Last Night's Democratic Debate: Falling On Deaf Eyes

Justin Maurer, author of autobiographical comedy, Falling On Deaf Eyes, is a CODA (Child of a Deaf Adult) and a professional American Sign Language interpreter, consultant, writer, producer, performer, and musician based in Los Angeles. In the last year he was interpreted for Bernie and Elizabeth as well as for Michelle Obama, Maxine Waters, and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. He has been a member of 3 bands, the Wayward Chapel (country), Suspect Parts and Maniac (punk). He shared this unique, intense and fascinating analysis of the Democratic debate on his Facebook page last night:

Joe Biden is like that kid who plays college football and needs to maintain a C average to stay on the football team. My mom teaches American Sign Language at a big football college and she has had a reoccurring problem with football players taking her class because they assumed it would be easy. When a football player barely shows up for class, doesn't study and gets an F on a test all hell breaks loose. She has to suddenly make time to meet with a phalanx of coaches and advisers who tell her that they need the player in the game coming up and he's a good kid who has had some tragedies in his family. She asks why she needs to make special exceptions for the football player and that question almost doesn't need to be answered-- the school makes a lot of money from the football team and will do almost anything to keep their players above that C average.

Biden isn't particularly good at sports, he has just had a lot of friends and family members on the team. Most importantly, he has the faith of 44 of the school's most prominent donors. He isn't even a starter, in fact, if he started the game, the team is almost certain to lose. They keep him in there the bare minimum - 3.5 minutes one game, 7 minutes another game, and some games he'll just sit on the bench. He frequently misses practice and is even considered a liability. He's been on the verge of being suspended for saying racist things during games and for some sexist behavior in the hallways at school and at parties.

All of this is easily forgotten and easily forgiven, because he's a nice kid with a nice smile, looks great in his uniform, and he's considered part of the family. He played on a championship team, so regardless of whether he sat on the bench or not, he's considered a champion. During a couple of press interviews he even embarrassed the team, fumbling his words, incoherent, barely able to form a sentence. Even though he barely shows up, isn't really good at the sport, is considered a liability, he's considered across the board as a champion, and they need that money coming in, so anytime he gets an "F" on a test he didn't study for, for a class he barely shows up for, you better believe a whole army of advisers and coaches runs to his aid to try and convince another one of his professors "can't he just get a C? Can't you just bump him up to a C so that he can keep playing this season?"

This debate tonight seems like a forced test retake, and you better believe they pulled out all the high-paid tutors they use for the worst students on the football team. The only problem is when the only plan is to "return to normal", that's not really a plan. Nice to see how the man without a plan does against the man with some bold ideas, a vision reminiscent of FDR's New Deal. A plan urgently needed in today's climate. And no Joe Biden, my mom won't bump your F test score up to a C, you've simply got to learn sign language if you're taking a sign language class.

Very strange and untenable idea by Chip Proser

Mayo Pete May Be Worse Than Biden, But Biden's Campaign Is Collapsing Faster

Have you ever agreed with right-wing Fox-Democrat Doug Schoen on anything? Never say never. In an OpEd for Fox.com after the debate, he wrote that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie were big winners and Biden-- every Republican's dream candidate-- was a loser. "All eyes, particularly those of Democratic leaders, strategists, and donors," he wrote, "were on Biden, who needed deliver a strong performance to reassure voters that he is ready for a general election fight against Trump. However, Biden was unable to break through and deliver the forceful showing that he needed, dodging a question regarding his son’s work with Ukraine and delivering several other uneven answers throughout the night. With each passing day, Biden seems to move further from securing the Democratic presidential nomination, and his unimpressive performance Tuesday night will likely result in a post-debate polling decline."

Maybe Biden was thinking about how badly he's been doing among the small dollar donor base. He gets plenty of money from the wealthy, but small dollar donors are just not buying into his "back to normalcy" campaign promise to make no fundamental changes-- at a time when most Democrats want fundamental change.

Biden has been burning through all those big money donations as though they are endless; they're not. He's raising far less money than Bernie or than Elizabeth Warren-- or even than the white bread conservative who wants his lame--Mayo Pete-- but he's addicted to private jets and he can't keep to a reasonable budget. So he's spending more than he's bringing in. CNN: "Biden's campaign entered October with $8.98 million remaining in its bank account, after spending more than $17.6 million during the July-to-September quarter. Biden raised $15.7 million during the quarter, according to a report filed by his campaign on Tuesday, shortly after the conclusion of the fourth Democratic presidential debate. The cash Biden has remaining a little more than three months before the Iowa caucuses puts him at a financial disadvantage to rivals such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who reported having more than $33 million stockpiled for the primary slog ahead. Sanders relied on small-dollar donations for about 60% of his contributions over the summer-- giving him a pool of donors to tap repeatedly before they hit legal contribution limits. Small donations accounted for less than a third of Biden's donors."

Also from CNN: Consider this: Biden's total cash on hand is less than all of his main rivals for the Democratic nomination, including even California Sen. Kamala Harris ($10.5 million) who has dropped precipitously in polling over recent months. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders ($33.7 million) has more than three times more left to spend than Biden, while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ($25.7 million) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ($23.4 million) have well more than double Biden's total... Biden's fundraising situation is bad. And there are few signs it's getting better."

Biden was relatively coherent on the debate stage, but that's about the only good thing I can say about him. Bernie responded to his mealy-mouthed bullshit about working with Republicans to get things done. John Haltiwanger reported for Business Insider that Biden and Beto were the two biggest losers of Tuesday night. "Biden stumbled through many of his responses, and offered a lukewarm defense of criticism over his son's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company while he was vice president... Biden has struggled to fend off these attacks, and that trend continued on the debate stage on Tuesday.

In any essay for New York Magazine yesterday, Frank Rich seemed to say Tuesday was the beginning of the end for Biden. He acknowledges he's "always looked highly plausible in theory but repeatedly failed to deliver... lacking intellectual agility."

