Biden And Trump Reveal Their Messages For The Rest Of The Campaigns

All during the primaries, I warned DWT readers that if Biden became the nominee, the campaign would swing on stuff that aren't of much relevance to the American people: which one has a more disgusting family, which one is more corrupt, which one is more senile. Democrats, bolstered by mainstream media, believe Trump's family is worse; Republicans, bolstered by Fox News and Hate Talk Radio, believe Biden's family is worse. Democrats, bolstered by mainstream media, believe Trump is more corrupt; Republicans, bolstered by Fox News and Hate Talk Radio, believe Biden is more corrupt. Democrats, bolstered by mainstream media, believe Trump is senile and batshit crazy; Republicans, bolstered by Fox News and Hate Talk Radio, believe Biden is senile and drooling on himself. Biden's performance Thursday left Trump nearly at a loss for words. It will be much harder for him to make the senility argument, at least for a few weeks. Even Fox was singing Biden's praises. Dan Perino called his speech "a home run in the bottom of the 9th... He had pace, rhythm, energy, emotion, and delivery. I think if he looks back, he could say that's probably the best speech of his life. He just took the moment."

Politico's reaction must have been rough for Trump to swallow: "In a campaign riddled with verbal gaffes and setbacks, where his cognitive abilities were questioned and his debate performances criticized, Joe Biden stepped up to the lectern and delivered the biggest speech of his life without a hitch... By addressing the somber mood of the nation and reaching out to those who suffered loss from the pandemic, Biden sought to distinguish his style of leadership from Trump, who’s long been criticized for failing to memorialize those who died from the virus... Biden's commanding delivery could make it more difficult for Trump to paint him as staggering and senile ('Slow Joe') at the Republican convention next week."

Before the speech, the NY Times reported that Señor Trumpanzee "unleashed a scorched-earth campaign... predicting 'mayhem' if his rival won the general election in November. At stake in this election is the survival of our nation, it’s true. Because we’re dealing with crazy people on the other side. They’ve gone totally stone-cold crazy."

A racist and sexist, he took pleasure in singling out Kamala Harris for special abuse, something I suspect is going to go over poorly outside of KKK circles, although he never mentioned how she allowed his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to escape a prison term. The Times reported that he was revealing "the core of his coming campaign: a highly personal assault on Mr. Biden and his running mate.

“These people have gone insane and they are radical left,” Mr. Trump said, calling Mr. Biden “a puppet of the radical-left movement that seeks to destroy the American way of life.”

In Mr. Trump’s often blatantly misleading telling, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris will destroy the country by taking guns away from Americans, funding late-term abortions, encouraging “deadly ‘sanctuary cities’” and allowing low-income housing to “abolish suburbs.”

Seeking to undermine Mr. Biden’s appeal in rural, blue-collar parts of Pennsylvania, the president lashed out at him, saying that Mr. Biden had “abandoned” his hometown, Scranton, when his family moved when he was a young boy.

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Biden had been at the forefront of a “globalist attack on Pennsylvania voters,” citing the former vice president’s support of trade deals with Mexico, China, South Korea and “the horrible, ridiculous Paris climate accords.”

[PENNSYLVANIA POLLING AVERAGE:]

As far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Trump asserted, “Joe Biden is no friend of Pennsylvania.”

In his remarks, the president also ascribed to Mr. Biden many positions that he does not actually hold or he mischaracterized Mr. Biden’s proposals.

Mr. Trump misleadingly claimed that Mr. Biden had “pledged to hike your taxes by $4 trillion dollars.” Three-quarters of the proposed increases would be levied on the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

The president falsely said that Mr. Biden would “take away your guns.” Mr. Biden’s proposed gun control measures include a buyback program that would allow those who own assault weapons and high-capacity magazines to either sell them to the government or register them.

Mr. Trump also falsely said that Mr. Biden would “give free health care to illegal aliens.” Mr. Biden’s health care plan would allow undocumented immigrants to buy government-sponsored insurance or private plans on government-run exchanges, but it would not be “free.”

The president misleadingly claimed that Mr. Biden would “close down charter schools.” Mr. Biden has said that he would end voucher programs for private, for-profit charter schools, but that he supports high-performing public charter schools.

And Mr. Trump misleadingly claimed that under Mr. Biden, “I guess 600,000, 670,000 lose their jobs.” That is an estimate of the effect of a nationwide ban on fracking from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but Mr. Biden has not said he supports such a ban.

Global Warming Is Accelerating. (In Other News, Democrats Reverse Platform, Won't End Fossil Fuel Subsidies)

The three colors in the chart represent odds that a season will be perceived as cool (blue), normal (white) or hot (red). In 1950 to 1980, if represented on a six-sided dice, there were two blue sides, two red sides and two white sides. "The dice are now loaded, really loaded. ... Four sides of the die are now red (hot) and one side is deep red for extreme heat, more than three standard deviations warmer than in 1951-1980. Dark red (22%) is creeping onto another side" (James Hansen et. al.)

by Thomas Neuburger

As we contemplate the political events of the week — the Republican takeover of the Democratic Party and convention; Democratic media adjunct MSNBC lying about AOC's Party-approved nomination of Bernie Sanders (before changing their headline); Bill Clinton daring to show his face in public, and post-MeToo leadership letting him — it's nevertheless impossible not to be overwhelmed by this.

 • "Good morning. The Greenland ice sheet has past the melting point of no return"

"[I]ce that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet" — Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

"[S]tarting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline—so you’re going to get even more losses,” meaning the melt-rate has permanently accelerated while the snowfall has not. 

But there's a bright side: “It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future ... The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

We're learning how to learn sooner how wrong we are, "so we can better prepare." That's the bright side.

 • "Record Arctic blazes may herald new ‘fire regime’ decades sooner than anticipated"

"Something’s changed in the environment there" — Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“This is the type of fire event that would be described by these worst-case modeling scenarios that were supposed to occur mid-century” — Jessica McCarty, a wildfire expert at Miami University of Ohio.

