Bernie: Breaking The Cycle Of Mediocrity And Mendacity

As Jonathan Bernstein made clear in an OpEd yesterday for Bloomberg News, Americans have become inured to deceit and manipulation from our political class. And he wasn't even speaking about Trump. His piece was on Paul Ryan's farewell speech. Unlike many inside the Beltway, Bernstein has long recognized Ryan as a faker and a fraud. "The same people," are wrote, "who celebrated him as a wonk-- something he never has been, as Paul Krugman and others have pointed out for years-- have also declared President Donald Trump’s clearly inadequate policy knowledge to be sufficient. It’s not just about false perceptions: One of the main reasons that Ryan’s agenda has gone nowhere, despite his ascent in the House and his party’s unified control of government, is precisely that Republicans didn’t have well-developed policy options ready to go. That was true for all of Ryan’s supposed areas of interest, from entitlement reform to immigration to poverty, and of course it was very much true of health care... [T]hings got even worse with Ryan in charge than they had been during Boehner’s tenure, and that’s at least partially on him. As is the least productive period of unified party government in decades."

Is this all we can expect from government? Conservatives would like us to believe so. It's a win/win for them. If they succeed with their dreadful agenda, they accomplish specific goals; if they fail-- as they inevitably do-- then people lose faith and trust in government, an even bigger goal for conservatives. It is absolutely crucial for conservatives-- regardless of party-- to defeat Bernie. The establishment can not tolerate him and his campaign against the status quo. The carefully crafted comfort of conservatism in this country will crumble if he becomes president and conservatives will fight to the death to prevent that from happening.

This week, writing for The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan dismisses their arguments against him and points out that "the case for Sanders in 2020 is as strong as it was in 2016-- if not stronger. He now has much better name recognition, a standing army of loyal and experienced activists, an unrivaled social media presence, an authenticity that cannot be bought or taught, and a string of substantive policy wins under his belt, from big-name Democratic support for his Medicare for All bill to the Stop BEZOS Act to the historic Senate vote on Yemen last week." Nathan Robinson, writing on the same day for The Guardian made similar points. "Based on his record, Sanders should be the progressive favorite by default. In 2016, he ran an impressive insurgent campaign that came close to defeating the party elite’s handpicked candidate. Savvier Democrats have already recognized that Sander’s message is the one that best suits the mood of the electorate."

His ideas have set the agenda for the Democratic party for the past two years, with elected officials trying to burnish their progressive credentials by doing photo ops with Sanders and adopting his policies, from free college to Medicare for All (a plan that even the majority of Republican voters now favor). Many polls suggest he is the most popular politician in the country, and would be the clear favorite in a match-up against Trump. Attempts to portray Sanders as the candidate of white “Bernie Bros” ignore the facts-- Sanders has higher favorability ratings among people of color than any other Democratic politician. It’s obvious that he’s the party’s best shot. He has a formidable team of experienced organizers, national popularity and name recognition, and a clear, bold agenda that can win over working-class people of all genders and races.

...A candidate should be judged on their record. Based on how recently most of the 2020 prospects have embraced the progressive agenda, it’s reasonable to suspect some opportunism. Sanders, on the other hand, has a lifelong history as a thorn in the side of the establishment. Even as a teenager, Sanders was getting himself arrested in civil rights demonstrations.

As mayor of Burlington, he pioneered an innovative community land trust approach to affordable housing. He has been an efficient legislator, even earning the title “amendment king” for his success in getting measures through Congress. And he has shown a willingness to take principled stands, including his early opposition to the Iraq war plus his votes against the Defense of Marriage Act and the Patriot Act.

There are only a few serious criticisms of Sanders, the main one being “he’s too old.’ But while age might be a more serious factor if the current president were far younger, Trump is a septuagenarian like Sanders. Sanders still shoots hoops, he criss-crosses the country giving speeches, and he has more energy than many of us who are less than half his age. If Trump tries to make an issue of Sanders’ superior age, experience, and wisdom, Sanders can just challenge him to settle it on the basketball court.

There are a few other criticisms that can be made of Sanders, including his unfair criticism of leftist “open borders” advocates. He has cast bad votes (the 1994 Clinton crime bill comes to mind) and sometimes makes frustrating gaffes. I do not think Sanders is the ideal candidate, the one I would make in a laboratory. It would indeed be nice to have someone younger, ideally a woman of color (if only the constitution didn’t bar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!) But the question isn’t “Is Sanders flawless?” Rather, it’s “Is Sanders the best candidate we have available?” To that, the answer is clear. No other 2020 prospect comes close.

