What Happens In Georgia Today?

 

David Perdue is stuck in a neck and neck race with a decidedly mediocre Democratic challenger who doesn't stand for much of anything. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Perdue losing to Jon Ossoff 47.0% to 46.0% and the most recent poll-- last week by Emerson-- shows Trump leading Biden by 1 point (49-48%) and Ossoff leading Perdue by one point (47-46%).

Yesterday, Perdue, Trump loyalist to the end, tweeted on the fake glories of the Trump economy, seeming to forget that Obama saved the economy from the shambles the Bush Regime left it in and Trump inherited the result, which and his GOP allies immediately started to undercut with tax breaks for the multimillionaires and billionaires and a deficit that was wasted on unproductive bullshit and that won't be repaid for generations.

Like Perdue, you've probably heard Trump gaslighting about how he built the strongest economy in history. That's a patent lie-- even if you allow Trump to define "the economy" as the stock market. As Axios reported yesterday, both Obama (66.1% increase) and Bill Clinton's (62.1% increase)-- and even George HW Bush's 45.9% increase-- out-performed Trump's 44.5% increase. (Trump did better than George W. Bush, who tanked the market and left it 15.8% in the red.)

Georgia is the only state in the country with two Senate races, the regularly-scheduled Perdue reelection face-off with Ossoff and a special jungle election to fill the rest of retired Senator Johnny Isakson's term. Brian Kemp appointed one of his top campaign donors, Kelly Loeffler to the seat, and she's being challenged by neo-fascist Trumpster-fire Doug Collins. Democrats Ralph Warnock and faux Democrat Joe Lieberman's son are also on the ballot. If someone gets one vote over 50% they will serve until January, 2023. No one will get over 50% though.

All of the recent polling shows Warnock in the lead-- Quinnipiac with 41% last week, to Collins' 22%, Loeffler's 20% and Lieberman's 5%. A more recent poll by Emerson shows Warnock leading the pack with 37%, followed by Collins with 25%, Loeffler with 23% and Lieberman with 6%.

The Nation published a piece by John Nichols Monday morning about Lieberman's son, The Democrat Who Could Prevent Democrats From Winning a Georgia Senate Seat. He asserts that Biden, Ossoff and Warnock could all win today. I guess that would be dependent on how one defines "could." And they could... but the likelihood is minuscule. Biden and Ossoff each has a reasonable chance. Getting 50% in the jungle primary-- with the 2 Republicans combined outpolling him and outpolling him and Lieberman combined-- seems a bit of a stretch, unfortunately.

Nichols makes the case that Lieberman's son is a sack of dog shit who's just doing this as an ego-trip. Maybe he's doing it because the GOP is paying him to; I haven idea but either explanation seems reasonable, given who raised him.

It had been assumed that Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, would end up in a runoff with one of two prominent Republicans who are running in the crowded special election contest (and thus splitting the Republican vote): appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins. But polls now show Warnock running almost as well as Ossoff. A just-released Public Policy Polling survey has the pastor of the church that was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s spiritual home at 46 percent, 19 points ahead of Loeffler. But recent polls have also have shown Lieberman, the son of former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, continuing to pull as much as 4 percent of the vote while another Democrat, former federal prosecutor Ed Tarver, has been attracting 1 percent or perhaps a bit more.

There are fears that because of Lieberman’s name recognition, he could pull enough votes to prevent Warnock from winning outright on November 3, thus forcing him into a runoff with Loeffler or Collins.

Nah.

The Culture Of Compromise... And Looking Ahead To 2022

On Monday morning, the Washington Post published an increasingly rare solo-piece-- rather than team effort-- this one by Annie Linskey: Biden's Flexibility Could Mean Bloody Fights. So! Someone has noticed! "He remains vague on policy." You think? Linskey started her piece by going right to the heart of why there is so much mistrust of the Biden campaign on the left and why even some of the most fervent Trump detractors are reluctant to commit to the hold-you-nose electoral strategy. "When Joe Biden released economic recommendations two months ago," she wrote, "they included a few ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account. But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda. 'They basically said, Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,' said one investment banker, referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple calls... The Biden campaign said the economic recommendations were produced jointly by supporters of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and were never intended as official policy."

This reluctance to be pinned down on policy details is central to Biden’s campaign, which has focused on a pledge to “restore the soul of the nation” rather than any particular legislative holy grail. While Biden has issued a raft of proposals, he’s often taken an all-things-to-all-people approach, sometimes making strong public declarations while relying on aides to soothe critics behind the scenes.

That strategy, reflecting a decades-long career in which Biden has seen himself more as mediator than ideologue, has helped him unify the party’s liberal and moderate wings behind the shared goal of defeating President Trump. But it also is laying the groundwork for bitter internal battles, should Biden win the presidency, on topics from race to climate to trade, while Wall Street leaders plan to have their way with a president many expect to be unusually susceptible to outside pressure.

...“We knew we weren’t going to get Medicare-for-all,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). “The question then for me was: How do we get some foundational pieces of Medicare-for-all, even if the words ‘Medicare-for-all’ aren’t there?”

Biden’s team agreed, for example, that low-income Americans would be automatically enrolled in Biden’s public option and that Medicare, not a private company, would run it-- significant concessions that nonetheless fell under Biden’s original framing.

“A good tell about how Biden would operate is there’s room for him to run as long as he doesn’t feel like he’s overturning his brand of moderation,” said one liberal who negotiated with Biden’s team.

Sounds like a bloody 4 years are coming up-- with a 2022 catastrophe in the making, when voters-- furious that the Biden administration, along with a Democratic-controlled Senate and House, are unable to deliver on anything of importance to working families. The 2010 midterm disaster will look like paradise compared to the Republican resurgence in 2022. The Biden campaign is about two things: a wrecked old man who wants it to say he was president on his tombstone and a coalition of conservatives and wary normal people who want to get rid of Trump. Policy-wise, there is no there there and 2021 is not going to be pretty as disparate groups fight for a piece of the pie.