Mid-century (2050) Arctic fires now occur regularly.

 • "Global warming is accelerating. 12-month mean peaked just below prior maximum"

"[G]lobal temperature is clearly running well above the linear trend that existed for decades" — climate scientist James Hansen

"1) That jump off the linear trend ought to scare the crap out of you. 2) Who but the careful public managers of your emotions say that being batcrap-scared is a useless response to the climate?" — Yours truly

Nonetheless, not everyone is scared.

 • "Democrats Drop Demand To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies From Party Platform"

"Roughly half of all U.S. oil reserves required subsidies to generate a profit, according to a study published in the journal Nature Energy in 2017, and that was before the price of crude plunged far below $50 a barrel." — Huffington Post writer Alexander Kaufman.

“This platform is a step backwards” — Charlie Jiang, Greenpeace.

• "DNC’s Flip-Flop on Fossil Fuel Subsidies Follows Deep Ties the Industry"

"In August 2018, the DNC approved a resolution from Chair Tom Perez that reversed a DNC policy prohibiting it from accepting contributions from fossil fuel PACs. ... Shortly thereafter, donations from fossil fuel executives began flowing into DNC coffers." — Donald Shaw, money-in-politics editor and co-founder, Sludge

 • "A-a-and we're done..." — Yours truly

If the question is climate, who with any power is the answer? Certainly not Joe Biden.

The real answer, of course, is the people, but only if they know it.
 

What If Biden Governs Like... His 4 Decades-Long Record?

Biden really is the Lincoln Project candidate, the candidate of what Rahm Emanuel called, approvingly, "the Biden Republicans." Wall Street Journal reporters Ken Thomas and Eliza Collins were being kind when they predicted unity in the Democratic Party won't last. The only "unity" I can detect beyond party hacks is the unification across the party and beyond to rid the country of the toxic malignancy in the White House. "Joe Biden," they wrote, "has united disparate factions of the Democratic Party behind a message of defeating President Trump and rebuilding from the coronavirus pandemic. The detente might not last past the Nov. 3 election, no matter who wins."

Hitting the nail on the head, they continued, "Interviews with Democratic lawmakers and strategists show that the internal battle over what the party stands for wasn’t resolved by Mr. Biden’s primary win-- but merely postponed. If the former vice president succeeds in his bid for the White House, he will preside over the fight on how the party governs. If he loses, the party is likely to go through an extensive soul-searching process that will test the liberal-moderate divide... Biden won the nomination after resisting calls from more liberal candidates to create a Medicare-for-all health-care system, extend free public university tuition to everyone and overhaul the economy to eventually eliminate fossil fuels..." But Biden's status quo positions are all far from the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Even the elected party delegates overwhelmingly disagree with him on just about everything.

On Monday, Eugene Daniels and Holly Otterbein wrote in Politico that Biden "was just about the last Democrat that progressives wanted as the nominee. But now that he’s the one taking on President Donald Trump, they’re working harder to put him in office than they ever did for Hillary Clinton-- then planning to give him hell the minute he sets foot in the White House. In conversations with more than two dozen left-wing elected officials, labor leaders and strategists in the days before the Democratic National Convention, progressives described an attitude toward Biden that is strikingly different from their previous relationships with either Clinton or former President Barack Obama-- and which could have enormous consequences with regards to the shape and power of a Biden administration. The Democratic Party’s left flank is firmly united with moderate Democrats behind the goal of ousting Trump, with former Bernie Sanders aides and allies creating super PACs and promising to spend millions to elect Biden in a way they never did for Clinton. But progressives, who are emboldened after successfully ousting several entrenched Democrats in recent primaries, are also clear: Unlike with Obama, there will be no honeymoon for Biden. If they follow through, Biden's ability to cut deals with Republicans-- a central pledge of his campaign-- would be hemmed in from day one."

And isn't that the idea? Keeping Biden from realizing his second biggest dream-- the grand compromise of wrecking Social Security and Medicare. (No one knows what "we" get in the compromise.) "[E]ven before they’ve defeated Trump," Daniels and Otterbein continued, "progressives are warning Biden that he-- or his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)-- might be challenged in the 2024 primary if they’re not sufficiently progressive."

“Our movement is ascendant,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the Sanders-founded group Our Revolution. “The risk that Biden or Harris faces is a challenge from the left in 2024 if they govern as Third Way-ers or do Clinton-esque triangulation.”

While progressive members of Congress are not yet willing to threaten their party’s 2024 ticket with an electoral challenge the way activists are, they are already alerting Biden that they will challenge him legislatively. Two of their top priorities are a massive green jobs plan and a health care proposal that makes Biden’s public option as robust as possible.

“We have to continue to push for our values, continue to push and advocate for people to join the administration [that] are progressive,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Sanders’ 2020 campaign co-chair, told Politico. “I'm confident that progressives will have a big, big role in a Biden administration.”

Mondaire Jones, the Sanders-endorsed Democrat who won the primary this year in New York’s 17th Congressional District and is expected to carry the general election, was more blunt: “In Congress, progressives must act as a voting bloc. We should be withholding our support for legislation that” they consider too watered down.

Even if Biden wins and Democrats take back the Senate, however, progressives will face serious hurdles: To pass major legislation, Biden will need the votes of conservative and moderate Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. And while Biden may be eyeing an FDR-like presidency, he is also still a longtime deficit hawk who opposes left-wing priorities such as Medicare for All.

Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist who just unseated Rep. Lacy Clay of Missouri in a Democratic primary, has talked about creating a Social Justice Caucus. With the so-called Squad poised to grow after the victory of Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who toppled longtime Rep. Eliot Engel in New York, some progressives are strategizing about forming a Freedom Caucus for the left. Many are frustrated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus for, in their view, not wielding enough power or taking bolder stands — and they think a smaller but more disciplined group could be more effective.

“If the Squad doubles in size this year, which seems very well like it could happen, that's a pretty remarkable transformation,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a Democratic strategist who worked on Sanders’ 2016 campaign. “And if we do that for another couple of cycles, suddenly the left has its own version of the Freedom Caucus. And on the right, that was enough to change how politics worked in Congress.”