Matt Taibbi was at Berniepalooza and his report is in the new issue of Rolling Stone.He sounds sold. He wrote that "After seizing 43 percent of the Democratic vote in the 2016 primaries and winning high-profile battles against companies like Amazon and Disney to raise their workers’ minimum wages to $15 an hour, Sanders in some circles is something it would have been hard to imagine him being years ago: a celebrity."

It’s possible the Democratic brand has been rehabilitated in the public’s eyes since 2016, and a combination of a new candidate, better tactics and voter experience of two years of a Trump presidency would spell victory for any Democrat in 2020.

It’s also possible this is not the case, however, and the absence of someone like Sanders in the race would mean surrendering all that populist anger out there into Trump’s cynical hands, again.

Campaign reporters constantly make the mistake of thinking politicians are causes, not effects. They’ve been trained to think of candidates as consumer creations that succeed or fail on the strength of concept (and if not the concept, the execution).

Bill Clinton is the sui generis of Third-Way-ism, a southerner who offered a mix of aw-shucks stump charisma, fiscal conservatism and a whiff of post-Sixties social liberalism. His 1992 run perfectly executed the plan for victory that folks in the Democratic Leadership Council dreamed might work, after the catastrophe of Walter Mondale in 1984. Offer voters the right political product, they thought, and they will buy.

But in the real world, these things can work backwards. The 2016 electorate was so profoundly dissatisfied with the usual choices that when Donald Trump slipped in the polls briefly in late October and early November of 2015, the immediate beneficiaries were two other non-politicians, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.

Pundits had been predicting that a Pat Buchanan-style protest curiosity like Trump would sooner or later fade, and he did. But he didn’t stay “faded,” among other things because 2016 Republican voters could not and would not consider any establishment alternative, not even fringy, mean ones like Ted Cruz.

Sometimes voters go through drastic changes of mind before parties even have a chance to offer them choices. After years of not embracing big shifts, they may suddenly decide they want universal health care, free college tuition, a slashed defense budget, a national minimum wage, and other sweeping ideas.

Other younger politicians may end up offering those same things, which would be great. But with Sanders, voters burned by past broken promises have probably guessed by now he’s constitutionally incapable of deviating from his platform. I don’t even think Sanders would know how to betray his own ideas for political gain.

About that: He was roundly mocked in 2016 for describing his campaign as a revolution, but as the policy discussions at the Gathering showed, his platform is actually revolutionary, in a specific way.

UMass-Amherst economist Robert Pollin appeared to unveil a massive plan to cost out the Medicare-for-All proposal Sanders is likely to spend the next years stumping.

Pollin’s plan is to reduce medical costs in America from 18 percent of GDP to between 9-11 percent, using a single-payer plan that mainly targets the waste in the system (read: corporate profits). He addressed the “biggest insurance companies in America,” saying half-wryly, half sternly: “We’re going to put you out of business.”

Sanders is no Lenin or Trotsky. He doesn’t want to overthrow free enterprise or establish a national ice cream. But the movement he and his wife are leading has goals that are genuinely threatening to the traditional funders of presidential campaigns of both parties in America: banks, defense contractors, pharmaceutical and energy companies, etc.

Sanders and co. hope to plow the proceeds of these conquests into an FDR-scaled “Green New Deal,” aimed at a fundamental transformation of the country’s transportation, housing, energy and agricultural systems.

It’s ambitious and drastically different from what Democratic voters have been offered by any viable candidate for a while. If voters aren’t behind such a program, that’s what primary seasons are for, finding that out. If they are, however, it would be a huge error not to have someone in the running backing it.

...[C]ynics always respond negatively to Sanders. In their world he doesn’t compute at all, so they keep inventing angles to explain him: he’s an “egomaniac,” or in it for personal gain somehow (“He has three houses!”), or a delusional bumbler out to poison the electorate with irresponsible and unrealistic expectations.

As to that last point: Sanders in 2015-2016 went from harmless, terminally ignored fringe-left curiosity to despised, possibly Russian-backed Hillary Spoiler virtually overnight. He’s probably second only to Trump as a target of press and social media invective, which paints him as a racist, socialist serpent in the fallen Eden of the should-have been Clinton presidency.

Some of this negativity is predictable, given that the Sanders platform would massively disenfranchise the traditional financial backers of the modern Democratic Party: Wall Street, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, Silicon Valley, lobbyists and corporate law firms, etc.