Last week, reviewing John Nichols' book, The Fight For The Soul Of The Democratic Party, for Jacobin, Paul Heideman, asserted that this predicament is nothing new since The Soul of the Democratic Party Has Always Belonged to Capital. When did the Democratic Party go bad. Many say it was "with Bill Clinton and the Third Way in the 1990s" while other say it was "with Carter’s embrace of austerity" while other "more conspiratorially inclined parts of the left have argued, when JFK was assassinated? Or has the party never been anything more than 'history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party?' Where you draw the line says a good deal about your politics." Nichols, he wrote, "draws the line very early indeed, with the removal of Vice President Henry Wallace from the ticket in 1944. The book is written explicitly as an intervention into current debates over the future of the party, and its argument that for most of the twentieth century, the Democratic Party was degenerating, is reflective of the radicalism of one pole of that debate. For Nichols, Wallace represents the real soul of the New Deal Democratic Party. A proud progressive, dedicated anti-racist, and passionate anti-fascist, Wallace attempted to continue Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy, only to be stymied by more conservative forces inside the party. This narrative occupies the book’s first half, while the second half covers the history of the party in the seven decades following Wallace’s defeat in 1944. The result is a readable introduction to both Henry Wallace, one of the most interesting American politicians, and the Democratic Party’s long history of betraying progressive ideals."

Did someone mention "the Democratic Party’s long history of betraying progressive ideals?" There is no better emblematic case of that than Joe Biden, you know... the guy all your progressive friends are telling you have to vote for in November (as part of the existential fight against fascism). In the same issue of Jacobin, Luke Savage is as pessimistic about a Biden presidency as I am. Does no one else see the disaster on the horizon. I explained it to one of my favorite Members of Congress the other day. She didn't say she disagreed with my prediction of a 2010 midterm-redux in 2022, only "Let's get there first," meaning electing Biden and a huge load of conservative Democrats to Congress first. Thanks, but no thanks. She wanted me to help her raise money for Blue Dogs and New Dems running for the House. I love her but... give me a break. Blue America works to defeat conservatives, whether Republicans or fake Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Savage takes issue with the idea that Biden, like Ed Markey, is a flawed liberal who could-- again, like Markey-- embrace the Sunrise Movement and everything would be hunky-dory. Markey-- who hold the #1 lifetime position at Progressive Punch-- may be a flawed liberal, but Biden isn't and never was a liberal. He's a conservative-- a really, really bad conservative-- as bad as his hair plugs and fake teeth. As imperfect as the results show ProgressivePunch's system is, it's the best measurement Ive found and, as you see, Markey's record is significantly better than either Elizabeth Warren's or Bernie's.

The 10 best Dems in the Senate

No, I don't believe for one second that Markey's more progressive than either, just that he's at #1-- which says something-- where as the senators more ideologically aligned with Biden-- both now and when he was amnestying atrocious senator himself-- are in a whole different category of Democrats:

The 10 worst Dems in the Senate

Chuck Schumer plucked Kyrsten Sinema-- then head of the Blue Dogs and sporting the single worst voting record of any House Dem-- out of the House and gave her the Democratic Senate nomination in a year when a Democrat was going to win in Arizona. He just did the same thing with another Arizonan likely to prove as far right as Sinema, Mark Kelly. And it doesn't stop there. Schumer has guaranteed the most conservative Democratic-controlled Senate in anyone's lifetime: Hickenlooper (CO), Cunningham (NC), Harrison (SC), Bollier (KS), Ossoff (GA), Heger (TX), McGrath (KY), Gideon (ME), Gross (AK), Greenfield (IA)... And Cheri Bustos is doing a similarly horrible job in the House. The Red-to-Blue program is nearly identical with the list of New Dem and Blue Dog endorsements. It will be a Biden Congress.

Markey did, after all, vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq and support NAFTA. He even backed the USA PATRIOT Act back in 2001 (though voted against its reauthorization in 2005, 2010, and 2011). That he nonetheless won the respect of so many young left-wing voters therefore does yield an important lesson for other Democratic candidates and elected officials.

As former Sanders organizer Claire Sandberg put it earlier this week: “Corporate Democrats want to make the Left out to be purity-obsessed and unwilling to compromise, but the Left rallied around a longtime politician with a mixed record because he actively courted their support and became a champion of one of their major legislative priorities.”

Where I differ from [Michelle] Goldberg is in thinking that this is the kind of lesson a politician like Joe Biden either wants to or could conceivably learn. Near the end of her piece, Goldberg writes: “I hope Joe Biden listens. Young voters favor him over Trump by large margins, but their lack of enthusiasm could dampen turnout.” She quotes Sunrise’s Executive Director Varshini Prakash: “The best thing that Joe Biden could do would be to speak in clear, exciting visionary terms about exactly what he plans to do to tackle the climate crisis, racial inequality, and economic inequality.”

It’s a capital suggestion-- and one Biden is certain to ignore. That’s because, whatever officially appears in the Democratic platform (Goldberg, for example, cites the recommendations of the Sanders/Biden joint task force) is entirely secondary to the political coalition Biden is trying to build, and the one he built to win the Democratic nomination.

Much like Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Biden is aiming to win the presidency by motivating conservative-leaning suburban voters and some Republicans-- with more traditional (and liberal- and progressive-minded) Democratic constituencies turning out in sufficient numbers where it counts. The former group was largely the target audience for this year’s DNC, which  pandered endlessly to the sensibilities of anti-Trump Republicans and rich suburbanites. The latter, meanwhile, gets lectures about how they need to be more enthusiastic while young voters get virtual Biden/Harris lawn signs in Animal Crossing instead of Medicare For All.

Centrist Democrats do want the support of young and left wing voters, of course. But they uniformly want it on their own centrist terms.

All this may be a strategic choice on Biden’s part, but it’s also a feature endemic to the faction that controls the Democratic Party as a whole. Biden’s nomination, which party power brokers ultimately did everything they could to ensure, represented a very conscious repudiation of the alternative course offered by Bernie Sanders-- one which was decidedly less interested in the votes of suburban conservatives and, perhaps more importantly, which pledged to reject the dictates of the donor class that Democratic elites have long embraced.

As such, there is simply no incentive structure in place to shift Biden from his current course.

In Massachusetts, a hitherto quite conventional liberal politician recognized that it would be in his interest to harness the energy and power of young activists. He embraced their agenda and saved his career in the process. Whether Markey’s shift represented a sincere change of heart or pure political self-interest is a secondary matter: he faced an existential challenge and pivoted towards the only constituency he believed could save him from defeat. The young left, which Biden’s candidacy has always been about marginalizing and repudiating, enjoys no such leverage with Biden.