Ganapathy pointed to the fight over the Keystone oil pipeline as a place where progressives spent a ton of resources with almost no payoff under Obama. The left has to find smarter ways to achieve its goals, he said.

“It's honestly less about being a thorn in their side and more just about being really strategic and tactical,” Ganapathy said. “I feel like a lot of what the progressive left did in the Obama years was sort of just waving our arms around, trying to get the Obama administration to pay attention to different things and to take progressive activists seriously.”

...[Moderate, non-progressive] Ritchie Torres, the New York City council member who is poised to be the first Afro-Latino openly gay member of Congress next year, said he’s wary of a potential hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by what he called “the new left.”

You know, white elites like AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar... Believe me, there was a reason Blue America didn't endorse the "first Afro-Latino openly gay member of Congress" in the primary but chose a real progressive instead, one who Torres, a corporate-friendly centrist-- at least in the context New York politics-- beat.

They also noted that "Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who recently launched the pro-single payer Center for Health and Democracy, is talking about possibly creating a PAC to help elect Medicare for All supporters. Former Sanders aides are discussing a super PAC to help progressive congressional candidates."

Welcome to the party-- Blue America has raised around $7 million from small dollar contributions to candidates backing Medicare-for All (click the thermometer on the right) and for progressive candidates running for the House, the Senate and for state legislatures... and even for small number of progressive incumbents who live up to their progressive pledges.

At Too Much Information, David Sirota wrote that he believes Trump must be defeated and that he's decided to vote for Biden. I respect his decision and the decision of any other progressive who decides to vote for the lesser evil, something I personally have no intention of ever doing. His post about not being excited about having to hold his nose at the ballot box is worth reading.

I’m told I should be bouncing up in the morning, uplifted by the Democratic convention and its promise of a new era soon-- 75 days. But at least for me, watching the cable TV snippets, the convention speeches and the celebratory Twitter dunks has left me with that feeling you get after eating junk food-- full, but not nourished, bloated, tired and vaguely nauseous.

I’ve worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, wins and losses. I’m literally married to a Democratic elected official. Over 20 years, I’ve put in an almost embarrassing amount of time working to support the Democratic Party. So these feelings are somewhat new for me, and I don’t think I’m having them just because Democratic officials decided to turn this year’s convention into a promotional platform for Republican icons who attacked unions, laid off thousands of workers, promoted climate denial, endangered 9/11 survivors and lied us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

I’m also not glum just because the Democrats’ presidential standard-bearer is often an uninspiring mishmash of incoherent here’s-the-deal colloquialisms that mean nothing.

I think the despair is deeper-- and has something to do with the now-yawning gap between social expectation and reality.

Right now, if you are following politics at all, you are asked to feel chipper and energized. We are expected-- no, required-- to conjure 2008-level enthusiasm during this even darker time than the financial crisis, all so that we can move into a new, glorious moment of Hope™.

Enthusiasm, though, comes from the assumption that the the process is authentic and that what we’re told by our leaders is real. But that feeling has waned, because there is no pretense. For all the high-minded rhetoric, everyone on all sides of this situation-- and I mean literally everyone-- knows that Democratic politics today is more about brand and pantomime than about power and legislative action. You may not say it out loud, you may not like thinking about it-- but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, because somewhere deep down in there, everyone senses the fraudulence at hand.

This is a moment of apolitical crises-- that is, crises that aren’t just manufactured by and confined to the political soundstage, but instead life-and-death, out-here-in-the-real-world emergencies in the realms of money, biology and ecology. We’re facing an economic and environmental collapse in the midst of a lethal pandemic. And we’re going through this cataclysm with a legislative branch controlled by right-wing senators, a court system that rubber stamps corporate demands and an authoritarian president whose major crisis-management experience was firing people on The Apprentice.

And yet, in the middle of this five-alarm garbage fire, we’re asked to white-knuckle it and feign excitement for an opposition party machine run by insiders, lobbyists and careerists who keep letting us know that they think campaign promises are distinct from policy. In so many ways, they keep telling us over and again that the most we can hope for is, in the words of the nominee himself, that “nothing would fundamentally change.”

...[T]he constant, incessant demand to be happy about fraudulence-- the insistence that we put on a smile and insinuate that the New Deal is on the ballot-- is shamefully dishonest. It helps make the whole process into exactly what Ohio Sen. Nina Turner described: “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.”

This is demoralizing for obvious reasons, but to feel demoralized is to feel like you’re crazy and alone-- because it requires you to deviate from the norm of blissful and willful ignorance. It requires you to pay attention and reject a culture that tries to turn you into a goldfish, forgetting your entire world every 15 minutes.

To be demoralized at this political moment is to remember that for all the great progressive oratory during the convention, the Democratic presidential ticket is the guy who wrote the crime bill, spearheaded the bankruptcy bill and worked with Republicans to authorize the Iraq War-- and, oh yeah, a runningmate who blocked her law enforcement staff from prosecuting Steve Mnuchin.

To be demoralized is to feel momentarily uplifted by Michelle Obama’s inspiring convention speech deriding our “greed is good” culture from her Martha’s Vineyard castle-- and to then remember that the Obama administration knowingly fortified that culture when it protected the Wall Street firms that destroyed millions of lives during the financial crisis.

To be demoralized is to make the mistake I made during my family break-- to sit along the shore of Lake Michigan and for some reason reject a mindless beach novel and instead read Ron Suskind’s old book Confidence Men. That tome meticulous recounts Obama and Biden promising real health care reform during the 2008 campaign, and then steamrolling a public option-- and dishonestly pretending they never even pushed such a modest reform in the first place (they did). The book reads like a cautionary tale of what could come during the next Democratic presidency-- especially if you believe the signals already coming from Capitol Hill.

To be demoralized, in other words, is to remember-- and that’s not what Democrats do in America.