[H]e seems incapable of the improvisational moves necessary to take on Trump. He ducked a question about why it was okay for Hunter Biden to trade on his name for cushy foreign paydays, however lawfully, and instead repeated an anodyne soundbite three times (“My son’s statement speaks for itself”). This was a lost opportunity because Biden might have joined other Democrats in denouncing the nepotistic follies of his hypocritical Republican critics, notably Donald Trump Jr., Rand Paul, and Liz Cheney. And he might have passionately lit into the criminal White House conspiracy to strongarm foreign governments to soil him and his son. After all, Trump’s assault on the Bidens is the best argument for his candidacy-- it makes the case that Joe Biden is the candidate Trump fears the most. But unaccountably Biden has made only fitful use of this political gift horse in the weeks since the Ukraine scandal became front-page news-- even as his campaign’s fundraising has wilted.

There were other examples of his lack of improvisational skills as well. After delivering a meaty tirade against the outrage of Trump’s surrender to Erdogan and Assad, he ducked the question of whether he’d send American troops back into the region. He couldn’t stop himself from repeating more than once his newly favored shtick (intended as a stab at Warren) trumpeting himself as the only candidate who’s gotten anything done. That claim is not only false, but is wielded as a dodge to avoid any treacherous policy question. Worse, it left him open to this memorable riposte from Bernie Sanders: “You got the disastrous war in Iraq done.” Sanders damaged Biden in a less explicit way as well. Post–heart attack, he seemed looser, sharper, and less programmed than he did pre–heart attack. He seems younger than Biden though in fact he’s two years his senior. Who would have ever imagined that Bernie Sanders could be a comeback kid?

Biden has 16 endorsements from current House members, primarily from conservative New Dems and Blue Dogs-- none with any clout to deliver any voters. In many cases, they're members-- like Texas crooks Vicente Gonzalez and Filemon Vela and members hoping for some crumbs to drop their way if he's elected-- who people look at and say, 'gee, if he's for Biden, I should be for someone else.' They have no followings because they have nothing to offer, just useless place-holders in a rotten system. On the other hand, right after the debate Bernie was endorsed by three of the most admired and meaningful members of Congress, AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib-- members who actually can sway voters. If you'd like to contribute to Bernie's campaign, you can do it at this link. Do it for our country and our future. 

14 Million People Watched The Debate Thursday-- Enough To Lower Biden's Irrational Standing In The Polls?

Right after the Thursday night ABC News debate ended, CNN.com published a column by their in-house pundit Chris Cillizza asserting that Biden was a winner and Elizabeth Warren a loser. Many decades ago I was managing local San Francisco bands. One of them was The Readymades and I had booked them an opening slot for a big touring band-- maybe Roxy Music?-- at a bigger venue than they usually played. I was disappointed when the top critics in town for the big newspaper didn't show up. However, towards the end of the headliner's show he made his entrance and came right over to me and asked me how the show had gone. I told him how great my band was-- a somewhat biased report-- and how the two bands were a perfect match. That review appeared in the newspaper the next day. I can't imagine that Cillizza actually watched the debate and came away with the idea that Biden did better than Warren; I wonder if it was Biden's campaign manager told him that was the case.

The following morning Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent did a more thought-provoking piece on the debate, Think Castro Was 'Mean' To Biden? Get Ready For An Absolute Bloodbath. "Biden's Democratic rivals," he wrote, "have now begun to raise questions about his age and mental competence. But they are doing so ever so gingerly, and even apologetically. President Trump is not being nearly as cautious or circumspect. In that contrast resides something that deserves more attention about the Biden age issue. The question isn’t merely whether Biden has the stamina for a grueling campaign, or whether Biden will be able to handle debates with Trump. It’s also whether Biden or indeed other Democrats are prepared for the massive onslaught of absolutely brutal and distortive attacks that Trump and his propaganda apparatus will wage on this particular front-- attacks that you can be certain will include all sorts of shamelessly propagandistic media manipulation and outright disinformation tactics."

James Hohmann also covered the Castro attack on Biden: "Castro follows in the footsteps of Eric Swalwell, who ripped into Biden and told him to 'pass the torch' during the first debate only to get nowhere. The California congressman dropped out days later. Castro certainly won’t. This isn’t fatal. But the exchange illustrated Biden’s underappreciated strengths. While he’s widely perceived as having a tenuous lead in the early polls, Biden’s support has thus far proven remarkably durable. At the same time, however, Castro broached an issue that is of genuine concern among many Democratic leaders and may have foreshadowed what’s to come as the field winnows and lower-performing candidates become desperate to break through.”

As the Boston Herald reported this week, "Biden has lost his lead in New Hampshire with U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders jumping ahead in what is now clearly a three-person race for the Democratic primary, a new Franklin Pierce University-Boston Herald poll shows. Sanders tops the poll at 29% of likely Democratic primary voters. Biden comes in second with 21% of the vote and Massachusetts U.S. Sen Elizabeth Warren is third in the poll with 17%.

And it isn't just New Hampshire Where Biden Is No Longer "Frontrunner"

And that was before Biden flopped Thursday night. Politico's John Harris: "Biden’s previous uneven performances didn’t dislodge him atop the race, and so caution is justified in predicting bleeding wounds from this one. Even so, discursive answers on substantive issues like deportation of undocumented immigrants and Afghanistan, an oddly dated reference to a 'record player,' disrespectful digs and patronizing swipes from rivals, all raise the question: Can he withstand four more months of this before actual Democratic voting begins?”