Goldberg is absolutely right to argue that the Markey campaign yielded real lessons for centrist Democrats. The problem is assuming those are lessons that centrist Democrats are under any real pressure to learn.

Trump Is The Worst Monster On Earth-- But Does Biden Want To Make You Puke Up Your Lunch?

6 states have fewer than a million people; Delaware is one of them. Biden has never been elected to anything-- unless you want to pretend he was elected VP-- outside of Delaware, a state with a pronounced penchant for electing very conservative Democrats. He has often tried to make it seem that he was a favorite son of Pennsylvania, the 6th most populous state in the union but he's never run for anything there. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is an important prize. Trump managed to win it in 2016-- 2,970,733 (48.18%) to 2,926,441 (47.46%) in a stunning and consequential upset. This year Trump is likely to lose the state-- and badly. Last week's Fox News poll shows Biden ahead 50-39%. It isn't so much that Biden is ahead-- few voters are enthused about Biden as president-- as much as Trump being behind. Voters are very enthused about kicking Trump out of office. At "best" voters are hoping for a 3rd Obama term.

Writing for Newsweek yesterday, Chantal Da Silva reported that most people in Pennsylvania who have decided to vote for Biden are actually voting against Trump, not actually for Biden... and that's a state he claims a solid connection to. A new poll from Franklin & Marshall College "found that 55 percent of Biden backers were motivated to vote for the former vice president so they could see Trump unseated, rather than out of an eagerness to see Biden himself in power. Among those who said they would be voting for Trump, the overwhelming majority expressed the opposing sentiment, saying they were backing their candidate out of support for the president himself, rather than as a vote against Biden." This poll shows losing with 41% to Biden's 50%.

In theory, it isn't too late for Biden to turn that around-- and many idealists with their heads in the clouds hope he will. He won't. Biden is who Biden is and he's not about to change that-- especially with all polls showing him headed for a landslide win, even if it's really a landslide loss for Trump. In an OpEd for the San Jose Mercury News Wednesday, Bernie delegate Norman Solomon wrote that 4 years ago overconfidence and thinly veiled hostility toward the left by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, "glossed over and shrugged off the disaffection among Sanders supporters, especially young voters. Instead of selecting a vice-presidential candidate who might attract progressives, Clinton chose a pillar of the Democratic establishment, Sen. Tim Kaine. Today, many 'Berners' are frustrated and angry. It’s not only that hopes for a Sanders nomination and presidency were abruptly dashed. More corrosive and significant is a common feeling that, despite his recent nods leftward, Biden remains largely oblivious to social imperatives-- most notably, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Medicare for All."

Nothing would make me vote for Biden, but I suspect, millions Democratic voters would feel a lot more enthusiastic about voting for him if he embraced Medicare-for-All. He won't; in fact, he said he would veto it if it passes Congress, which it won't anyway, Schumer having set up the most conservative Democratic Senate imaginable for 2021.

Virtually every exit poll of Democratic primary voters this year reflected strong majority support for Medicare for All, often by lopsided margins, even in conservative states. National polling has continued to show that two-thirds of all registered voters want Medicare for All.

While Biden is now calling for a “public option” that would be an improvement on the 10-year-old Affordable Care Act, he hasn’t budged from his opposition to making Medicare universal-- at a time when tying medical coverage to jobs has been exposed as a grim travesty. A new study says that 5.4 million American workers lost their health insurance due to losing their jobs between February and May.

While touting his “Build Back Better” program, Biden declared in a July 9 speech: “Let’s finish the job of Obamacare by ensuring everyone has access to quality, affordable health care.” By clinging to timeworn and evasive buzzwords like “access” and “affordable,” Biden affirmed his alignment with the multi-trillion-dollar health care industry more than with Americans who want health care to be treated as a human right in reality instead of in mere rhetoric.

Just as Biden’s chances of winning the presidency would improve if he embraced Medicare for All, his prospects would also be enhanced by adopting popular positions that are especially important to racial minorities. For instance, he could do the right thing by finally supporting the legalization of marijuana, which would be a major step toward ending racist law-enforcement practices.

Young African-Americans share with other young people a distinct lack of enthusiasm-- and a likelihood of low turnout-- for Biden. A similar problem exists with Latino voters, who heavily backed Sanders in the 2020 primaries and caucuses.

Solomon cites polling showing that 12% of Bernie voters having decided, like me, to forgo casting a ballot for the lesser evil and he thinks they will-- unlike me-- vote for Biden if Biden adopts progressive policies. Biden never will. He's aggressively anti-progressive and always has been and always will be. Wednesday John Nichols reported how 700 delegates to the convention say they will oppose the party platform unless it includes Medicare for All. It won't-- and does their threat matter at all? The Democratic conservative establishment has captured the party. Get used to fighting it. The platform will reflect Biden's conservatism on every single issue-- from healthcare, a Green New Deal, Israel and a jobs guarantee to marijuana legalization and ending qualified police immunity. Biden is on the Republican side of every issue. Yesterday, after I tweeted a list of Republican senators who should be asked if they support Trump's call to postpone the election-- Susan Collins, Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, Dan Sullivan, Martha McSally, Miss McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue-- @VastLeft responded that he thought for a second that it was Biden's Supreme Court nominee list.

Nichols wrote that "it is hard sell to claim that this is the boldest Democratic platform in American history. The 1900 Democratic platform began by 'warn[ing] the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.' That was bold. The 1932 Democratic platform announced, in the midst of the Great Depression, that the party was committed to 'stamping out monopolistic practices and the concentration of economic power.' That was bold. The 1944 Democratic platform asserted, in a time of Jim Crow segregation when the party relied on the 'solid South' as a part of its coalition, that 'racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution.' And it argued that 'Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.' That was bold. The 1960 Democratic platform declared, at a point when new technologies were transforming workplaces, that 'we will provide the government leadership necessary to insure that the blessings of automation do not become burdens of widespread unemployment.' That was bold. The 1972 Democratic platform promised 'to rethink and reorder the institutions of this country' to address systemic racism and sexism and classism-- and it outlined a plan to 'restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power.' That was bold. So, too, was the document’s recognition that a for-profit health care system was failing the United States-- and its commitment to 'establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered.'"