Whether it’s now or later, whoever takes on those interests is going to take a hell of a beating. That Sanders seems willing to be that person seems reason enough to embrace another run. Someone has to take up those fights eventually. It might be a while before anyone else volunteers for the job.

Will Bernie Run In 2020?

Progressive Democrats by Nancy Ohanian

I went to the first convention of the burgeoning alternative music business way back in the late '70s. All of us at indie labels, indie radio, indie publications, etc, got to meet in person for the first time and share our passion nd ideas about a music scene that was starting too take root in the popular culture. It was small and focused and fun. Now, I really hate going to conventions. At Warner Bros we did them annually, often twice a year-- one for the domestic company and one for the international company-- and I revelled that upon retiring I would never have to go to one again. All those germs... all that drunken behavior... all that bullshit and pointless travel. So I never went to any for the netroots movement that I really knew I should have gone to. But last night I got home from Berniepalooza. I had a good time and it was small enough to not be overwhelming-- maybe 250 people-- and to not be obsessed with mass inebriation and mass germ attacks. And I got to meet people in person who I've been conspiring with for over a decade on progressive politics. One woman whose work I admire tremendously told me she's in her 40's and said she's been wanting to meet me in person for years so that she could thank me for something that happened to her when she was 17 years old at a Morrissey concert at Madison Square Garden. She had charged the stage and was being escorted out of the building by the police when I walked over and gave her a backstage pass so she could get back in. She's been grateful all these years.

The event itself was good. Meeting all those people was enough for me but some of the presentations were inspiring and elucidating. Some weren't. But my mood kept going up and down based on whether or not I felt I was getting signals that Bernie is running or not. Blue America was the first PAC to start raising money for his 2016 campaign--even before he announced back then-- and we're doing it again this cycle too (just tap the thermometer on the right). But I was positive he was running a few months ago and Berniepalooza left me unsure. I asked Jeff Weaver every time I saw him and he said "maybe" every time. He and his staff are working as though Bernie is 100% in but when you talk to them they say that what Bernie says in public-- he's 50% decided basically-- is exactly what he says in private: he's 50% decided. So one day I felt all the signals added up to 49% and I would get depressed and the next day it was 51% and I would be all elated. Look, I'm not going to last forever; I'm not young anymore and the sense of immortality I had when I was climbing Mt. Everest or horseback riding in the Afghanistan's trackless Hindu Kush is long gone. I just want to see one great president before I die. Don't we all get one? There's no rule that says we do, is there? I just want to see one-- not someone who's somewhat good and relatively great, like Obama, but one who's historically great and who moves the country forward, like FDR. That's not Amy Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg or Kirsten Gillibrand. That's Bernie.

But, as it turns out, I didn't even have to venture up into the frozen tundra to "find out" the good news. The Associated Press' Steve Peoples had the scoop all along. Sanders, his headline blared, eyes 'bigger' 2020 bid despite some warning signs. Dateline Burlington. "An insurgent underdog no more," he wrote, "Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is laying the groundwork to launch a bigger presidential campaign than his first, as advisers predict he would open the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season as a political powerhouse." Whew. And then...

"A final decision has not been made, but those closest to the 77-year-old self-described democratic socialist suggest that neither age nor interest from a glut of progressive presidential prospects would dissuade him from undertaking a second shot at the presidency. And as Sanders’ brain trust gathered for a retreat in Vermont over the weekend, some spoke openly about a 2020 White House bid as if it was almost a foregone conclusion.

“This time, he starts off as a front-runner, or one of the front-runners,” Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver told The Associated Press, highlighting the senator’s proven ability to generate massive fundraising through small-dollar donations and his ready-made network of staff and volunteers.

Weaver added: “It’ll be a much bigger campaign if he runs again, in terms of the size of the operation.”

Amid the enthusiasm-- and there was plenty in Burlington as the Sanders Institute convened his celebrity supporters, former campaign staff and progressive policy leaders-- there were also signs of cracks in Sanders’ political base. His loyalists are sizing up a prospective 2020 Democratic field likely to feature a collection of ambitious liberal leaders-- and not the establishment-minded Hillary Clinton.

Instead, a new generation of outspoken Democrats such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris are expected to seek the Democratic nomination. All three have embraced Sanders’ call for “Medicare for All” and a $15 minimum wage, among other policy priorities he helped bring into the Democratic mainstream in the Trump era.