Eric Levitz asked the question all Democratic primary voters need to ask themselves: Would You Leave Joe Biden Alone With Trump? Levitz's 3 main takeaways from the debate that Cillizza thought Biden won: "The Democratic front-runner cannot speak in complete sentences when he is feeling tired or defensive. And 90 minutes of debate is enough to make him tired. And a reference to something that he said about race in the 1970s is enough to make him defensive." They left him feeling "rather apprehensive about the prospect of the Democrats sending Joe Biden into battle against Donald Trump next year. A three-hour debate can be tiring. But a 14-month campaign would seem considerably more so. If Biden can’t keep his talking points straight for an entire evening, what shape will he be in after running the gauntlet between today and his televised showdowns with the president next fall? And if a pointed question from an ABC News anchor can reduce him to spasms of anxious blather, how well will he hold up when Trump comes after his family? ...To my eyes, the following exchange between Biden and ABC News’ Linsey Davis on the question of our collective responsibility for slavery reads like dialogue from an obscure Beckett play-- but to an objective observer, perhaps this reads as a thoughtful, cogent answer from a man manifestly equipped to be the next president of the United States:"

Linsey Davis: Mr. Vice-President, I want to talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” You said that some 40 years ago, but as you stand here tonight, what responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?

Joe Biden: Well, they have to deal with the … Look, there is institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining, banks, making sure that we are in a position where-- Look, we talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title 1 schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the equal of … A raise of getting out of the $60,000 level.


Number two, make sure that we bring in to the help with the stud-- the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need … We have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are required-- I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them.

Make sure that every single child does, in fact, have three, four, and five-year-olds go to school. School! Not daycare, school. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not want they don’t want to help. They don’t know want-- They don’t know what quite what to do. Play the radio. Make sure the television-- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night. The phone-- make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school-- er, a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

Davis: Thank you, Mr. Vice-President.

Biden: No, I’m going to go like the rest of them do, twice over, okay? Because here’s the deal. The deal is that we’ve got this a little backwards. And by the way, in Venezuela, we should be allowing people to come here from Venezuela. I know Maduro. I’ve confronted Maduro. Number two, you talk about the need to do something in Latin America. I’m the guy that came up with $740 million to see to it those three countries, in fact, change their system so people don’t have to chance to leave. You’re all acting like we just discovered this yesterday! Thank you very much.

This is what President Obama had in mind when he warned Biden to think long and hard before running and embarrassing himself and his family. Levitz wrote that nominating Biden is "a needlessly risky bet to make, given the party’s myriad other options. Polling continues to indicate that, contrary to conventional pundit wisdom, Bernie Sanders is a formidable general-election candidate. Elizabeth Warren’s favorability has steadily increased throughout the duration of her campaign, as has her standing against Trump in the polls. But if you are more moderate in your ideological sympathies, or nervous about nominating someone 'too progressive,' there are plenty of sharper centrists you can back. Cory Booker is a gifted orator. Amy Klobuchar is good at winning elections in the Midwest. Beto O’Rourke is tall. Before Thursday, none of Biden’s ideologically sympathetic competitors had dared to explicitly sell themselves as a more mentally 'with it' alternative to Uncle Joe. But after Julián Castro (clumsily) went there during the debate, Booker embraced the 'many people are saying Joe Biden’s lost a few steps' line of attack."

My one fear is that a Trump-Biden general election will hinge about which one is more senile and which one lies more. What could possibly discourage voters from bothering to turn out? Nielsen reported that the debate had 14 million viewers on ABC and Univision, beating everything else on TV. Millions more watched on their computers. I suspect that "Sleepy Joe" could never hold up against Trump. Tom McCarthy, reporting for The Guardian wrote that "while Castro’s attack on Biden might not have landed, the frontrunner repeatedly seemed to fumble the facts: he at one point mistakenly referred to Sanders as the president, he badly botched the name of the Moms Demand Action gun safety group and he said nonviolent offenders shouldn’t be in prison when he (apparently, aides later said) meant nonviolent drug offenders. When he got in trouble, Biden got punchier, and sometimes wilder, with an answer on education confusingly swerving into the previous topic, Venezuela and foreign policy.

Jacobin's Branko Marcetic wrote that we all know how these debates go: "moderators will drape a right-wing framing around their questions, almost everyone will attack Medicare for All, and Joe Biden will misrepresent his record." He conceded that Thursday night Biden's performance was "surprisingly nondisastrous... By clearing the extremely low bar of appearing coherent and not having any of his body parts malfunction on stage, Biden has already been awarded top marks for his performance, even declared the winner. But it’s important to remember that Biden’s performance rested on a patina of lies. Challenged by moderator Jorge Ramos on the distinctly Trumpian nature of the 'Obama-Biden' administration’s immigration policies, Biden dubbed the comparison 'outrageous.' 'We didn’t lock people up in cages,' he said. 'We didn’t separate families.' Both are untrue."

As fact-checkers quickly pointed out, Obama and Biden infamously did detain immigrants, including children, in cages. And while it’s true the administration didn’t make snatching children from migrants an official policy as Trump has, breaking families apart, sometimes permanently, was a cornerstone of the Obama-Biden approach to immigration, usually by arresting and simply disappearing the undocumented parents of US citizen children, but also, under the Alien Transfer and Exit Program, by separating families traveling together at the border, including minors. Pressed by Ramos for dodging the question, which asked if Biden and Obama had made a mistake by deporting as many people as they did, Biden was forced to re-endorse the policy, saying that Obama “did the best thing that was able to be done at the time.”

When the issues of mass incarceration and segregation came up, always fraught territory for Biden, the former vice president engaged in more rewriting of history. “I’ve been involved from the beginning,” he said about the fight for black civil rights, later repeating that “from the time I got involved, I started dealing with” institutional segregation.

