Do You Know Anyone Who Says "Vote Blue No Matter Who" Who Isn't An Insufferable Cretin?

That's a powerful statement from Bernie on how existentially crucial it is to defeat Trump. Not a word though about electing Status Quo Joe. That sums it up for almost everyone I know: hold your nose and elect the worst Democratic nominee for president since... let me see... there have been some real stinkers... ummm... Biden is worse than Hillary, who was so bad she even lost to Donald Trump. Biden is worse than Gore who was another Senate conservative and who picked Joe Lieberman as VP, making it impossible for progressives to vote for the ticket. Biden is worse than Bill Clinton, the man who turned the party from a worker-oriented party to a neoliberal corporate-oriented party. Biden is worse than John Davis, Woodrow Wilson, Alton Parker, Grover Cleveland (the original corporate whore Blue Dog, although they were called Bourbon Democrats at the time), Winfield Scott Hancock, Horatio Seymour, George McClellan, Stephen Douglas... Oh, wait... James Buchanan. That's the one who was a worse Democratic nominee than Biden-- the 15th president of the United States, a Pennsylvania Federalist who switched to the Democratic Party where his states' rights views were in vogue among the pro-slavery base of the party. Historians inevitably include Buchanan in any list of the 3 worst presidents ever and as one of the causes of the Civil War. Biden's probably not as bad. Probably.

The CDC is predicting that something like 11,000 people will die every week this month because of Trump's epic pandemic failures-- that's over 40,000 in the lead up to mail in ballots going out in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and other swing states.

Last week, Murdoch's right-wing NY Post headlined a nothing-story about how Rashida Tlaib refuses to endorse Biden. Beyond the headlines, it is a story about how she is fighting to defeat Trump. Although there may be a tiny and utterly insignificant cohort on the fringes of politics who believe to bring down the corrupt system, we need an armed civil war-- and therefor the worst outcome (another Trump term)-- progressives all want Trump to lose, even if they abhor Biden.

Polls have shown over and over that there is virtually no enthusiasm for Biden. But there is gargantuan enthusiasm to see Trump turned out of the White House. He is the most despised president in any of our lifetimes, more so than Nixon, let alone Bush. Last week, writing for The Atlantic, right-of-center journalist Peter Nicholas listed half a dozen reasons how Trump could win in November. One of them, of course, is Biden. Nicholas began by conceding that "Trump is losing this race. Set aside the particulars-- how suburban voters are migrating toward Joe Biden, and how seniors are rethinking their support too. Consider the basics. Presidents are supposed to keep Americans employed. The jobless rate now stands at 11 percent-- more than 3 points higher than when Jimmy Carter lost reelection in 1980 and when George H. W. Bush was defeated in 1992. Presidents are supposed to keep Americans safe. About 140,000 have died from COVID-19, more than twice the number that perished in the Vietnam War, which doomed Lyndon B. Johnson’s reelection chances in 1968. Presidents are supposed to attract voters outside their loyal base. Trump’s approval rating stands at 38 percent, according to Gallup; no president since Harry Truman in 1948 has won reelection with a number less than 40 percent. So what-- it’s over, then? Maybe not. Facing the combined calamities of a pandemic and an economic meltdown, Trump hasn’t collapsed. His base never really grows, but neither does it crumple, keeping him competitive."

And then there's Biden:

Biden’s got his own problems.

Biden has suffered personal loss, which has made him a comforting figure to grieving Americans who have lost jobs and loved ones in the pandemic. Yet he still symbolizes a brand of establishment centrism that leaves some younger voters and some in the party’s activist wing uninspired.

“We have to be true to ourselves and acknowledge that Biden is a mediocre, milquetoast, neoliberal centrist that we’ve been fighting against in the Democratic establishment,” Cornel West, the Harvard University professor and a Bernie Sanders supporter, told me.

If Sanders’s primary voters stay home on Election Day out of pique, that could damage Biden’s chances, especially in must-win swing states.

Nina Turner, a co-chair of the Sanders campaign, told me she has no appetite for the choice she faces: “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.”

Expect Trump to aggravate a dispute that advances his own interests. As I’ve written, he spent months wooing Sanders voters during the primary, trying to convince them that the senator was the victim of a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from getting the party’s nomination.