Let me stop here for a minute. Elizabeth Warren-- yes. She's the real deal; a real progressive. Tried and true-- PROVEN. Filled with great ideas, if-- maybe-- not the easiest to elect. But Kamala and Cory. You know a progressive by their actions, not by their electoral positioning strategies. Maybe Cory and Kamala will turn out to be progressives. They could start being progressives for a few years, obliterating past mistakes and in a decade, maybe less, run for president as progressives. I'm open to it. But in 2020? Are you kidding? I'm glad they've learned to parrot Bernie and that they've decided to vote well. It means something that they both have ProgressivePunch "A"s and that for the current session Kamala scores 99.61 and Cory scores 97.29, sandwiching Bernie's 98.82. It means "something," but not enough. Slow down kids, you both have a lot to prove before you'll win my vote. And you can do it-- by doing it, not claiming you will do it. People reported that a "high-profile Sanders supporter who was in attendance, Cornel West, described the Vermont senator as 'the most consistently progressive one out there,' suggesting that some would-be 2020 candidates have adopted Sanders’ words, but maintained ties to Wall Street and 'militarism.'" BINGO!

Perhaps the most important member of Sanders’ network, wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, said Democrats may be embracing Sanders’ “bold progressive ideas” on health care and the economy in some cases, but there’s need to go further on issues like climate change, affordable housing and student debt.

Whether her husband will lead the debate as a presidential candidate in 2020, she said, remains unclear. O’Meara Sanders noted that one question above all others would guide their decision: “Who can beat Donald Trump?”

“That has to be the primary goal. To win. We think you win by a very strong progressive commitment,” she told AP. When asked if Sanders could win in 2020, she said “every single poll” showed that Sanders would have beaten Republican nominee Donald Trump two years ago.

...“It’s not about us,” O’Meara Sanders added. “It’s about what’s right for the country.”

Despite signs pointing to a 2020 run, Sanders has given himself a clear escape hatch.

Weaver, like Sanders himself in a recent interview, suggested that the senator would step aside if he believes another candidate has a better shot at denying Trump a second term. There are no clear indications from Sanders or those closest to him, however, that he currently has that belief.

“I know they haven’t announced, but it sort of seems like that’s what’s happening,” said John Cusack, another actor invited to the weekend summit. Asked about his preference for 2020, he called Sanders “the only real progressive candidate out there.”

“All of the sudden, what was once fringe politics is now mainstream. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that (Texas congressman) Beto O’Rourke and all these young candidates are running on the People’s Summit and progressive movement platform, but let’s not forget who broke us through.”

“If he runs again, I’ll be on board,” Cusack said.

A word about Beto, since Cusack brought him up. Beto's a friend who I like a lot. Blue America backed him when he first ran for Congress and endorsed him against against Ted Cruz. And Beto is as progressive as they come on 3 issues: immigration, campaign finance reform and marijuana. Other than that... Beto never joined the Progressive Caucus. He joined the New Dems. His record in Congress was, at best, middling. It's great that he took on Cruz and did so well... and, perhaps (I think so) grew as a politician. But hie's no Bernie Sanders. He's been in Congress for 6 years. Go ahead and name an accomplishment or an initiative. His ProgressivePunch voting record, I'm sorry to say is an overall "F." Sorry to shatter any hallucinations. His lifetime crucial vote score-- 78.99. And this cycle... 67.65, pretty terrible, especially for someone representing a deep blue district (PVI D+17) where Obama won twice and where TRump's share of the 2016 general election vote was a miserable 27.2%.

The Opposite Of Berniepalooza

I spent the last few days in lovely Burlington, Vermont… at Berniepalooza. It was very inspiring, very forward-looking of course-- with speakers like Stephanie Kelton, Cornel West, Bill de Blasio, Abdul El-Sayed, Ben Jealous, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, Bill McKibben… talking about the progressive vision for America and the world.

ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) had a conference too. It was the exact opposite-- how to abolish Social Security and Medicare kind of thing. Nancy Altman covered it for Common Dreams. “Mick Mulvaney, the Trump administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget,” she wrote, “is the latest to make crystal clear the longstanding plan to destroy both programs… Mulvaney just revealed that he plans first to go after what he sees as more politically achievable cuts. He explained that the next step, presumably after Trump is in his second term, will be for the administration not just to cut these programs but to end them as we know them.”

Mulvaney is apparently so eager to go after our earned benefits that he threw the point into a speech to state legislators, even though both Social Security and Medicare are federal programs.

Mulvaney’s apparent uncontained enthusiasm to take away people’s earned benefits is similar to that of Mitch McConnell, who just weeks before the midterm, called for Social Security and Medicare to be “adjusted” (code for destroying them). McConnell couldn’t resist broadcasting his intentions, even though these programs are extremely popular even with Republican voters.