This, too, is false. Biden was reviled by educators and the civil rights community for the Biden-Eagleton amendment, passed in 1977, which forbade what was then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to spend money on school busing. In 1980, the Education Commission of the States voted to declare the amendment the most “far-reaching” legislative roadblock to civil rights enforcement. On the 25th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1979, the Civil Rights Commission published a report that bitterly noted the lack of progress on desegregation and specifically criticized the law. The commission’s chairman charged it had “aided and abetted” anti-integrationist forces, called for its repeal, and labeled it “one of, if not the major civil rights issues confronting the country at this time.” Political scientist Stephen C. Halpern called it a “death knell” for the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VI in education, and it ground desegregation efforts to a halt around the country, including in Chicago. Ironically, it had no effect on the court-ordered busing initiative in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, the ostensible reason he had crafted the amendment.

In the process, Biden staked out a position on desegregation that was far from liberal. He nonsensically claimed there was a “conceptual difference between desegregation and integration,” charged integration with being “racist and insulting” in some of its forms, and even said that integrating people “so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest” was a “rejection of the whole movement of black pride.” As he explained to the attendees of a fundraising dinner in 1975, the liberal idea that the United States owed its strength to its status as a “great melting pot” was “a bunch of poppycock because we know being black and white and Christian and Jew breaks us apart.” By the time Biden, who entered the Senate with a reputation as a civil rights advocate, ran for president in 1986, his hometown paper noted his major legislative accomplishment was arguably a tough-on-crime law he had authored with former segregationist Strom Thurmond.

With a history like this, it’s hardly surprising Biden would gloss over it.

Is The Democratic Party Worth Reforming And Saving? Are We Stuck With It As Our Only Hedge Against Fascism?

Even before Biden showed how incoherent and unfit he is during yesterday's debate, Michael Hudson, University of Missouri in Kansas City economics professor and author of And forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year, published a call to abolish the DNC and break up the Democratic Party. He wrote that the debate-- "a reality entertainment show"-- would be a "shameless charade" and that despite the pretense that we're selecting who the Democratic nominee will be, most Americans "vote with their backsides, belonging to the informal but dominant party of non-voters who choose not to be sucked into legitimizing the bad choices put before them."

Hudson wrote that "Most Americans are now living from paycheck to paycheck and cannot come up with even $400 in an emergency. They are afraid to go on strike or even to complain about their job, because they are afraid of getting fired-- and of losing their corporate health care, knowing that getting sick may wipe them out... Voters basically want what Bernie Sanders is promising: a basic right to Single Payer health care and a retirement income. That means protection against the Republican-Democratic threats to cut back Social Security to balance the budget in the face of tax cuts for the richest One Percent and rising Cold War military spending. This means a government strong enough to take on the vested financial and corporate interests and prosecute Wall Street’s financial crime and corporate monopoly power. When neoliberals shout, 'But that’s socialism,' Americans finally are beginning to say, 'Then give us socialism.' It beats being ground down into debt peonage."

[H]ere’s the trick that the TV debates sweep under the rug: It is not the voters who are empowered to choose the Democratic Party’s candidate. That privilege belongs legally to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Since stacking the political deck in 2016 to serve up Hillary Clinton as nominee, it has put in place rules that will enable its Donor Class members, super-delegates and other lobbyists for the One Percent to repeat the trickery once again in 2020.

I hope that the candidate who is clearly the voters’ choice, Bernie Sanders, may end up as the party’s nominee. If he is, I’m sure he’ll beat Donald Trump handily, as he would have done four years ago. But I fear that the DNC’s Donor Class will push Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or even Pete Buttigieg down the throats of voters. Just as when they backed Hillary the last time around, they hope that their anointed neoliberal will be viewed as the lesser evil for a program little different from that of the Republicans.

So Thursday’s reality TV run-off is about “who’s the least evil?” An honest reality show’s questions would focus on “What are you against?” That would attract a real audience, because people are much clearer about what they’re against: the vested interests, Wall Street, the drug companies and other monopolies, the banks, landlords, corporate raiders and private-equity asset strippers. But none of this is to be permitted on the magic island of authorized candidates...

The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0.

DNC donors favor Joe Biden, long-time senator from the credit-card and corporate-shell state of Delaware, and opportunistic California prosecutor Kamala Harris, with a hopey-changey grab bag alternative in smooth-talking small-town Rorschach blot candidate Pete Buttigieg. These easy victims are presented as “electable” in full knowledge that they will fail against Trump.

Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed a different policy.





The Democratic Party’s role is to protect Republicans from attack from the left, steadily following the Republican march rightward. Claiming that this is at least in the direction of being “centrist,” the Democrats present themselves as the lesser evil (which is still evil, of course), simply as pragmatic in not letting hopes for “the perfect” (meaning moderate social democracy) block the spirit of compromise with what is attainable, “getting things done” by cooperating across the aisle and winning Republican support. That is what Joe Biden promises.

The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class. But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party.

...The DNC preferred to lose with Hillary than win with Bernie, whom springtime polls showed would be the easy winner over Trump. Potential voters who didn’t buy into the program either stayed home or voted Green.

Now is the time to start thinking about what to do if and when the DNC presents voters with neoliberal Hillary 2.0, preferring to lose with Biden or his clones than to win with Bernie.

I think the only effective response will be to boycott the Democratic Party-- not only its presidential candidates, but its Blue Dog candidates and incumbents.

The legal kerfuffle raised by Sanders supporters in the aftermath made the switcheroo official. The courts affirmed that the Democratic Party’s candidate for president is legally chosen by the DNC alone, and may or may not be the candidate elected by voters in the primaries. To cap matters, the superdelegates serve as a safety valve against any candidate unwilling to go whole-hog neoliberal. A legal tangle of state and national U.S. election laws effectively blocks third parties from meaningful representation in Congress. Registered Independents such as Sanders are constrained to caucus with and serve on committees of one of the two parties.

That makes it difficult for any third party to play more than the role of a spoiler in elections. When the Democratic Party runs its right-wing Blue Dog candidates, a third-party protest will throw the Senate or Congressional election to the Republican-- until the DNC finally just walks away.