Last month, Bernie's former press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, penned a long think piece for Current Affairs, In Defense of Litmus Tests, laying out why progressives need to keep the pressure up on Biden. She began by asking swing state voters if there is "a single issue, or an approach to governance, or a character deficit, or a past vote that you would consider to be disqualifying for a Democratic presidential nominee? A commitment to preserving the for-profit healthcare system, perhaps? Waffling on the right to choose? A yes vote for the Iraq War? Would you decline, maybe, to vote for a candidate who had accepted corporate money to fund their campaign? Or one who had been credibly accused of sexual assault? What about a candidate with a record of trying to cut social safety net programs like Medicare? Or one who had eulogized a segregationist? If your answer is no-- that no single issue or 'litmus test' is disqualifying-- was there once a time, before Trump perhaps, when you would have answered 'yes'?"

“Vote blue no matter who,” has become a sort of gospel among moderate Democrats and “Never Trump Republicans.” The logic is simple: Trump is so cruel and presents such an enormous threat to, well, nearly everyone, that he must be stopped at all cost. As my former colleague Mehdi Hassan has argued forcefully and often, no matter what Biden’s flaws are, Trump is worse.

...[A]lthough I agree Trump must be defeated, I don’t think it must come at the price of abandoning the values which ostensibly motivate our opposition to him. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this “vote blue no matter who” orthodoxy really promotes.

...Now that Joe Biden is the nominee, “vote blue no matter whoism” is principally deployed to shield him from personal accountability and calls to move left-- where the bulk of American voters are on policy. To criticise him or merely decline to endorse him is to “cast a vote to support Trump,” according to prominent pundits.

But, of course, it’s possible to defend the choice of Biden over Trump without pretending he’s flawless.

If we accept the binary that your vote is either unconditional or pledged to Trump, it removes our ability to affirm the values which will remain important long after the election is over.

...[T]he urgent desire to beat Trump-- an urgency I share-- has given rise to an approach to politics that refuses to admit error, concede flaw, or consider improvement. A world where Trump must lose is also one, according to influential members of the corporate political and media establishment-- in which any criticism of the Democratic nominee, no matter how mild or factual, is unwelcome. “No matter who.” No matter what.

...What is it that actually drives Republican message discipline? Too often, liberals cast party differences as a battle between “good guys” and “bad guys”-- principles vs power-- but more often than not, the answer is “money.” Republicans present a united front because the party leadership is committed to core conservative economic principles shared by both leadership and, sadly, much of their base. The Republican establishment ultimately coalesced around Trump because they believed he would protect the most fundamental conservative economic interests. And they were right. Trump’s first major action as an executive was a $1.7 trillion tax cut for the rich. He has stacked the courts with judges who protect corporate interests, and has worked to discourage antitrust litigation. Conservatives don’t do anything which fail to advance those ends.

The problem is that corporate Democrats serve the same masters, but must operate under a veil of pretense. Their corporate donors are equally motivated as Republican donors to cut the social safety net, preserve for-profit health insurance, protect private real estate against profit-undermining housing laws, and slow the pace of environmental reforms. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republican messaging aligns straightforwardly with their economic goals: Cut taxes for the rich. Protect “individual freedoms” from government overreach. Encourage “self sufficiency.” They’ve branded austerity so that it’s welcomed by their constituents. Meanwhile, Democrats attempt to disguise that they’re offering versions of the same wrapped in rainbow flags and kente cloth, but have the clumsy task of rationalizing why they fail to deliver more than tokenism and lip service.

For Republican corporate donors to be happy, Republicans must win, and they do. For Democratic corporate donors to be happy, Democrats must lose. And they do.

Candidates like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramilla Jayapal and Jamal Bowman excite voters and are able to message differently exactly because they don’t take corporate PAC or lobbyist money. And in the context of the 2016 and 2020 primaries, millions of Americans got a taste for what it felt like to be offered concrete, people-funded plans to advance their lives.

“When I graduated in 2011, I owed $137,000 in student loans. Today I have $175,000 even as I continue making monthly payments. I will never own a home, start a family, or live debt-free. @BernieSanders is the only person running who will cancel ALL student debt.” writer David Ian Robin tweeted as part of the Sanders’ “#MyBernieStory” campaign. “I got a bill for my miscarriage because my insurance only covered my child as long as the child was ‘viable.’ What a wonderful country we live in, huh? #whyIamForBernie #MyBernieStory” tweeted a supporter named Georgia, who, like millions, was inspired by Medicare for All.

Now, establishment Democrats want the base to put their substantive differences aside and coalesce behind Biden. But for millions of voters, what they’re getting for that exchange feels inadequate.