From the 1940s through 1980, on health care issues, Democratic platforms took bolder stands than does the party’s 2020 draft platform. “Progressive ideas are nothing new,” notes Representative Ro Khanna, a cochair of the California delegation to this year’s convention, who argues that “there’s no reason we can’t finish enacting those policies today.”

Unfortunately, the platform committee does not propose to do so.

A Medicare for All amendment advanced by supporters of the 2020 presidential bid of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was rejected overwhelmingly on Monday, garnering just 36 “yes,” versus 125 “no,” votes from a committee dominated by Biden backers. Proposals to lower the Medicare eligibility age and expand access for children were also rejected.

The party’s refusal to support Medicare for All is wrongheaded practically, as Michael Lighty noted Monday when he urged platform committee members to join civil rights groups in supporting Medicare for All. “It’s vital that we meet this moment that demands health justice and Medicare For All to create a system to address the health inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic when Blacks and Latinos are dying at rates two-, two-and-a-half-times that of whites,” said the veteran single-payer activist.

The party’s refusal to support a single-payer system is also wrongheaded politically, as the campaigns of Sanders and a rising generation of Democratic members of Congress have popularized the Medicare for All agenda to such an extent that recent polling finds it is supported by 69 percent of all Americans and 88 percent of Democrats.

“The Democrats are making a fatal mistake by turning their backs on Medicare for All,” argues Winnie Wong, a former senior political adviser to the Sanders campaign, more bluntly. She labeled the committee votes “shameful” at a time “when the country is in the death grip of a global pandemic and people are dying” because they can’t afford health care.

This is Obama's party. He's calling the shots. He was in office for 8 years and I never heard any serious talk about Medicare-for-All, did you?. His wing of the party doesn't want it and it's not going to happen. Nothing in the progressive agenda will. That was decided on Super Tuesday. Do you know what a general strike is? Fighting about a platform isn't going to get anyone anything.

And most of all, at John Lewis' funeral, Bill Clinton-- the most corporate Democrat of our lifetimes-- wants to thank Jim Clyburn-- more than Obama or Bush or Pelosi... Why? For killing the peoples' campaign behind Bernie, that's why. It's less than a minute, just listen... and watch the ugly smirk from this serial rapist pig.

It Looks Like Bernie Isn't Going To Be President, But He Is The Most Consequential Person In The Politics Of The American Left

Thursday evening Bernie did his first TV interview since dropping out and instead of going on TV with some hostile establishment shill he went on the air with MSNBC's savviest critical thinker and most reliable journalist, Chris Hayes. Talking about his discussions with Biden, Bernie said that Biden's "people are very smart and they understand that in order to beat somebody like Trump they're going to have to generate a lot of excitement, a lot of energy and reach out to people who have not necessarily been all that supportive of the vice president. And that means a lot of younger people, a lot of lower income people and I think what you have begun to see and will continue to see is that the vice president is listening to many of the concerns that low income people and working people and young people have and beginning to move in their direction. He is now on board in making public colleges and universities tuition free for folks who are under $125,000 a year. He's now on board in cancelling student debt for those who have been at public colleges and universities and HBCUs... That is a movement in the right direction, not far enough to my mind, but it is a movement, an important movement. Today he announced that he would support reducing the eligibility age for Medicare for 65 down to 60-- again, a step in the right direction. There are millions and millions of people 62... 64 years of age who desperately want to get into Medicare; they will be able to do it... I think that what you will see is the vice president beginning to move in a more progressive direction."

Bernie just described what could possibly be-- at least in his mind-- a real change for one of the most conservative Democrats in American politics for the last 5 decades. Wishful thinking? Smart strategy to move a possible Biden administration in the right (left) direction?

As John Nichols mentioned in his look-back on the #NotMeUs campaign for The Nation, Bernie Sanders Changed Our Politics, Bernie was always a movement builder and educator, so nothing at all like Biden or any other contemporary U.S. politicians. "The senator," he wrote "set out to organize and educate and transform our understanding of what is possible in politics. He succeeded." When he suspended his campaign on Wednesday, Bernie "acknowledged that he would not be the transformative democratic socialist president of the United States. He would not even be the Democratic nominee for president. He would be a senator, one of 100, struggling to advance policies in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse that has extended from it... energetic when he declared, 'While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not. Let me say this very emphatically. As you all know, we have never been just a campaign,' Sanders said. 'We are a grass-roots multiracial, multigenerational movement which has always believed that real change never comes from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up. We have taken on Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and the greed of the entire corporate elite. That struggle continues.' But the immediate success of the movement-- and its potential to achieve more success in this critical moment-- is what excites Sanders most. He intends to be a powerful force in the Democratic Party, and he expects that the delegates he had already won-- and those he may accumulate in the contests yet to come-- will write a platform that is the most progressive in the history of the party. At a more fundamental level, he expects that this radical program will form the necessary alternative vision to the austerity agenda that conservatives are sure to advance as the crisis eases."

Here's what Nichols shared from his conversation with Bernie last week:

I think the progressive movement has a great amount be proud of in terms of what we have accomplished in recent years. Right now, we have very clearly won the ideological battle. On issue after issue, which four or five years ago seemed to be radical and extreme, progressive positions are now widely supported by Democrats in general and in many cases by the American people. We have taken this country a very, very long way in a progressive direction, and at the end of the day, that is enormously important.

So I think I’m very comfortable in saying that, certainly within the Democratic Party, and I think more broadly within the country, we are winning the ideological struggle, and we should be very proud of that.

The second point, equally important, is the future of this country does not rest with people who are 75 or 80 years of age. It rests with the young people. In terms of ideology, we are winning young people overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly.

I’m not just talking about my campaign. I’m talking about where the young people of this country are coming from. They are coming from a very, very different place, a very deep different place than is the Democratic establishment.

When you talk about the future of this country, and you talk about a multi-generational, multi-racial movement of young African Americans and whites and Latinos and Native Americans and Asian Americans, that’s the future of the country! They are the future, and they are rallying in overwhelming numbers to our ideology and our politics and our belief about where this country must be going.

Those are two enormous victories that we have won.