It would not help much to take over the Democratic Party as long as its rules cede control to Wall Street donors. For the party to be reconstituted, the coterie that has imposed Rubinomics, Hillary’s neocon military empire, and is threatening to balance the budget by cutting Social Security needs to be isolated.

The most obvious start is to run real progressive candidates against incumbents, like AOC in Queens. If the DNC bans consultants from working with them, they should be attacked in the primary and then either stay home or vote for a third party in the fall election to defeat the incumbent rather than participate in the fake choices of just which neoliberal may be the least worst.

Democrat leaders will denounce the Third Party, claiming that voters would have supported Democratic otherwise, much as they blamed Ralph Nader in 2000. The reality is that voters refused to support the right-wing neocon Joe Lieberman (how appropriate that he became Obama’s Senate mentor) and his neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council front-man Gore, who would have given George W. Bush a run for awfulness.

The only way to make the Democrat Party democratic is to clean house, to boycott its Blue Dog candidates even though this throws elections to the Republicans until the DNC is emptied out. Only at that point can its rules be replaced with ones committing the party to follow the choice of voters and the majority non-Democratic (even non-voting) bloc instead of big donors and super-delegates.

This tactic may lead to Republican sweeps in the next few elections. That is the price that the Democrats have forced to be paid for their neoliberal intransigence that has made Donald Trump their president as much as that of Republican voters.

There is no “middle class” policy in an indebted economy polarizing at an accelerating pace as financial rentiers lord it over an indebted majority. That is why wage earners have lost their identity with the Democratic Party’s loyalty to Wall Street. Although Democratic politicians presents themselves as the only alternative to Republican corporate lobbyists, the DNC is a smoke-filled room of donors, packaged in identity politics-- every identity except that of indebted wage earners. It is merely a diversion to focus on personalities and to claim that economic reform is “divisive” because it may offend centrist voters such as the Democrats’ dream of attracting suburban Republican women.

Joe Biden’s promise of a moderate centrist policy is like Warren Harding’s slogan of a “return to normalcy” a century ago, in 1920. But a “return” would mean rolling back the enormous post-1980 increase in debt, the privatizations, deregulation and other neoliberal nightmares. Today’s U.S. economy-- like that of Europe-- has no middle ground. Attempts at a “moderate” party are merely a euphemism for backing the financial and real estate sector, the oil industry and the military-industrial complex.

If America had a parliamentary system reflecting voters’ preferences for parties, the Democratic Party would share the fate of German and other European Social Democrats that have embraced neoliberal economics and would poll about 5 percent of the vote, just barely being represented in a truly democratic congress. Voters are rejecting neoliberalism everywhere, but the DNC and foreign formerly left-wing party bureaucracies are holding onto it. They have become zombie party hacks.

Sanders rightly blames Wall Street and the One Percent for the economy’s financial mess. Warren strikes a resonant chord in seeing the need to alleviate the debt burden saying in effect, “It’s the debt, stupid.” But she also seems prepared to go along opportunistically with the rest of the Democratic Party’s platform. Even so, the DNC seems quite willing to throw the election to Trump as its major funders and super-delegates back Biden, Harris and Buttigieg.

When Bernie says he will take on Wall Street, people believe him. When Elizabeth Warren says that, voters worry about just how far she may compromise. When Biden or Harris say that, most voters realize that they are simply grabbing slogans that play well in focus groups, selling their personalities without policy content.

Most potential voters have no party in the United States, but are forced into a choice between Republican and Democratic neoliberals. The polls euphemize most voters as “undecideds,” as if they have not decided to avoid both parties and try to scrape by as best they can with the bad choices put before them: Republican corporate lobbyists, or Democratic Wall Street lobbyists, both parties supporting military spending and representing the One Percent who form their donor base.

Most Democratic voters have decided not to back Biden or Harris. They realize their interests were betrayed first by Clintonomics and its deregulation of Wall Street and stripping away of social spending, and then by Obama protecting his Wall Street donors from “the mob with pitchforks,” namely, those who voted for his empty promise of hope and change. That is how the DNC views its constituency-- to be manipulated and its attention diverted onto the Fantasy Island episode aired on Thursday on ABC.

There's No IQ Test To Get Into Congress

The debates have taught me that many of our politicians don't understand what Medicare is beyond a Medicare-For-Dummies synopsis they may have read once. I noticed that as the case with Tim Ryan (D-OH), no brain surgeon to begin with. The fool got into an argument with Bernie about Medicare and thought he could skate by as though he and another drunk congressman were in a fact-free zone arguing. Watch the deer-in-the-headlights expression.

But what really goy me was when he responded by saying (re: union members) "the only thing they have is, possibly, really good health care." He has NO IDEA-- none-- what he's talking about. None. Their health care might be decent, but "really good?" Not a chance. As the president of a division of TimeWarner, I had really good healthcare-- or so I imagined. I mean the contracts of all the divisional presidents and chairmen stipulated that we had the best healthcare on the private market. How would I know that it wasn't very good? You know how I found out? When I retired and went to Medicare. Medicare is WAY better. Members of Congress should know that, but they don't. When I tell them, they think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Medicare, even with its flaws (no dental, no ear care, no aural care, no mental health, a crap GOP-created drug plan), it's better than anything on the private market.

Yesterday, Tara Golshan, reporting for Vox wrote that union leaders are well aware that Ryan was wrong. And it wasn't just Ryan; Delaney-- an ultra-conservative New Dem idiot (so not a surprise)-- was also on an anti-Medicare tear.

“This plan being offered ... will tell the union members that give away wages in order to get good health care that they will lose their health care because Washington is going to come in and tell them they have a better plan,” Ryan said. Delaney talked about his father, a unionized electrician, suggesting he would “never want someone to take [his health care] away.”

But some of the biggest unions in the country couldn’t disagree more.