If Democrats want the same party cohesion conservatives enjoy, the answer isn’t to become more like Republicans and coalesce behind a flawed candidate. It’s to start acting like Democrats. It’s time to regain the public trust. And you don’t do that by asking them to vote for a “D” before an idea.

Being clear about what you’re fighting for matters. Especially in the shadow of the incredible health and economic crises currently facing America, universal healthcare still matters. Abortion rights still matter. Climate change absolutely matters. And backing popular, progerssive solutions to the COVID crisis-- solutions like monthly relief checks-- would certainly go a long way toward proving that the country wouldn’t just be better under a Biden administration, it could thrive.

“Can we all just admit this,” New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow recently wrote, “the transformational changes that COVID, the economic crisis, police brutality and racial turbulence will force are precisely some of the things Bernie Sanders was talking about but may have sounded too extreme to some just months ago.” Blow is right, but it’s not enough to admit that reality has endorsed Bernie. Biden should endorse his policies too. And we shouldn’t be sheepish about pushing him to do so.

...But Biden declines to support popular progressive policies because, frankly, he, and the people who run his campaign, are paid not to. Biden’s senior advisor, Steve Richetti, is a former healthcare lobbyist. The organizers of his super PAC include Larry Rasky, whose lobbying firm works for Raytheon, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. More billionaires donated to Joe Biden’s campaign than any other-- at least forty-four billionaires, in fact, representing the real estate industry, the finance industry, and big tech. Voters may want Medicare for All, but what incentive do these men have to kneecap the for-profit healthcare industry? How will the needs of renters and unemployed gig workers stand up against the interests of real estate and life insurance billionaire Eli Broad, who contributed $25,000 to a Democratic Party PAC?

Biden has openly admitted the influence corporate donors have on politicians. At a 2007 campaign event, he explained: “If you, Lynn, bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I’m excited & say, ‘Joe, I’d like to talk to you about something. You didn’t buy me. But it’s human nature, you helped me, I”m going to say, ‘Sure, Lynn, come on in. The front of the line is always filled with people whose pockets are filled.”





“It’s human nature,” he added.

...Most Democratic voters can accept that they need to vote for Biden to prevent a second Trump term. But more voters, particularly new or formerly disaffected voters, would be convinced to turn out (and volunteer and donate) if party leaders truly recognized what’s at the root of Sanders’ appeal. In his platform, millions of working class and poor Americans felt their most fundamental concerns were genuinely being addressed-- often for the first time in their political lives. They saw in him a candidate with a values-based vision of what this country could be: a belief that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was not just a slogan, but a bedrock principle that life shouldn’t be contingent on a co-pay, race shouldn’t influence liberty, and happiness shouldn’t be held hostage by corporate titans too stingy to pay a living wage. I suspect that many can’t forget the feeling, cultivated by Sanders’ movement, that a better world was possible and that yes, they deserved it. And frankly, they shouldn’t ever forget.

The way to put together a massive coalition that will be unstoppable against Trump is not to shame Americans-- struggling now more than ever-- into a fidelity pledge. The way forward is to put together a platform that so completely meets voters’ needs it becomes irresistible.

I am deeply concerned that each time a corporate Democrat attempts to disavow us of our principles by smearing our values as  unreasonable “litmus tests”-- each time they tell us that a policy implemented the world over is “pie in the sky,” that demanding healthcare as a human right is akin to whining for “a pony,” that women’s rights are conditional on who the woman is and how powerful the man is that she’s crossed-- we lose our ethical moorings.

And with each election cycle, as progressive candidates are openly thwarted by big monied interests who are deeply invested in the status quo, I’m concerned that we have no strategy to ratchet back the rightward creep that “lesser of two evilism” enables.

“Vote blue no matter who” lowers the floor of what Democrats stand for to a hair’s breadth above Trump’s scalp. And the effect of repeatedly lowering the standards of the only powerful resistance party is grave. It establishes a slippery and ever inclining slope, a race to the bottom that has skewed American politics such that the “liberal party” is well to the right of American voters on all but certain social issues.

I agree that Donald Trump presents a unique and grevious threat to this country. But it’s also true that every four years we’re told the same. Republicans are becoming more right-wing, more reactionary, more openly white supremacist. But it happens, in part, because Democrats chase them to the right, thinking electoral victory can be found in splitting the difference rather than taking a stand for good. Year after year, Democrats vote to keep Republicans from winning “at any cost.” At some point, the conscience coffers will be empty.