Next generation... AOC up next? Anyway, here's the note she sent to Bernie after his announcement:

Thank you for fighting for all of us from the very beginning, and throughout your entire life.

Thank you for fighting the hard, lonely fights in true devotion to a people’s movement in the United States.

Thank you for inspiring me to run for office. You made this broke girl from the Bronx believe that a grassroots movement was possible and winnable, and that everyday, working people are powerful enough to overcome the entrenched interests of corrupted power and systems.

You have shown us that victory is ours for the organizing, even if not always guaranteed. Thank you for demonstrating that it IS possible to serve authentically, without compromising our values or integrity, and with the ferocious urgency and paradigm-challenging leadership that this moment demands.

Thank you for it all. We love you. #NotMeUs

Los Angeles progressive Ted Lieu has largely steered clear of the presidential race. Today, he explained where's he's at on the campaign. "Senator Sanders, Vice President Biden, our other Democratic candidates, and Democrats across our country all agree that we need to remove Donald Trump from power. He is a uniquely dangerous individual in a precarious moment for our nation. Democrats from across the political spectrum (as well as independents and even some Republicans) are going to need to work together this November. These are challenging times and it has never been more clear that leadership matters in times of crisis. It is absolutely imperative that come January 2021 Trump is no longer our President."





In an e-mail to her own supporters, Bernie surrogate Pramila Jayapal wrote that as a lifelong activist and organizer, she believes "that politics is the art of the possible-- and it’s up to all of us to move the boundaries of what is possible. That's what Bernie Sanders has done throughout his life and career, demonstrating the kind of authenticity, consistency, and passion we need in our leaders. And although Bernie has suspended his presidential campaign, his work-- and our work-- is not done. His 'not me, us' movement was never about any one person. At the end of the day, this is about all of us-- about how we step up, take charge, take care of each other and lead, in big and small ways." She had more to say:

I am so proud to have campaigned fiercely with and for Bernie-- fighting for Medicare For All and humane immigration reform, taking on corporate supremacy and this corrupt administration, and lifting up the voices of his multi-racial, multi-generational movement for the change that will transform our country and finally take on the racial, economic, and gender inequality that has plagued us for too long.

Today, the stakes could not be any higher. We face an unprecedented public health and economic crisis that has revealed the problems with systems that prioritize the wealthy and well-connected over regular people and the common good.

We need solutions that match the scale of our crisis. And we need our movement to be energized and enthusiastic about voting to take back the White House and voting in down-ballot races in November. Our Democratic nominee must recognize the scale of the challenges we face and must welcome and embrace the movement for change that Bernie’s presidential campaign has created.

The causes we fight for-- healthcare, a decent job, a good education, a healthy planet-- are not idealistic or pie-in-the-sky. They are necessary.

Bernie Sanders carried our message across the country. He celebrated us for thinking big and believing that we deserve better. And for that, I am so very grateful to him.

Onwards to justice.

Can Bernie Become The Frontrunner Again?

On Friday, John Nichols made the case that Bernie's moral outrage and devastating sarcasm during the bailout debate and with which he "struck back against a GOP assault on poor and low-income workers" is exactly what an opposition party is supposed to sound like. He-- alone among Senate Democrats-- refused to let the Republicans wage class warfare against working Americans, and "shamed Republicans in a Wednesday Senate floor speech that ripped into them for prioritizing corporate bailouts while objecting to providing a measure of security for low-wage workers who have lost their jobs as much of the American economy has ground to a near halt."

Anti-working class journalists went berserk, particularly the woman who Skip Kaltenheuser refers to as "Bezos Brigader Ruth Marcus, who heads Washington Post’s editorial page, which never misses taking a shot at Bernie.' When she was subbing in on the PBS NewsHour Friday night political wrap, she looked as pleased as a tattle-tale who just ratted out someone to teacher as she pronounced "Right now, we're all COVID-19 all the time. And there is nothing else that people can think about, talk about, dream about. And so I think, in a sense, this is just a moment where, first of all, for Bernie Sanders, he needs to-- the moment for him to go gracefully is probably behind us. But it just shuts off any oxygen that he had left for his campaign. I don't really know what his point is right now, at this time of national emergency. For Vice President Biden, he just needs to find his voice in this moment, but also just to make sure it doesn't look too political." She didn't add anything specifically about giving up on the practice of democracy.

Status Quo Joe is now saying he refuses to debate Bernie on the important issues-- health care and COVID-19-- that are foremost in the minds of every American. Nathan Robinson-- writing for Current Affairs Friday is optimistic about Bernie's chances to win the Democratic nomination, even with the entire political establishment united in its opposition to him and everything he stands for-- basically, the working class. Robinson wrote that "everything has changed overnight and the Democratic primary is no longer over. This is a historic crisis requiring nothing less than FDR-style ambition and leadership. We’ve got just the guy."

And you know exactly who he means-- and it isn't Andrew Cuomo. "We do not," he posited, "live in the same country that we did a month or two ago. It may look the same superficially. But everything has turned upside down: The stock market suffered a more sudden crash than in 1929, millions of people have lost their jobs overnight, and the healthcare system is being strained to the brink by a devastating global pandemic that has the potential to kill people in horrifying numbers. Americans are being advised to shelter in their homes for an indefinite length of time. The chart of new unemployment claims on the front page of today’s paper is astonishing:

In this topsy turvy world, there is only one issue on everybody’s minds: the virus, along with its consequences. Nearly every news story is about it; everything else is set aside for now. We know that without an indefinite lockdown, the virus could run rampant with devastating consequences, but without a strong social safety net in place, an indefinite lockdown will lead to massive income loss."

Donald Trump is about the last person you’d want in charge during a crisis, and his behavior has been downright criminal. He lied to the public repeatedly, implying the virus’s seriousness was being exaggerated for political reasons, suggesting it was no worse than the flu and promising that “like a miracle-- it will disappear.” He has lied to people about whether they could be tested. (“Anybody that needs a test, gets a test.”) Against the opinions of both public health experts and economists, he has told the public he wants to have the churches open for Easter services and suggested that lockdowns are doing more harm than good. As people begged Trump to invoke the power of the state to compel ventilator production, he instead opting for protracted haggling over prices with private companies, and said that hospitals were asking for far more ventilators  than they really needed. He has even reportedly denied medical supplies to states based on petty grudges.