“Tim Ryan, that’s a great failure of understanding how unions work,” said Sarah Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. His suggestion was “offensive to me,” she added.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten noted that that AFT is supportive of Medicare-for-all and other universal health care plans. “Any plan that provides more people with the care they need and gets us one step closer to affordable coverage is a step in the right direction,” she said.

Both Ryan and Delaney oppose Medicare-for-all on the grounds it is radical, politically unfeasible, and too disruptive to the current health care system. They advocate instead for proposals that would expand coverage while keeping private employer-sponsored plans.

Ryan’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about where he got this idea. But those close to the labor movement suggested it may come from a vestige of a shrinking and transforming labor movement.

“Ryan, coming from Ohio, really frames this in terms of the union members with hard hats,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist who has close ties to the labor movement. “It’s this old guard of labor. What we have seen in the last couple years, is this labor movement that’s made this grassroots resurgence, [like the teachers and service workers]. Those unions have publicly come out and said they would support Medicare-for-all.”

Delaney and Ryan were trying to pit some Sanders’s biggest priorities-- universal health care and worker’s rights-- against each other. Their argument centered around the fact that Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill does away with employer-sponsored insurance and puts every American on an expanded public health care system. They say that unions have fought hard to secure generous health care packages from employers, and shouldn’t have to switch from that."

...It should be noted that as a member of the House, Ryan has signed on to a Medicare-for-all bill, which would eliminate private insurance. His campaign told the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein that Ryan disagreed with some of the key components of that bill, but signed on hoping it would change in negotiations.

[Ryan signed on for political expediency without understanding anything about the bill. He is hardly the only one.]

In making this case that Medicare-for-all was bad for unions, Ryan seemed to be echoing why many unions are open to the proposal.

“This is a priority we set in the 1940s, and labor was quite successful in negotiating contractural health care, but every time we go to the table the for-profit system has put so much pressure that when we get what we already have we call that a win,” Nelson told Vox about the difficulties negotiating health care poses. She added that having a government-sponsored baseline health insurance would go a long way to help unions negotiate better wages, and benefits in other areas of their contract.

While there is a wealth of research that has found increased health care costs bring down wage growth, there’s less evidence that companies engage in the trade-off the other way. As Sarah Kliff reported, “there are no studies that show the reverse relationship-- wages rising when premiums grow slower-- but experts in labor economics believe this relationship exists.”

Polling across the board shows that Americans aren’t too fond of the idea of cutting out private health insurance. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 56 percent of the public favors “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, where all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.” But when told directly that Medicare-for-all would end private insurance, larger margins support more incremental steps toward a government-run program, like lowering the eligibility age for Medicare.

And it’s true that Democrats have some work to do shoring up union members. Clinton underperformed Barack Obama among union workers; white male union members significantly shifted toward Donald Trump, outpacing Clinton altogether to help deliver Trump the presidency.

Those seem to be the voters Ryan is talking about; an older coalition of white working-class voters that defected to Trump.

“I think [Ryan’s argument] may resonate because they are just more conservative in general and many actually voted for Trump,” Feldman said. “I don’t think it’s because they love their private health care.”

But candidates like Warren and Sanders are taking a different approach to the union vote. They recognize that the labor movement as a whole has been attempting to broaden its constituency to a progressive working class that didn’t necessarily see a champion in either Trump or Clinton in 2016. This more diverse working-class group-- which includes women, Latinos, and African Americans-- represents the fastest-growing share of union membership. And this growing sector of the labor movement might be ready for something different.

“No elected official should accept incrementalism,” Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and most influential unions in North America, told Vox’s Alexia Fernandez Campbell. “American taxpayers are subsidizing multimillion-dollar companies that are making record profits but are not providing decent jobs for people. You can’t nibble around the edges. All these bold solutions are not radical.”

And, Nelson points out, not all union contracts are made the same.

“It is real that there is work to do with unions,” Nelson said. “People do love their contractural plans. But not every union contract today has exemplary health care.”

And NONE are nearly as good as Medicare.

Pete Found A Good Line Tuesday To Describe The Shame Of Today's GOP-- "Naked Racism"

Trump's mind by Chip Proser

In Tuesday night's debate, Mayo Pete mostly regurgitated his slick McKinsey-like, carefully-tested talking points. He didn't really have a memorable moment, but he did make a worthwhile point about Status Quo Joe: "We cannot have a vision that amounts to 'back to normal,' he said. "The only reason we got this president, is that 'normal' didn't work." But he suddenly pivoted to Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party-- very smooth, very well-done. "We have to be ready to take on this president and, by the way-- something that hasn't been talked about as much tonight-- take on his enablers in Congress. When David Duke ran for Governor, the Republican Party, 20 years ago, ran away from him. Today they are supporting naked racism in the White house or are, at best, silent about it. And if you are watching this at home, and you are a Republican member of Congress, consider the fact that when the sun sets on your career, and they are writing your story, of all the good and bad things you did in your life, the thing you will be remembered for, is whether in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him or you continue to put party over country."

The naked racism line was a great one from Pete-- and several Democrats running for Congress agreed wholeheartedly in terms of their own contests. Kara Eastman is taking on reactionary Republican Don Bacon in Omaha again this cycle. "Donald J. Bacon has voted 95.7% of the time with Donald J. Trump," she reminded us. "Today a prominent community leader in Omaha, Preston Love Jr., made the comment that Bacon pays 'lip service' to the African-American community in Omaha. He says he does not agree with the President’s viewpoints, but then stands with him almost all of the time. Bacon’s refusal to stand up against racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant statements and policies that stem from the President shows his true character. He is not representing the district, but just a party that has clearly lost its way."