Minds are wiped and Iraq War architects become Resistance heroes and Democratic convention speakers. Memories are scrubbed and Wall Street thieves become Democratic economic gurus and treasury secretaries. Amnesia takes hold and the Democratic governor of Mount Covid becomes a pandemic mancrush. Democrats lose a presidential campaign to Donald Trump by defending the Washington establishment-- and now four years later they are running the same Washington valor campaign again, telling themselves they’re too legit to quit, baby.

Our society is not interested in recollection and learning from the past. We are immersed in short-attention-span media and propaganda that doesn’t want us to remember, and therefore goes out of its way to omit mention of historical context.

...That doesn’t mean I don’t know what to do when I get my ballot. I know I’ll have to deliver it to a drop box rather than by mail if I want to make sure it gets there on time. And I know to vote the Democratic ticket because I live in a swing state and I know that fascism’s bid for reelection must be defeated.

But I also know that the threat of fascism isn’t going away after November, so don’t ask me to be excited or feel happy. I’m not and I don’t-- and I suspect it’s the same for many people.

Maybe that doesn’t make us crazy. Maybe it makes us human.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself when I have trouble rising and shining the morning after Joe Biden’s convention speech.

Going Forward... What's The Democratic Party Going To Be?

No one knows what's going to happen, but it would be a safe bet that Americans aren't going to have a chance to vote for a real progressive for president in a very long time, probably longer than I'll be a sentient being. Or maybe not. Maybe Biden and the Democrats will screw up so badly that the Democrats lose Congress in 2022 and then the Democrat in the White House in 2024-- whether Biden or Kamala-- loses to a Republican who also screws up. So 2028... I may still be walking around and sentient. My grandmother was at that age.

But... I still feel cheated. I so wanted one damned good great president in my life. Instead they've all be mediocre at best and, more frequently, piles of stinking, rotting garbage. I wanted to see Bernie win so badly. It wasn't in the cards-- the Democratic establishment made certain of that.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Sean Sullivan wrote about an interview they did with Bernie on Sunday. They predicted that Bernie's DNC speech last night "will effectively close an improbable odyssey-- two bids for the White House that together formed the backbone of a new, insurgent liberal movement." Thanks in great part to Bernie, Medicare-for-all, free college tuition, the Green Anew Deal and a chastening of the nation’s financial elite have all come to the fore of a grassroots Democratic Party-- and have pulled even a horribly corrupt status quo establishment slightly to the left and, perhaps put the breaks on a corrosive drift toward more-centrist views that have been been dominant since the Clinton DLC wing of the party managed to take over and change the focus from working class to managerial and donor class.

They quoted Bernie: "Ideas that we raised in health care, in education, in the minimum wage, in climate change, in criminal justice were ideas five years ago that people perceived to be radical and extreme. Today they are mainstream, and today they are actually being implemented by states and communities around the country."

They saw the slot allotted by Biden to AOC as a kind of passing of the torch. That's OK but there's more to it than that. I think I saw just about every Velvet Underground live performance in New York. They were my favorite live band when they were first getting going. There are many claimants to this but I think Michael Stipe first said, "not that many people ever bought that first Velvets album, but everyone who did started a band." And thank God they did. And not that many people saw that first Ramones national tour-- but it was Howie Klein (not the thieves who stole it as their own) who compared them Johnny Appleseed and noted that everyone around the country who went to see them started their own punk band.

AOC isn't the only political heir of Bernie's but one who even Biden was unable to deny at least 60 seconds of speaking time during his convention. But think of all the people Bernie has inspired who are now serving or will soon be serving at every level of government and who are committed to the somewhat revolutionary approach he imbued in a whole generation of Democrats.

When David Feldman introduces me on his radio show every week, he says something to the effect of Blue America supporting progressive and socialist candidates. I often remind him that this cycle, there was just one actual socialist candidate-- Shaniyat Chowdhury, who ran for a southeast Queens district held by loathsome and corrupt party boss Gregory Meeks, a New Dem. Shan, a first time candidate, didn't win, although close to a quarter of the voters backed him in the primary. "We’re only getting started," he told me this morning. "This was just the beta as a first time candidate. Change makers persist. I’ve continued to organize post election around housing rights, anti-poverty, and foreign policy. Sometimes I forget how young I am and how young our collective movement is with Bernie Sanders. Which speaks to the level of despair of what working people are going through. We are tired of waiting for change to happen election cycle or establishment democrats telling us it’s not our moment. I wake every morning thinking Trump or not, will everyone have free healthcare? Are we ending universal poverty and unjust wars? Are Black lives going to matter beyond symbolic gestures? The answer is clear. For that, I’m not going away anytime soon. Whether it’s this election or the next, we must continue to change the tides in the sea towards a more prosperous future. I will run for Congress again because I believe it is there where we can fight for humanity throughout the world."

In 2016 then-Flagstaff city councilwoman Eva Putzova was a Bernie delegate to the convention. This cycle she ran for Congress against a reactionary Blue Dog incumbent who spent most of his political career as a Republican and still votes as a mainstream Republican. Although the full face of the establishment opposed her. Yesterday, her district's election results were finally certified by Arizona's Secretary of State and she ended the race with 41.4% of the vote, winning in the most populous county and doing exceptionally well in the southern part of the district despite DCCC and the Arizona Demmocratic Party tilting the scales in favor of the incumbent. "We ran," she told me today, "a spirited, principled campaign that showed the district is winnable by a progressive candidate. If things fall in place, it's not out of the question that I'd run for the seat again. We have learned a great deal, built an impressive infrastructure, and we wouldn't be starting from scratch." That's how progressives win-- two cycles. It took that long for Alan Grayson and it took that long for Ro Khanna and Donna Edwards, each primarying their own party's establishment choice.