With Trump’s incompetence already having caused needless deaths-- and probably about to be responsible for many more-- and his administration having made it clear that their main interest is in protecting corporate profit, not American lives, he should be hated. His approval rating should have tanked. And yet: it hasn’t. It’s actually risen, and most Americans approve of the way he has handled the crisis. Since he has handled the crisis in an objectively abysmal fashion and is killing people’s loved ones, you may find this puzzling. But it isn’t really: Trump has been on television every day talking to the American people, bragging about things he hasn’t actually done, promising that everything is under control, touting “beautiful” new tests and miracle cures, and promising that everything will be alright. He has-- brilliantly-- slapped his name on some coronavirus advice and then mailed it to everyone in the country. If people just turn on the television or check the mail (and they can do little else right now), they’ll see a president who seems to be in command.

It’s all an illusion, but in order to show people it’s an illusion, you’d need an effective, on-message Democratic opposition, exposing Trump and offering a clear plan of their own. Unfortunately, Democrats for the most part have failed utterly. Their messaging has been muddy, with an early Democratic relief proposal being so unambitious that some Republicans were able to paint it as stingy, and Nancy Pelosi originally defended a provision that would have denied paid sick leave to most people, and then scaled it back even further. As Ryan Cooper notes, at a time when Congressional Democrats should have been “hammering Trump at every moment of the day,” they were silent.

There is a total leadership vacuum on the Democratic side. We hear a lot about the “bipartisan” relief package that just passed, but Democrats need to show that they are in command at a time when Trump is flailing. This they have not done. In part, this is because the party’s frontrunner for the presidential nomination, Joe Biden, was completely missing in action as the worst part of the crisis escalated. Biden declined to do television appearances or speak to the public, giving the unlikely excuse that he was waiting until construction on a TV studio in his home had finished. Biden’s silence meant that Donald Trump was the only national leader people were hearing from; no wonder his approval rating shot up. In fact, that may have been intentional, with Politico reporting that Biden was afraid of being “too political” and criticizing the president during a crisis. “I don’t think the public wants to hear criticism of Donald Trump right now,” said a Biden adviser. This is indefensible: It’s like declining to criticize George W. Bush over Hurricane Katrina. Trump is directly causing people to die in large numbers and then lying about it. It’s the worst thing he’s ever done. But let’s not get “too political”? Why on earth would you not get political?

Eventually, after #WhereIsJoe began trending on Twitter and party donors were “perplexed” and asking the campaign why Biden was bungling so badly, he agreed to appear in public. Biden’s first national address came on Monday. It quickly showed why advisers had wanted to keep Biden off camera; Biden read listlessly off the teleprompter, the most memorable moment coming when the teleprompter malfunctioned and Biden struggled to speak without a script. Further TV appearances did not go well. Asked about Trump’s belief that the “cure would be worse than the disease,” Biden gave the confusing reply: “We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what. No matter what.” (If we assume “take care” means “prioritize” and “that” means “Trump’s approach,” the answer makes sense, but when you watch it you go “Huh?” and right now we do not want a candidate who merely has “plausible non-nonsensical interpretations of their speech.”) At one point, Biden even said that he had experienced no symptoms of coronavirus before coughing repeatedly (and not into his elbow, leading to an awkward exchange with Jake Tapper). After the first “daily briefing” on Monday, Biden’s Tuesday briefing was canceled.

It became very plain, then, why the campaign had kept Joe Biden from doing video appearances. Those of us who had begged him to show up more on television so that Trump would have an effective opposition immediately realized we had made a huge mistake. Biden looked weak, unfocused, and sometimes confused. He had very little to say beyond vacuous “pull together and beat this thing” platitudes and a few requests that the president be more honest. He looked above all, like a man who is going to lose this election.

I have to say, it’s actually a little surprising, because even those of us who had long thought Biden was a weak candidate had to admit he did fairly well in his debate against Bernie Sanders. Biden was energetic and aggressive, even if completely full of shit. What happened?

The crisis happened. The candidates were faced with a real-world leadership test, a moment that would show how, as president, they would handle a massive national emergency. And Joe Biden revealed that he could not possibly lead. In fact, Politico reported that Biden was deliberately “deferring to party leaders” by keeping quiet. But he’s supposed to be the party leader! During a critical week, Biden’s direct communication with the public amounted to little more than a single thumbs-up emoji posted on Instagram. And the messaging from his campaign on what needs to be done could not be emptier: “forming a task force” and “bringing leaders together.”

Now, to be fair to Biden, if you watch the full interviews he ultimately did, when he got around to them, he is coherent the majority of the time. In fact, when Joe Biden is on form, as he was during the debate, he is lively, garrulous, and can even be quite compelling. The problem is that he’s incredibly hit-and-miss, and when he’s not on form, which is often, he’s a mess. And those, of course, are the clips Trump will air.

In fact, we had already known that Biden was unfocused, a poor manager, and a weak figurehead for the party. Barack Obama infamously tried to discourage him from running, and Biden’s campaign has, for the most part, been badly-run. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, no Sanders fan, said Biden was “well past his prime… His campaigning pace is languid, his debate performances unsettling.” (Chait concluded that Biden’s “2020 campaign is going to end in a disaster for the whole party.”) Biden was only able to achieve his upset victories over Sanders by having other candidates drop out at the last minute and rally behind him, because the centrists had no other plausible nominee. But it’s hard to believe they thought Biden was actually an effective candidate.

Meanwhile, I feel compelled to point out, Bernie Sanders has been doing something quite different. His campaign has pivoted to becoming a coronavirus relief effort. He raised $2 million from his supporters to fund coronavirus charities. He has savaged the president over Trump’s dangerous lies, holding nothing back. Sanders has seized the opportunity to fight hard to relieve the suffering of ordinary working people, supporting strikers who refuse to work in dangerous conditions, crusading against corporations that put their workers in danger, having supporters phone bank to organize mutual aid efforts, and doing regular livestreamed events to speak to the public about what is happening and what we can do. With the Sanders campaign’s ability to hold rallies and knock on doors eliminated by the crisis, much of this necessarily takes place online, but Sanders has long had a formidable digital operation well primed for the moment. Biden’s team have excused his inaction in part by saying that it’s because he doesn’t currently hold office and has no formal authority. But none of this stuff requires a title.