Kathy Ellis, is running for Congress in a red, red southeast Missouri district where Trump beat Hillary 75.4-21.0%. Her opponent, notorious anti-gay closet case, Jason Smith, adamantly opposes Trump being impeached (and himself being outed). "I couldn't agree more with Mayor Pete's comments on this topic," Kathy told us yesterday. "The blatant racism of our President is unacceptable, and it is the responsibility of Republican members of Congress to hold him accountable. However, my opponent, Rep. Jason Smith seems to have no comment about this or any other Trump policy that is harming the people in my District. The people in the 8th District and nationwide will not forget his silence."

Jon Hoadley is a Michigan state Rep. running for Congress in the southwest corner of the state. His opponent, Fred Upton, is a sly old Trump enabler. Hoadley told us that "We are at a generational moment. We need bold ideas that place people and communities at the center of decisions. The Fred Upton who folks voted for over 30 years ago is not the Congress Upton of today. When he said no to healthcare, no to equality, and no rising to the challenges of a climate crisis, it is clear voters are going to say no to his reelection. The Trump Republican Party has changed. Congressman Upton has changed. Is that the legacy he wants to leave for the history books?"

Teresa Tomlinson is running for the U.S. Senate. She wants to "remind everyone that Georgia Senator David Perdue was in the Oval Office when President Trump made his infamous 's-hole' countries statement. Perdue first said that didn’t happen, and then said he didn’t hear it. Denial is cowardice. We have seen the true colors of the current failed Republican leadership. They are cowards, for surely they do not condone or support the racism of the president’s tweets and rants, they are simply scared to say so. Or, do they? It is for them to tell us and tell us now. Do you stand with this President and his racist remarks, or are you cowardly enablers? Senator Perdue’s silence speaks volumes."

But, back to Pete; the line just wasn't enough to fish him out of the mayonnaise. In fact, two old buddies-- Ian Welsh and Pachacutec-- teamed up last night to take a swing at explaining who exactly Mayo Pete is... after his endorsement by former New Dem PAC head Patrick Murphy. Pachacutec started by introducing himself-- in contrast to Mayo Pete-- to Ian's readers:

Then he introduced Murphy via something I had once written about him, long, long ago, although my comment was about the other conservaDem Patrick Murphy, the guy from Florida, rather than the guy from Pennsylvania, which I'm 100% certain is the one who endorsed Mayo Pete:

"Pete," wrote Pach, "is getting a fair amount of recognition for being a gay candidate. People who know me know me know that I’m a big old homo. And now with my tiara firmly in place, I’m here to call out Mayor Pete."

Okay, I don’t actually wear a tiara. I’m actually very much like Pete in my gay origins, in that I am a light-skinned person, presumed to be white (though I’m half Latino) with a good education, cis gendered, and a beneficiary of all the presumptions of competence and intelligence that accrue to light-skinned, well educated men who are not effeminate in their conduct or manner.

Like Mayor Pete, I came out later in life, in my young 30s. That was a pretty traumatic time for me, actually. I made a fair mess of my life, and we won’t get into all that. But as Ian’s readers know, it’s what you do with your suffering that makes or breaks you. If you dive into it and learn from it, with the right support and process, you can turn it into your superpower.

Or you can become a preening, pompous, head up his ass climber who cashes in the cultural, social and political checks earned for work done by all the very homos, queers, transgender men and women, and people of color that you personally avoid engaging at all costs.

Everyone in the gay community knows these people. These are the white boys who stand and model, painfully preppy, in bars filled with other white boys, with a few token “ethnics” like black men, Asians or Latino men sprinkled in to provide a little variety, a little sexy “grit” and fetish fodder. Their Grindr profiles say things like “No offense, but I prefer white guys,” or “no fats or fems.”

These are cis gay white boys who might stay for the drag show and enjoy the bawdy jokes, but who feel painfully uncomfortable around effeminate men. As in my tweet, they don’t even see women, non-binary gender rebels, or black folk. Mayor Pete’s relationships with black folk in South Bend are a joke. Gay guys like Mayor Pete never go into a bar if the person of color ratio gets too high, say, higher than 15%, unless for example they really have a thing for Latin guys and it’s salsa night at the club. Some of these guys really fetishize some groups, be they Asians, black men or Latinos. It gets very creepy.

I don’t want to belabor the point. This guy has no claim to stand for gay politics when he is precisely the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been caught dead anywhere near the Stonewall Inn, and lacks the self-awareness to know it or understand why. I personally know the type, because, in the beginning of my coming out journey, I had to overcome the legacy cultural biases, blind spots and presumptions of privilege (I know Ian hates that word, sorry) that would have made me into one of those guys.

For some people, the experience of coming out, and the experience of being marginalized or oppressed in some fashion, leads to expanded empathy and curiosity for others who are downtrodden or outcast. That’s clearly not Mayor Pete. Pete fundamentally believes in his inherent superiority, and subsequently wants to have it both ways: he wants people to overlook his gayness because he’s not that gay, and then he wants credit for being some kind of LGBTQ pioneer. But whether you look at his policies, his politics or his presence in a room with real people, he is what he is: a conservative wannabe frat boy who happens to be gay. No wonder Patrick Murphy loves this guy.

Yeah-- it works for both Patrick Murphys. And-- just asking for a friend-- do gay frat boys still stick to that old "No Fats, No Femmes" thing? Someone should ask Mayo Pete at the next debate.

Who Won Last Night-- And Who Totally Sucked?