Why are these opponents so hostile to such important programs? Social Security, now more than eight decades old, and Medicare, now more than five decades old, have stood the test of time. Both of these efficient, virtually universal, overwhelmingly popular programs insure us against risks that all of us face. Rich or poor, anyone can suffer a disabling illness or accident, making work impossible. Rich or poor, any parent can die prematurely leaving dependent children. Rich or poor, all of us hope to live to old age and, if we are so fortunate, require income we cannot outlive and health insurance for the treatments and medication we inevitably will need.

The private sector is incapable of providing the wage and health insurance that Social Security and Medicare provide as efficiently, universally, securely or effectively as the federal government. Insurance works best when the greatest numbers of people are covered. The only entity that can require that everyone is covered and pays premiums as soon as they start working is the federal government. That is one of the reasons both Social Security and Medicare work so well.

And that is why Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents of these programs want to end them. These programs put the lie to their ideological zealotry, which insists that the private sector is always better than government.

Decades ago, opponents of these programs were forthright that their objections were ideological. They did not see the creation and administration of universal insurance programs as an appropriate role for the federal government. But the American people overwhelmingly disagreed, so this argument was utterly unsuccessful.

Now most opponents have changed their tactics, and proclaim their love for these programs. President George W. Bush, for example, proclaimed, “Social Security was a great moral success of the 20th century, and we must honor its great purposes in this new century.” His very next sentence argued for radically changing it.

Similarly, Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents hide their straightforward ideological opposition. Rather, these opponents subversively seek to undermine confidence in Social Security’s and Medicare’s future by asserting that both programs are unaffordable.

Worse, in their efforts to end Social Security and Medicare, they seek to turn Americans against each other. They tell us that seniors are taking from children, that people with disabilities are taking from seniors.

Moreover, in their efforts to lull us into thinking they are not seeking to hurt our legitimate interests, opponents claim that our vital and earned financial protection in the event of disability isn’t as “core” as our financial protection in the event of old age. In his recent ALEC speech, Mulvaney tried to make just such a claim, asserting, “You can reform and save a ton of money in Medicare and Social Security and not touch the primary pillars for the next several years.” Along those same lines, last April, Mulvaney rhetorically asked, “Do you really think that Social Security disability insurance is part of what people think of when they think of Social Security?”

I am confident that the over 10 million Americans receiving Social Security because of wages lost as the result of serious, work-ending disabilities understand that Social Security disability insurance is Social Security. When American workers pay into Social Security with every paycheck, disability insurance is one of the protections they earn, along with life insurance and retirement annuities.

Social Security disability benefits are inextricably intertwined with Social Security’s retirement and survivor benefits. Social Security benefits are generated from the same formula. When workers with disabilities reach retirement age, their benefit is unchanged in amount but is paid as a retirement benefit, no longer as a disability benefit. Despite those facts, though, Mulvaney’s claim that Social Security disability insurance is not really Social Security is a convenient rhetorical game to claim “core” benefits are not being touched.

For Medicare, Mulvaney revealed another trick before his ALEC audience. He floated the idea of Medicare no longer reimbursing teaching hospitals its fair share of those hospitals’ costs, arguing that the cut wouldn’t hurt beneficiaries. Like his claim that Social Security disability insurance is not “really’ Social Security, beneficiaries would be hurt, though not immediately, and the cause of the hurt would be difficult to trace.

While benefits wouldn’t be directly cut, it certainly would limit the ability of Medicare beneficiaries to get treatment at teaching hospitals if that were their choice and the best setting for their care. To the extent Medicare didn’t pay its fair share and teaching hospitals nevertheless continued to treat seniors and people with disabilities, those costs would be shifted to everyone else.

And, of course, this is just the start, Mulvaney made clear. “In the long term you’ll have to [make more major changes.] The president has asked me to fix the easy stuff first,” Mulvaney explained to his audience.

Fortunately, the Democrats-- who support expanding, not cutting, Social Security and Medicare-- have control of the House of Representatives, at least for now. But, all of us who want to keep the benefits we have earned must remain vigilant. We must not be fooled or confused into allowing opponents to make what they deem “easy” cuts to our earned benefits.

These opponents will not give up. And neither must we. Expanding, not cutting, our Social Security and Medicare is profoundly wise policy and is overwhelmingly popular. But it will only become a reality if we keep our voices loud, reminding our political leaders that it’s voters, not donors, to whom they must account next election day.