One of the people I met while Hector Oseguera was running for Congress told me during the convention broadcast last night the "for the past month, Hector has focused on the future of the progressive movement. Although we've witnessed incredible strides since Bernie's first presidential run, Hector often says 'we still have such a long way to go.' Policies like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal have not yet been realized. We are in the middle of a generational shift, and Hector is taking a central role in directing that shift across North Jersey. Bernie's presidential runs paved the way for a new generation of leaders, but that door sits merely ajar. It is now up to the Millenials to throw that door open and lead our nation into a new progressive era. It is often said that the true measure of a person is how they respond in times of adversity. Given the response I've seen from Hector in the past month, I wouldn't be surprised to see him throw his hat into the ring again." Yep... I get the same feeling!

Kim Williams ran for the strongly Democratic Central Valley seat held by worthless Blue Dog Jim Costa, who Biden will likely appoint to his dream job next year-- ambassador to Portugal. Kim told us she entered her race this year because she "wanted progressive policies to become part of the conversation in a poor, rural district that needed it. Throughout my campaign, we said things out loud that others would not, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we accomplished. We started a district-wide conversation and we knocked on 20,000 doors to promote a policy platform that resonated with actual people and not the local party elite. Our efforts proved that there was demand for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal while helping Bernie, and other progressives, win primaries in the district. And our work continues. I will not run again this cycle and I won’t need to. My focus today is on tearing down barriers for progressives and combating the incredible corruption embedded into every layer of our political system. CA-16 will see another candidate carry the progressive banner forward, and I am delighted by the base of support that is rallying behind her. My friend, Yenifer Gallegos-Mejia, is jumping in as the only candidate with the backbone to stand for progressive ideals and against Fresno’s duplicitous political class. She will not only build upon early momentum and carry us over the finish line, she will inspire an emerging generation of activists that will build a more equitable America. She is the future, and I will stand behind her and every other progressive running in the district."

"Sanders-style left-wing populism," wrote Costa and Sullivan, "is gaining power throughout Europe and the Americas, at times replacing an older guard of liberals who embraced globalization. Across Western democracies, campaigns rooted in passionate emotion and grievance have won mass followings. 'I’m very proud. I am very proud of the movement that we have built,' Sanders said. 'The younger generation is overwhelmingly progressive, and they want to see their government function in a different way than in the past.' Sanders pointed to Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), two allies who recently won congressional primaries, as evidence of a healthy and competitive left flank inside the Democratic Party."

In the eyes of his core backers, Sanders came agonizingly close to seizing control of the Democratic Party with his strong showings in the initial contests of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. There were days when they thought he would be unstoppable.

But it didn’t pan out four years ago, as Hillary Clinton scooped up victories and support from superdelegates-- and as Sanders grew furious with the Democratic National Committee. Nor did it work out earlier this year when former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg muddied Sanders’s plans for a clean-cut victory in the Iowa caucuses and a politically hobbled Biden suddenly revived his campaign in South Carolina, in part because of alarm in corners of the party about a Sanders nomination.

Sanders and his supporters are trying to learn from his success during the 2020 primary campaign in courting young voters in Iowa and Latino voters in Nevada-- and from his stumbles, particularly with Black voters who rallied around Biden in March.

Exit polls showed that the struggles Sanders experienced among Black voters four years ago against Clinton largely continued. Sanders’s fervent push to broaden the electorate with new voters was never realized.

Sanders’s supporters argue that campaigns come and go but that ideas move glacially. And history has precedent for movement campaigns having a long-term impact. In 1964, conservative Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election in a landslide. But his campaign laid the ideological groundwork for his supporter Ronald Reagan to win the White House 16 years later.

If the United States eventually moves toward democratic socialism in the coming years, Sanders will deserve significant credit for mounting campaigns that pulled the Democrats to the left, said Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-based liberal organizer.

“He didn’t only take on the establishment but the governing consensus in America that markets are the answer,” El-Sayed said. “He drove the conversation that we are all having. He lost two elections, but he won the future in the sense that the party is now a lot browner, blacker and younger and sounds like Bernie Sanders.”

Faiz Shakir, who served as Sanders’s campaign manager in 2020, said the defeats were not rejections of the senator’s ideas but a product of a “party in transition.”

“There is no question the kinetic energy and dynamism in the Democratic Party is with progressives. But the party is in transition,” generationally and politically, Shakir said, “and you’re going to have fits and starts.”

...Biden, who once fashioned his candidacy as a vessel to restore political norms and bolster institutions, has started sketching out a more transformational-style presidency that would seek to marshal a sweeping response to the coronavirus pandemic, a severe economic crisis and racial upheaval.

“What we’re seeing is more than lip service,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who served as a national co-chair on the Sanders campaign. “The Biden team has been very intentional about listening to not just Bernie Sanders but a lot of his key policy advisers.”

Some Sanders activists have refused to join with the senator in offering the former vice president their unequivocal support, underscoring the importance of Sanders’s pitch for unity on the convention’s opening night.

In a column for the socialist magazine Jacobin, former Sanders adviser David Sirota mocked the task-force rollout as “an SNL skit.”

“They are a mix of party dinosaurs, corporate zombies and some terrific progressive voices,” Sirota wrote of the group members.

Over the weekend, Tlaib said she voted against the Democrats’ platform and cast her delegate ballot for Sanders, expressing outrage about her party’s refusal to upend what she called a “for-profit system that is leaving people to suffer and die just because they cannot afford health care.”

The Sanders political operation has labored to keep things calm, asking some supporters he picked to represent him at the convention to sign agreements barring attacks on other candidates or party leaders, combative confrontations on social media or talking to reporters without approval.

The move, which carried a threat of being removed as a delegate, has the effect of blunting one of the most powerful if divisive tools of the Sanders support network-- its unrestrained online presence and tendency to stoke controversy through social media, which has at times spiraled into abuse of his opponents.

...“It’s not about looking back,” [Bernie] said. “It’s about looking forward.”