However, Bernie has also been using his position in the Senate to help. When Republican senators tried to stop a critical unemployment measure in the relief bill, Sanders took to the floor of the senate to denounce their opposition. (Worth noting that as a member of the vulnerable age group, Sanders probably should not be hanging around the virus-ridden Senate, but he’s got priorities.) To the Republican fear that some unemployed workers might earn $600 more a month in unemployment benefits than they had at their badly underpaid jobs, Sanders thundered“How absurd and wrong is that? What kind of value system is that?”

Standing alone, he threatened to block the entire bill unless the Republicans gave in. They folded. The unemployment benefits stayed. Poor people will get more money thanks to Sanders, and we now see headlines like “Why Everyone Is Thanking Bernie Sanders Right Now-- Even His Critics.” So much for those saying Sanders can’t “get anything through the Senate.” In fact, as has been true his entire career but has simply been ignored, Sanders is a pragmatic legislator who gets things done. They call him “the Amendment King” for a reason.

So two candidates, one leadership test, two very different responses: hiding away and then stumbling versus springing into action. But so what? “The Democratic primary is over. Biden won. It’s nice that Sanders is helping, but he still lost.”

The Democratic primary is not over. And Sanders supporters need to immediately recognize that it isn’t over. It was over. But it’s back on. And Sanders needs to be in it to win it, because the consequences of putting Joe Biden up against Donald Trump during this kind of historic calamity are unthinkable.

Let’s just remember where things stand with the primary, though it all seems like far distant history now: Sanders won the most votes in the early states, first Iowa and New Hampshire and then a blowout victory in Nevada. But then Joe Biden bounced back with a big South Carolina victory, and the centrist candidates lined up behind Biden before super Tuesday while progressives were still split between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Biden developed unstoppable “momentum” as Democratic voters deemed him the “safe, responsible, pragmatic” choice, as opposed to the “radical” Bernie with his popular proposals for free healthcare, generous paid family leave, a Green New Deal, etc. Biden beat Bernie in Michigan, a state Bernie had won in 2016, which was the beginning of the end. By the time Biden won Florida and Illinois (in states with already depressed turnout due to coronavirus), people were barely paying attention to the primary. It was done.

I thought it was done myself. After Michigan I concluded privately: “It’s over. Unless something huge happens, like, I don’t know, a giant national economic collapse requiring a New Deal style intervention that vindicates all of Bernie’s arguments, the rest of the primaries are irrelevant.” And then, um…

Let’s remember: The primary was declared over well before it was actually over. 1,991 delegates are needed to win. Biden currently has 1,217 delegates (40 percent of the total), Bernie 914 (30 percent of the total). And there are some big states left to vote, like New York and Pennsylvania. The primary was declared over not because it was mathematically impossible for Bernie to win-- note that every story about it contains the caveat “nearly insurmountable”-- but because the momentum of public opinion was trending so strongly in Biden’s favor that it was hard to imagine any obvious factor that would reverse the trend. If such a factor came along, and suddenly there was a reason why people might consider Bernie anew, the whole picture would look different.

Now, Biden’s lead is still very significant even though it may not look it from raw numbers. In order for Bernie to pull ahead, he would have to start beating Biden by the kind of margins that Biden has recently been beating Bernie by. Things would have to turn completely upside down.

But things have indeed turned completely upside down. All of the arguments that made Biden so compelling before have collapsed. It used to be that Biden’s incrementalism and disdain for bold federal action seemed “safe.” He would keep things mostly as they were, be a caretaker who did little but harmed nothing. Now, the state of “things as they are” is disastrous, and doing nothing is deadly. Democrats admit that Joe Biden is basically just a warm body-- The Atlantic ran an article saying that all Joe needs to do is stay alive, probably the lowest bar ever for a candidate, but one he seems barely even able to clear. They just want a “not Trump” name on the ballot in November.

If November is nothing more than a plebiscite on Trump, though, Trump will win overwhelmingly, because people like crisis presidents if they look like they’re doing their best, and Trump is working hard to look like he’s doing something even as he does nothing. Unless someone exposes the lie and offers an alternative path and better leadership, people will remember the president’s daily press conferences and nothing else.

What is the argument for Joe Biden in a crisis? Biden’s plan for healthcare, even at its most ambitious, would leave 3 million people without health insurance. Now, people are dying from COVID-19 because they don’t have health insurance. Under Biden, even after the years-long process of getting some minor improvements to the insurance system through, for many people a pandemic would inflict exactly the same kind of financial distress on people that it’s doing now.

The case for universal free healthcare just got about 1,000x stronger. Biden used the opportunity of the last debate to trash single-payer healthcare, saying that it hasn’t saved Italians. But it has saved Italians from having financial ruin go along with a pandemic. The point of a social safety net is not to cure coronavirus, but to make sure that something like coronavirus doesn’t also leave people destitute. We’re seeing now the human consequences of having health insurance tied to employment: As staggering record numbers of people are thrown out of work, they will also lose their health insurance. This was always Bernie’s point in response to those who touted their “good private insurance” or said that Medicare For All would “take away” people’s insurance. In fact, Medicare For All would make sure you always got to keep your good insurance, no matter what happened with your job, while under our current system, millions can find themselves uninsured overnight.

The things Bernie has been shouting about for the entire campaign are suddenly becoming far more obvious. If corporations own the government, and congresspeople are bought and paid for by lobbyists, then even in a pandemic the priority of the government will not be to save the lives of working people but to protect corporate profits and the stock market. Healthcare that operates for profit is not going to plan for or tend to the needs of those people whose illnesses are not profitable. Once people were scared of “government healthcare.” Now they’re all desperately wondering: Why isn’t there any government healthcare? Where are the free public hospitals? Why isn’t the federal government doing something? And the answer, in part, is because there has long been a bipartisan consensus around government austerity, believing that the private sector will solve problems as if by magic through the divine protection of an Invisible Hand that hovers above us all. (Yes, capitalism is a religion.) Actually, problems only get solved because people roll up their sleeves and do shit, and government is the collective coordinating apparatus that helps us know what shit needs to get done and who needs to do it.

