The NeoCon Wing Of The Democratic Party Is Beginning To Grapple With The Reality That They May No Longer Be In Charge

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that billionaire class avatar Michael Bloomberg "did not rule out" spending a billion dollars of his own to defeat Trump-- even when its clear he's not going to be the nominee-- and even if Bernie or Elizabeth is the nominee.

"Bloomberg’s plans would effectively create a shadow campaign operation for the general election, complete with hundreds of organizers in key battleground states and a robust digital operation, ready to be inherited by the party nominee-- regardless of who that nominee may be.

Already, Mr. Bloomberg has spent more than $200 million on advertising, putting him on pace to spend by early March about the same as what President Barack Obama’s campaign spent on advertising over the course of the entire 2012 general election. If Mr. Bloomberg fails to win the nomination, future spending would be redirected toward attacking Mr. Trump.

And in an interview with Reuter's Jason Lange in Texas, Bloomberg rejected the attacks that he's trying to buy the election: "Number one priority is to get rid of Donald Trump. I’m spending all my money to get rid of Trump. Do you want me to spend more or less? End of story."

Sounds personal-- more than ideological... and maybe a little ego-driven. Also-- Bloomberg, a moderate #NeverTrump Republican masquerading as a Democrat-- detests Trump, who isn't nearly as rich as he is-- for beating him to the presidency... and because Trump derisively refers to him as "Little Michael." And, in fact, on Saturday Bloomberg was interviewed by CBS News' Tim Perry to whom he reiterated that "the number one thing is to replace Donald Trump... While I certainly would disagree with Bernie on an awful lot of things, if it's Donald Trump vs. Bernie, I would support Bernie.

Last week, Reuters released a poll Ipsos did for them about one of those places where Bloomberg disagrees with Bernie-- a wealth tax on the super-rich. Billionaires-- like Trump and Bloomberg-- and their toadies son't like the whole idea of a wealth tax and call it "socialism!!!!" The Ipsos poll shows that 64% of Americans like the idea-- including even 53% of Republicans.

A wealth tax is levied on an individual’s net worth, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, as well as cash holdings, similar in concept to property taxes. It is separate from an income tax, which applies to wages, interest and dividends, among other sources.

...The Reuters/Ipsos results suggested even stronger support for an annual levy on total wealth, not just income. Warren and Sanders have touted the idea as a way to help pay for major social programs like Medicare for All and to reverse a stark rise in the share of wealth owned by the very richest Americans, known as the “1 percent.”

The poll also points to changing attitudes toward basic ideas such as “keeping what you earn.”

That notion, central to a winner-take-all brand of capitalism, got mixed reviews. While 56% of Republicans agreed the very rich should keep what they have regardless of the impact on inequality, 35% of Republicans disagreed with the statement, as did 71% of Democrats.

Republican survey respondents interviewed by Reuters said they did not see their support for a wealth tax conflicting with their party ideals or their support for Trump.

Kathy Herron, 56, a Republican who lives in Santa Rosa, California, said her support for Trump-- a self-proclaimed billionaire-- stems from his hardline policies on illegal immigration. In her view, the president would do well to support higher taxes on rich Americans. “We’re taxed from one end to the other, and it just seems the rich don’t pay their share,” she said.

In recent years in particular, mainstream economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve have taken seriously the possibility that high levels of wealth and income inequality may be not just politically corrosive, but bad for economic growth.

At the most recent Fed policy meeting, staff members presented research on how families’ differing access to credit might make a recession worse-- the sort of exercise that shows how unequal starting points among households can influence national outcomes.

Economic and market trends have likely reinforced doubts about who gets ahead, and how fast. Since the start in 2009 of a now-decade-long recovery, the top 1 percent’s share of national net worth has grown from 27.8% to 32.2%, driven by a record-setting boom in the stock market, according to Fed data.

Trump has cited the rise in equity markets as a selling point in his campaign, which is centered on taking credit for historically low unemployment, and a tariff-heavy trade policy that he says will restore manufacturing jobs.

But that has not changed the country’s wealth picture. While the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% of Americans has increased since the crisis, to 1.5% percent, longterm the trend is down, with their share at less than half what it was in 1989. The shares of wealth held by the middle and upper middle classes-- or all other Americans save for the richest 1 percent-- have all fallen since the crisis.

The key questions:

1. How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - The very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs

• Strongly agree- 36% (49% among Democrats)
• Somewhat agree- 28% (28% among Dems)
• Somewhat disagree- 15% (12% among Dems)
• Strongly disagree- 11% (6% among Dems)

2. How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - The very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality

• Strongly agree- 13% (7% among Dems)
• Somewhat agree- 20% (14% among Dems)
• Somewhat disagree- 23% (26% among Dems)
• Strongly disagree- 31% (45% among Dems)

Politico reported that at a campaign event for white collar Democrats-- lawyers and insurance executives-- in Des Moines last week, "A young voter stood up and asked Biden 'How could we trust your judgment?' After all, the voter said, he’d gotten two of the biggest questions in recent years wrong: the 2002 Iraq War vote when he was a senator and the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which Biden, then vice president, counseled Obama against... On Iraq, Biden gave a familiar answer that Democratic senators who voted for the invasion have been making for 17 years: It was a vote to give President George W. Bush leverage at the United Nations to bolster a weapons inspection regime, not to greenlight an imminent attack. (This is historically accurate, but a bit like arguing you let a college-aged friend borrow your credit card only for buying books for his fraternity and then being surprised about all the pot and booze he added to the bill.)"