Who Will Be The Democratic Nominee? by Nancy Ohanian

Biden's name wasn't mentioned last night-- and the half dozen conservatives who were onstage fared badly, although none of them were boo-ed despite the barrage of Republican talking points that flew out of the mouths of Delaney, Frackenlooper, Ryan and Bullock each time one of them spoke. Each candidate gained twitter followers after the debate and according ti Google Trends, Marianne was the most-searched of the ten candidates during the debate in 49 out of 50 states, Montana being the outlier:

• Marianne- 8,005
• Liz Warren- 5,772
• Mayo Pete- 4,553
• Bernie- 2,331
• Delaney- 1,135
• Bullock- 1,079
• Amy Klobuchar 782
• Beto- 718
• Frackenlooper- 407
• Ryan- 372

Ryan, Delaney, Frackenlooper and Bullock were all really and and I hope we never have to hear about any of them again. Tragically, none of them seem to have the vaguest clue of what Medicare is and one is tempted to wish unspeakable healthcare problems on them and their families so that they find out. But that would be so, so wrong. Instead, save your worst thoughts for the person on the stage who really did the worst last night: Jake Tapper. CNN probably pays him handsomely and they could have saved a lot of money and had a more honest performance had they just tasked either Michael McAdams or Chris Pack from the NRCC to be the moderator. I'm sure either would have done it for free. Despite Tapper's best efforts to goad Elizabeth Warren and Bernie into fighting with each other, the two progressive champions seemed prepared to ignore him.

According to Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin at the NY Times this morning, neither took the bait. "On an evening that could have produced explosions in their own political rivalry, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren instead formed something of an ideological tag team to defend their shared agenda, above all on health care. Though each is seen as the other’s chief obstacle in the Democratic race, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren did not at any point clash directly. Instead, they battled an array of comparatively obscure candidates who used the debate as an opportunity-- and for some of them, likely a last chance-- to express alarm about their party’s embrace of immense liberal policy goals, like the creation of a 'Medicare for all'-style health care system, Mr. Sanders’s No. 1 issue, and a broad liberalization of the immigration system."

I don't know that we're electing a debater-in-chief, but CNN asked Todd Graham, the director of award-winning Southern Illinois University debate team to grade how each candidate did last night.

Elizabeth Warren A+

Warren hit all the right notes with her tone, demeanor, language choices and especially her policy-specific answers. She struck the right balance between progressive and pragmatic while pounding away at corporations, the rigged system, greed by insurance and pharmaceutical companies and more.

...To Delaney: "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for."

Bernie Sanders B+

Sanders was clever to use the word "radical" when reminding us his health care plan isn't as crazy as many make it out to be. It's in fact used successfully by other countries, including Canada. Sanders' rhetoric was also compelling when he reminded everyone that Republicans aren't afraid of big ideas, so Democrats shouldn't be either.

And while he took some hits on removing Americans' choices from health insurance and the potential effects of providing undocumented immigrants with free health care and education, Sanders' defense was generally successful.

Mayo Pete B

Buttigieg's idea that military action needs three-year sunset clauses, forcing Congress to regularly reevaluate our involvement oversees was brilliant-- especially coming from a veteran. And he's getting good at calling out hypocrites in the Republican party who stand for party over country when supporting Trump. His advice that Democrats should not worry about being called socialists was spot-on.

Unfortunately, Buttigieg failed to distinguish his ideas from Warren's or Sanders' on issues such as debt-free college. And he lacked the fire of some of the other candidates.

Beto B

O'Rourke gets "most improved" from his previous debate. Most of his answers were clear and concise. But when asked how to beat Trump, O'Rourke offered nothing more than what we saw from him in his battle for the Texas Senate-- a battle in which he was defeated. Democratic voters must be shaking their heads in disbelief that O'Rourke thinks the same strategy that lost to Ted Cruz can somehow beat Trump.

Amy Klobuchar C+

Klobuchar wasn't as specific, memorable, or personable in this debate. And it began with an opening statement that was all over the place. While she occasionally had good points, like calling out Trump's criticism of Baltimore, she was often missing in the debate (perhaps due to the moderators not calling on her enough).

Steve Bullock C

Bullock's strength was moderation. He successfully criticized "wish-list economics" and was believable when he talked about workers and farmers losing money when Trump tweets about trade. Unfortunately, he failed to defend a clear position on nuclear weapons, with a muddled and confusing answer in which he said, "Never, I hope, certainly in my term or anyone else, would we really even get close to pulling that trigger."

Tim Ryan C-

Ryan was partially successful in his pragmatic approach to answering questions. But some lines seemed forced, as when he said to Bernie Sanders, "You don't have to yell." Heck, Sanders was actually pretty calm (for Bernie) at the time. Plus, Ryan's Ted Talk-esque conclusion about not capturing the left or center lane but instead capturing the viewers' imaginations was so contrived it made me laugh out loud.

John Delaney D+

With a better stage presence than he had in the previous debate, Delaney improved. And he made some sound points about finding realistic climate policies. He was actually holding his own on that issue until attention turned to Elizabeth Warren. Unfortunately, Delaney was outdone by Warren's on-point and number-specific climate response. Nice try for Delaney, but he was upstaged in the end.

Frackenlooper D

He didn't stick to his strongest arguments like he did in the previous debate when he constantly pointed to examples of his successful governorship. Hickenlooper was unfocused in many of his answers, from saying "there is a way of looking at trade that is therapeutic," to mumbling something about "big, you know, noisy hangars" when discussing American military foreign policy. Plus, his lack of energy was noticeable compared to others on stage.

Marianne D-

The problem with Williamson in this debate is that for every legitimate criticism of our government she gave-- and there were several-- she lacked follow-up solutions. She derided the "political insider game and wonkiness and intellectual argument," without offering a clear picture of her practical alternative. And her closing statement was something about emotional and psychological gobbledygook that finished with a crescendo like she was singing the big finale of a Broadway musical.

Two polls, a twitter poll that is still active and may show which candidate was most puke-worthy:

And a slightly more traditional poll that Crooks and Liars is still running today:

And for anyone interested in my own gut reaction to the candidates last night. (Marianne is a personal friend and I can't grade her)

• Elizabeth Warren A+
• Bernie A
• Amy Klobuchar C
• Mayo Pete D
• Beto D
• Bullock F
• Ryan F
• Frackenlooper F
• Delaney F

I'm hoping we never have to hear from any of the F's again. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, none of them are remotely qualified to be on the stage since they are all polling between 0.3% and 0.7%.