Rachel Ventura is on the Will County board and primaries a garden variety Illinois New Dem this cycle. Yesterday she told me that "Bernie is right, it’s about looking forward. Currently, the corporate Democrats continue to ignore the people, whether it’s the call of free college, Medicare for all, the green new deal, or even legalizing marijuana. The hope and change we are looking for does not rest in the present, but in the future. We need to take control of our own future and run our own candidates. We need more bartenders, teachers, community activists, nurses and blue-collar workers taking the reins of power from the elitists who currently govern for the wealthy few. We see candidates like Marie Newman and Cori Bush win on their second time running. How many progressive candidates who ran this year will run again in 2022? I know I’m leaning that way and with an army of supporters already pressuring me to run coupled with national organizations biting at the bit to endorse our campaign again, there’s definitely a compelling argument to run. While taking home 42% of the vote after being outspent 17 to 1 is impressive, it isn’t a win. The win will come from continuing to champion the people’s voice."

Rachel continued: "Today and every day until the 2022 election, we need every person to drown out the false media voice and demand better representation, Medicare for All, and The Green New Deal. We need people to have political conversations with their friends and neighbors about how both democrats and republicans have failed the people in a time of COVID and economic uncertainty but pulled no punches to protect their corporate donors. It isn’t enough to call for our politicians to be anti-corrupt; we must throw them out and elect people who will truly represent common sense solutions. Our government, via the politicians, for too long have told us what we deserve and don’t deserve but it is ‘we the people’ that need to tell them what it is we need and demand. Now is not the time of polite negotiations, now is the time for impatience and bold action. Regardless of who wins the Presidential Election, the people must rise up and demand better policies. We cannot allow them to control the messaging, whether at the pulpit or on the news stations. That fight continues from everything Bernie has fought for, from the things MLK fought for, even all the way back to Henry Wallace. Our fight won’t be over in 2020 and it certainly won’t be over in 2022. But it is the time to stop pulling punches. To stop the DNC or RNC from gaslighting us. We all, collectively need to call them out. I’m excited for the future and have already begun collaborative talks with the 2020 congressional candidates like Eva Putzova, Morgan Harper, Melanie D’Arrigo, Robert Emmons, and so many more. Join us in the continued fight!"

Dorothy Reik is widely considered one of California's most visionary progressive leaders is the president of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains and an elected member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee-- elected by the largest majority of anyone else in the county-- and is a member of the California Democratic Party Executive Board. This morning, she told me that "Looking forward without looking back is how we got where we are today. We cannot really move forward until we understand how we got where we are right now and until we conquer the forces that led us here, from corporate greed to racism and everything in between. As I write this at least 850 delegates have refused to support the platform because it does not include Medicare for All. What evil brought us to the point where we confuse 'insurance' with 'care'? Yes, Bernie has moved us forward in many ways but we cannot progress further until we admit to who we are and where we have been.

How Out Of Step Is Biden With His Own Party? More Than You Might Guess

The Challengers by Nancy Ohanian

A new Langer poll for ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 86% of Democrats approve of Biden's pick of Kamala Harris as his running mate-- and so do most independents and even 25% of Republicans. This morning's CBS News Battleground Tracker has the Biden/Harris ticket with 279 electoral votes to Trump/Pence's 163. Even if Trump wins all the undecided votes-- he won't; Biden leads in all of them-- he would still lose, since they make up 96 electoral votes, not enough to put him over the hump. And the new Marist poll for NPR and PBS today shows Trump/Pence losing to Biden/Harris by a very wide margin-- 11 points, in a 53-42% rout. That said, my interest in party conventions ended in 1964 when I went to Atlantic City, sweet 16, to cheer on LBJ. Can you recognize which one is me?

And convention platforms are of barely more interest to me than the conventions-- all meaningless show. Platforms get shelved the moment a president is elected-- if not sooner. A lot of friends of mine are delegates to this year's convention and have been working hard-- and in good faith-- on the platform. One of them slipped me this information over the weekend. It's kind of subversive inasmuch as it shows Biden consistently and significantly out of step on the top issues of the day with his own party's elected delegates. And Ro Khanna wasn't the only delegate to vote against a platform that was railroaded through by Biden campaign honchos despite not representing the values of most Democrats:

Although the majority of delegates were elected on Biden's ticket, they are more progressive than he is on the issues. "It is common for the media," wrote the authors of the document, "to portray the Sanders’ supporter as reaching for 'pie in the sky' and the Biden supporter as nostalgic for a simpler time and dedicated to incremental solutions. The truth is that taken as a whole, the actual participants to the 2020 Democratic Convention believe in big ideas. We are absolutely unified in the mission of getting Trump out of office. This part is clear without needing a survey. But we are also in strong agreement when it comes to the issues of healthcare, climate crisis, education access, and election integrity. The precursor to this survey was an investigation of every state’s Democratic Party platform on the same four issues, which showed strong support for Medicare for All, Green New Deal, College for All, and Fair Elections, within the Democratic Party across the country."

We felt a survey was necessary to further investigate because we could see that the platform committee of 2020 was not bringing the biggest, most urgent solutions to the table for a vote. When we started the survey, we were not sure what the results would show, but we suspected exactly what we found to be true: across each of the four topics we polled, enough Biden delegates agreed with the Sanders delegates such that the delegation as a whole has a strong preference for bold, progressive solutions.

On the issue of healthcare, when the data was weighted across all of the pledged delegates (based on the current proportions of delegates), 75.1% of the delegates support Medicare for All, and 75.3% support Single-Payer.

On the Climate Crisis, 84.7% of the delegation supports a 10 year mobilization, and 78.9% support the Green New Deal.

On education access, 87.0% of the delegation supports cancellation of student debt, and 77.6% support tuition free college.

When it comes to elections, 71.9% of the delegation support Rank Choice voting, 90.3% support election audits, and 73.2% oppose party interference in primary elections. The following pages and graphs tell the full story of the opinions of the 2020 Delegation.

HEALTHCARE

When asked to react to the statement, “American should be able to access public coverage through a public option, and those over 55 should be able to opt in to Medicare.” 85.5% agree (either strongly or somewhat) with this statement, and 54.2% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “We should support a comprehensive single-payer, government-run insurance system that eliminates all copays and deductibles, is not tied to employment, and does not require payment at the point of service.” 75.3% agree with this statement, and 48.6% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “We should support expanding the current healthcare system to Medicare for All that is comprehensive in its coverage.” 75.2% agree with this statement, and 52.1% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to rank their preference of the three statements, 58.5% of delegates rank either Single-Payer or Medicare for All as their first choice solution.