Biden boasted that he "will put my record against anyone in public life in terms of foreign policy." Bernie, noted Politico, is the only rival who seemed to welcome that challenge.

Earlier on the same day Biden spoke, Sanders stumped in Grundy Center, about 90 minutes northeast of Des Moines. It was a small working-class audience and Sanders, after blasting Biden on Iran for the cameras, returned to health care.

Though the term is not often used nowadays, the Sanders town hall format is what sixties-era activists used to call “consciousness raising.” He prods ordinary people to stand up and describe for their fellow citizens the depravities they’ve experienced in the American health care system. Older radicals used the method to make working people aware that they were oppressed, that they weren’t the only ones, and that they could do something about it.

These sessions usually surface so many sad stories that Sanders has a regular joke about how his wife, Jane, complains that his events are too depressing. He then points to an aide who will be handing out Prozac on the way out.

The Sanders view is that, quite literally, this is how the revolution starts. Raise enough consciousness among regular people about the vagaries of the health insurance industry and eventually people will be organizing together and clamoring to trade in their own insurance plans in favor of “Medicare for All.” This is not just how Sanders sees health care, but it’s how he sees almost every issue, including foreign policy.

“I was mayor of the city of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was our enemy,” he said in a 2017 address at Westminster College, in Missouri. “We established a sister city program with the Russian city of Yaroslavl, a program which still exists today. I will never forget seeing Russian boys and girls visiting Vermont, getting to know American kids, and becoming good friends. Hatred and wars are often based on fear and ignorance. The way to defeat this ignorance and diminish this fear is through meeting with others and understanding the way they see the world. Good foreign policy means building people-to-people relationships.”

...Sanders’ allies describe Biden as a bloodthirsty neoliberal warmonger who will return to militarism once elected... Progressives have also changed the politics of foreign policy. Democrats across the spectrum no longer believe that a reflexive toughness to international crises is a prerequisite for victory. In 2004, Kerry, who in his youth was most famous for his opposition to the Vietnam War, reinvented himself as a war fighter for the general election. (He lost.)

The Biden campaign attempted to bullshit the media that they would match Bernie's Iowa rallies with AOC by rolling out Biden's A-team: Kerry and little known Iowa conservative freshman Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer. Bernie and AOC are drawing thousands, Biden, Kerry and Finkenauer are drawing dozens-- sometimes not even.

Biden supporters and staffers waiting for surrogate John Kerry

And Bernie leads in Iowa polling now. He's number one-- with 21.3%-- in the Real Clear Politics polling average (with Biden at 17.7%). And in the latest poll-- the Iowa Poll for Des Moines Register and CNN-- Not only is Bernie # 1, but Biden is barely hanging on with 15%, the number needed to move on to the second round.

Let's look at a perspective-- a missive to shocked neocon GenXerss-- on all this from Cleveland-based attorney and blogger Tim Russo, an unwavering, unflinching Bernie supporter: Now that you’re in Bernie panic….

It’s happening. As polls one by one put Bernie Sanders the front runner to win Iowa, then New Hampshire, the Great Bernie Panic of 2020 has begun. Relax! Shock is always the first stage of grief, is it not? Grief at the death of your dear, departed worldview needn’t be too long. After all, it’s served you so poorly you couldn’t see Bernie Sanders (let alone Trump) happening. Duh!! The good news? There is no zeal like that of the recently converted; a nirvana of endless energy awaits you. The shock is natural. Here are some steps to help you along, as the inevitability sets in. Enjoy the ride!

1. Unplug. Turn off the TV, the podcasts, the talking heads. Very little mass media existing in the early 21st century will help you navigate a road you must walk yourself. In fact, media today is purpose built to oppose precisely that. If silence is too much for your brain, (too many ghosts! second thoughts! regrets! shame MY GOD the SHAME) listen to your favorite music. Find new music. Go back to vinyl, get those god damn plugs out your fucking ears and immerse in the tactile experience of placing needle onto LP to conjure the angels of your soul. I find watching classic movies on TCM is just the ticket-- no commercials!

2. Read Marx. Did you know Marx wrote about America? A lot? No, you didn’t. Now you do! Get the 2016 edition of those works, and study them closely. I realize the letters of the alphabet “M” and “a” and “r” and “x” are not permitted to pass your lips in pronounced succession, but that shit’s over bitch. Educate yourself on what’s been denied to your brain your whole life. Your brain is just sitting there, waiting. It will thank you.

3. Talk to strangers. Run with scissors, even! Yes, the world order needs to be reversed. All of it. Up needs to be down, right must become (literally) left. You are shocked that Bernie Sanders is even an option, let alone about to win. Guess what? That means you got it all wrong, your whole life, and now you need to go in the opposite direction, in everything you do. Literally everything. It’ll be fun!

4. Get drunk. Your dead worldview deserves to go out with a bang, so raise a glass (or 6) to your deluded former self, how stupid you were, and have a laugh. Spark up a fatty. Let that freak flag fly that you buried your whole life, and enjoy the world around you, because it’s changing, fast.