Environment

When asked to react to the statement, “We must be committed to getting 50 percent of our electricity from clean energy sources within a decade, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions more than 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.” 82.4% agree with this statement, and 60.4% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “We must achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers and should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization.” 84.7% agree with this statement, and 62.3% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “Recognizing the scientific research that climate change is driven by human activity, we must support a Green New Deal that explicitly cares for fossil fuel states and workers.” 79.0% agree with this statement, and 61.1% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to rank their preference of the three statements, 61.5% of delegates rank Rapid Transition/Green New Deal as their first choice solution.

EDUCATION

When asked to react to the statement, “Every student should be able to go to college debt-free. Those who currently have student debt should be able to refinance their loans at the lowest rates possible.” 69.5% agree with this statement, and 41.9% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “We should eliminate existing student loan debt and eliminate predatory student loan practices.” 87.0% agree with this statement, and 59.5% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to react to the statement, “We should call for free education to extend through public college or university and vocational/technical schools.” 77.6% agree with this statement, and 59.9% believe the language is appropriate.

When asked to rank their preference of the three statements, 67.3% of delegates rank Cancel Student Debt/Tuition Free-College as their first choice solution.

Before I was sent the full document, another delegate had sent me just one table, one table because she knew it was an issue I've been carrying on about since Rahm Emanuel took over the DCCC and Chuck Schumer took over the DSCC-- the ability of corporate money-obsessed party bosses to fix primaries-- up and down the ballot-- for candidates in their own craven, corrupt images. Most Democrats don't like it either. The document noted that "When asked to react to the statement, 'Organizations using the Democratic name, such as the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC, should not interfere in state and local elections by making endorsements prior to a primary election because doing so creates the appearance of an unlevel playing field while the party is committed to maintaining impartiality.' 73.2% agree with this statement, and 68.6% believe the language is appropriate." Damned shame it won't mean a damned thing-- just like the rest of the platform, convention and sentiment of the Democratic grassroots. Keep repeating to yourself: "Biden is better than Trump. Biden is better than Trump, Biden is better than Trump... Trump is Satan."

This morning's CBS News poll asked Democrats (only) if they wanted or didn't want to hear from 11 people at the party convention scheduled to begin tomorrow. In order of how much excitement each speaker drew:

• Barack Obama- 92%
• Joe Biden- 91%
• Kamala Harris- 91%
• Michelle Obama- 88%
• Elizabeth Warren- 72%
• Bernie- 68%
• Nancy Pelosi- 65%
• AOC- 63%
• Hillary Clinton- 58% (with 42% opposed to her having a speaking slot)
• Bill Clinton- 56% (with 44% opposed to him having a speaking slot)
• John Kasich- 38% (with a resounding 62% opposed to him having a speaking slot)

One more little, tiny note for those who have come this far: Two years after I, all rosy-cheeked and innocent, was waving that handmade LBJ sign on the Atlantic City boardwalk, I was in jail for burning my draft card, dropping out of school and slamming heroin because I was obsessed and out of my mind about America killing innocent Vietnamese women and children and, soon after, moving abroad. "Hey, Hey LBJ... how many kids have you killed today?" And LBJ, you know, was much, much better than Biden... in every conceivable way.

How Iowa Chooses National Convention Delegate and What That Means For Us

Iowa's four congressional districts. Note Cedar Rapids in CD1, Iowa City (a major college town) in CD2, Des Moines in CD3 and Ames (the other large college town) in the otherwise heavily rural CD4.

by Thomas Neuburger

Most people think, innocently enough, that the coming Democratic Party Iowa caucuses held in each of the state's voting precincts selects pledged delegates to the national convention.

The real situation is much more complex. Precinct caucuses do select pledged delegates, but the delegates they select are to the county convention. At the county conventions, delegates are selected to the congressional district conventions, where, finally, pledged delegates to the national convention are selected.

All of this layering, despite its indirectness, is nonetheless intended to produce a national delegate mix that roughly approximates the vote ratios at the precinct caucuses — "roughly" because of rounding rules. Are there unfortunate consequences to this indirectness? Yes, and they could be considerable.

Iowa Delegates, What Kind and How Many

Let's start with the pledged delegate allocations themselves, then look at the process in more detail. For a source we'll use an excellent if weedy site, The Green Papers, to explain the details. (Here's the Iowa Democratic Party's explanation, if you want to look at the ultimate source.)

Iowa, like all states, has been allocated a number of pledged and unpledged delegates by the DNC. Pledged delegates come in three kinds or types: per-district, at-large, and "pledged PLEOs" (party leaders and elected officials).

Starting with per-district pledged delegates: The state has four congressional districts (CD1, CD2, CD3, CD4), each of which, at its district convention, allocates its assigned delegates based on viable candidates' performance at the precinct caucuses in that district.

"Viable" means that a candidate has received at least 15% or more of the caucus vote in a precinct (but see explanation and example below; the viability threshold changes depending on the number of pledged delegates available in a precinct's district). Any candidate who receives less than the viability minimum of caucus votes for that precinct's district gets no delegates.

In addition, the DNC has granted Iowa Democrats a number of at-large or state-wide pledged delegates, which are allocated at the state convention to viable candidates based on their performance in the precinct caucuses.

Finally, Iowa Democrats have been granted a number of pledged PLEO ("party leader and elected official") delegates who are also allocated at the state convention — again, according to viable candidates' performance at precinct caucuses.

In Iowa's case, the pledged delegate allocations are as follows:

• 7 for CD1
• 7 for CD2
• 8 for CD3
• 5 for CD4
• 9 at-large or state-wide delegates
• 5 pledged PLEOs

• Total = 41 pledged delegates

In top of all of that, the state has been granted eight unpledged PLEO delegates — these are the so-called superdelegates — for a grand total of 49 delegates to the national convention.

How Iowa Delegates Are Chosen

Here's a more detailed look at the selection process for the pledged delegates from The Green Papers (emphasis and some reparagraphing mine). Note how many layers it contains and how byzantine the process is.

Democratic Party Caucuses meet in each precinct at 7 PM CST. Absentee or proxy voting is not allowed. Each Precinct Caucus chooses the precinct's delegates to the County Conventions based on presidential preference. ...

At each caucus, each presidential contender who fails to get at least 15 percent support among the participants in the initial balloting after a period of discussion will be considered "non-viable" and all supporters of such "non-viable" presidential contenders will then be required to join in the support of presidential contenders who have remained "viable".

To determine the viability of a presidential contender, multiply the number of eligible caucus attendees by the percentages below and round to the nearest whole number. This is the minimum number of delegates needed for the contender to remain viable.

• 50% (majority vote) for caucuses electing 1 delegate.
• 25% (one quarter) for caucuses electing 2 delegates.
• 16.66...% (one sixth) for caucuses electing 3 delegates.
• 15% for caucuses electing 4 or more delegates.

Example. 57 people attend a caucus electing 3 delegates [case 3 above]. The viability is 1/6th of 57 = 9.5 rounded which is 10. Say 29 people support candidate A, 19 support candidate B, and 9 support candidate C. Candidates A and B are viable since they have support of 10 or more of the attendees. Because candidate C did not receive the support of 10 attendees, those supporting candidate C must realign to another candidate [or go home]. At this point, the attendees realign themselves so 34 support candidate A and 23 support candidate B.

The caucus will next choose the precinct's delegates to who will be allocated in proportion to the percentage of the support each "viable" presidential contender received in the second round of balloting at the precinct caucus as of the time of its adjournment.

Continuing the example from above: For Candidate A: 3 (total precinct delegates) × 34 (supporters) ÷ 57 (total attendees) = 1.789 which rounds to 2 precinct delegates. Candidate B receives 3 × 23 ÷ 57 = 1.211 which rounds to 1 precinct delegate.
Note: Due to rounding, the sum of precinct delegates may exceed the total number of precinct delegates allocated to the caucus. If this happens, round down the candidate with the smallest fraction. Candidates receiving 1 precinct delegate are not subject to this rule, that is, candidates cannot loose their only precinct delegate during this adjustment.

National Convention delegates are allocated from the state delegate equivalency results of the precinct caucuses. ...

Saturday 21 March 2020: County Conventions convene in each county to choose Congressional District delegates of which the county is a part as well as the county's delegates the Iowa State Democratic Convention.

Saturday 25 April 2020: Democratic Party District Conventions convene in each congressional district at 9:00am to elect the district's delegates to the Democratic National Convention according to the results of the precinct caucuses.

This accounts for the congressional district delegates. Now for the selection of pledged at-large delegates and pledged "party leaders and elected officials" (PLEOs):

Saturday 13 June 2020: The Iowa State Democratic Convention convenes at 9am CDT. The State Convention elects the 9 At-Large and 5 PLEO of the Iowa's Pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention according to the results of the precinct caucuses.

Finally, this is the makeup of the group of Iowa's unpledged or superdelegates:

The remaining 8 National Convention delegates consist of 8 Unpledged PLEO delegates:

• 5 Democratic National Committee members.
• 3 Members of Congress (0 Senators and 3 Representatives).
• 0 Governors.
• 0 Distinguished Party Leaders.

These 8 delegates ... will go to the Democratic National Convention officially "Unpledged".

Again, notice the layers.

How to View the Delegate Selection System

I offer three takeaways from this look at the selection process.

First, in an honestly run election the process will indeed, at each stage, allocate pledged delegates "according to the results of the precinct caucuses" as required by the rules — allowing for very small differences due to rounding.

Second, because the entire selection process isn't over until after the June 13 Iowa state convention, those small differences can (and most likely will) be reported intermittently as adjusted per-candidate delegate totals. That is, a candidate may be reported as having X number of delegates on caucus night, but actually receive a slight different number by the time the state convention is held.

Third, because of the many layers...

• Precincts choosing precinct delegates to county conventions, followed by
• County conventions choosing delegates to the congressional district conventions, followed by
• Congressional district conventions choosing delegates to the national convention

...the people chosen as delegates by the precincts are unlikely all to be the people who vigorously represent the candidates at the national convention. (This will almost certainly be true of many of the "pledged PLEOs.") Instead, national convention delegates are just as likely to be people who have been most deeply involved with the Democratic Party for the longest time and have simply promised to vote a certain way on round one. This is not just true of Iowa pledged delegates, by the way, but to all of them.

Which means that at the national convention, a Sanders or Warren or Biden pledged delegate may not in fact be a Sanders or Warren or Biden loyalist. In many cases, that delegate may just be a state party official or loyal party functionary who's being rewarded for their service with a nice, perhaps pre-paid, trip to the week-long party (in both senses) event in Milwaukee.

What Will the Democratic Party Do On the Second Round of Convention Voting?

Keep all this in mind as you game out the results of a second round of voting in Milwaukee, when all delegates who were "pledged" on the first round, become decidedly unpledged on all subsequent rounds. The opportunities for second-round mischief are many.

On the second round of voting, and on each round afterwards, the entire convention is composed of unpledged delegates, many of them merely state party loyalists, each free to vote as they choose. The aggregated response of the Party to that second-round freedom may well define the Party in the eyes of voters for the next generation.

And the response of voters to the way the Party exercises that freedom may well define the Party's future, or lack of it, as well. After all, if primary voters select one of the revolutionary candidates by a solid plurality, and at the convention the Party denies that candidate the nomination, the Party itself may not survive the voter revolt against it in the battle to unseat Donald Trump.

Could the Democratic Party actually Whigify itself in 2020? It seems unlikely given the many advantages secured by the bipartisan duopoly.

But do stay tuned. These are epic times, when even the most unthinkable of outcomes is entirely possible.