Bernie Sanders has a coronavirus plan, and it’s a good one. Free healthcare indefinitely, not just for coronavirus, because coronavirus is going to cause many other conditions to worsen. Paid leave, a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, expanding food stamps (which the Trump administration tried to cut during the pandemic). But most importantly: Bernie can lead people. He can organize. This campaign has shown that he can do what Biden is hopeless at: build an army of activists ready to go out and work (or, during a pandemic, stay online and work). Bernie has always been very clear about what is necessary, and he has a long record of fighting for working people. He’s fighting for them even now, while Biden’s team spend a few more days adjusting the lighting in his home studio in the hopes it disguises the fact that Joe Biden is Joe Biden.

This really should be Bernie’s moment. A looming Second Great Depression in a country governed by a 21st century Herbert Hoover (this is woefully unfair to Hoover, actually, and I’m sorry) requires a new FDR. Bernie Sanders is very clearly the closest we have, and as I have written 10 billion times before, he is very effective against Donald Trump. This crisis demands a particular kind of person. We are fortunate enough to have the person waiting and ready to take charge.

If you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, you have been demoralized. You might be working on virus relief, but you have lost hope that Sanders can be the nominee. But you are operating as if the world hasn’t changed. The world has changed. Bold actions like the ones Bernie has proposed on healthcare once looked risky. Now the risk is that we won’t implement them quickly enough. There are already signs that people’s minds might be open to being changed in a way they weren’t just recently. I see people like Ezra Klein posting things like “radical times require radical responses,” MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid seems critical of employer-based healthcare, and weird stuff is happening. Did you think you’d see Britney Spears calling for strikes and wealth redistribution? (Fran Drescher is also attacking capitalism and calling for a general strike, though she may have been a long-time comrade.) At the very least, it is a newly uncertain moment, and one during which we cannot afford to give up but must redouble our energy. People are hurting more than ever, and the progressive agenda is about relieving suffering and giving everyone better lives. We are ready for this.

People have stopped thinking about the primary. But they shouldn’t. Especially because, even if the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t happening, Joe Biden can no longer even be the Democratic nominee.

Why Joe Biden Is Done

[Content warning: sexual assault]

I need you to do something. I need you to listen to the latest episode of the Katie Halper Show, which is an interview with former Biden staffer Tara Reade. The full interview is here, and if you have the emotional wherewithal to do so, you should listen to it in full. There’s also a short version here, and a good article covering it can be found here.

In the interview, Reade describes how, when she was working for Biden in the early ’90s, he sexually assaulted her. Her description of the events is precise, brutal, and compelling. She sounds, to me, credible. I have also had several private conversations with her that have left me with no reason to doubt that she is telling the truth. When feminists talk about “believing women” who come forward to talk about sexual assault, it doesn’t mean we believe every word a woman says no matter what; it means that when a woman comes forward with a story of being sexually assaulted, we start from the presumption that she is probably telling the truth. In short, we trust, but verify. Reade claims that, at the time of the assault, she told her brother and a friend. Ryan Grim of the Intercept has spoken to both the brother and the friend, who confirm Reade’s story. That, on top of Reade’s heartbreaking, detailed account on The Katie Halper show and our private conversations, is sufficient verification for me.

Sexual assault is a crime committed behind closed doors, in private; our legal system currently finds these cases difficult to prove even when victims choose to report. Of course, no one can know with absolute certainty if Reade’s story is accurate. But as Biden himself once said, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.” When women accuse powerful men of sexual assault, the consequences are usually severe and horrific; Christine Blasey Ford had to move four times and keep a security detail due to death threats. We took Blasey Ford seriously (not seriously enough) on the basis of similar verification and compelling testimony. We must take Tara Reade seriously, too. [UPDATE: Tara’s story has now broken into the mainstream press, with a full report in Newsweek.]

In fact, we shouldn’t be surprised at all by Reade’s accusation. Joe Biden has long been considered a MeToo scandal waiting to happen. He had already been accused by seven other women of inappropriately touching them and violating their boundaries. A female Democratic fundraiser told Harper’s last year that Biden “has a bit of a Me Too problem… We never had a talk when he wasn’t stroking my back.” Based on the previous allegations, and Biden’s documented history of sniffing the hair of women and girls, anyone could have thought that a more serious allegation might drop sooner or later. Now it has, and nobody is saying: “Surely not Joe Biden, it seems so out of character.”

Lucy Flores, who had been a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of Nevada, said Biden came behind her, put hands on her, smelled her, and kissed her without her consent. And if that’s what Biden did to a prominent politician in public, is it implausible he would do worse to low-level staffers in private? Powerful men with boundary issues aren’t exactly well-known for stopping at hair-sniffing. They tend to do whatever they feel they can get away with. Lucy Flores, despite being a major state-level Democratic politician, was mocked and ignored, her accusation treated as trivial.

Tara Reade came forward in April 2019, after she heard people saying things like “well, if what Lucy Flores says is really true, why aren’t any of his former staff members complaining?” At that time, Reade only came forward to confirm what Flores was saying about Biden’s general handsiness. But, after being subjected to online smears, and seeing the media was not taking claims against Biden seriously, she didn’t pursue the matter further or tell her full story. Reade says she approached numerous reporters and prominent people, including Elizabeth Warren (whom she supported at the time), but nobody helped.

But in January, Reade tried again, contacting the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which was set up by the National Women’s Law Center to provide legal aid to MeToo victims. And they shooed her away, not because they disbelieved her but because she was accusing Joe Biden. They said they could not handle a claim against a candidate for office because legally they would risk their nonprofit status, a highly dubious assertion. Finally, Reade found her way to left podcaster Katie Halper, the only one who would listen, who interviewed her at length.

I think the cynical view will be that while Reade’s allegation is serious, it won’t hurt Biden, because the press won’t cover it and no one will care. I have certainly feared that myself, but I think one thing all Democrats need to be pressed to do is listen to Reade’s actual interview in her own words. Because when you hear her, it becomes very difficult to think it’s possible to disregard her testimony. Many Democrats will not want to hear it, because they now believe the fate of their party is tied to propping up Joe Biden’s dismal campaign. But it is hard for me to accept that no one prominent in the post MeToo-era Democratic Party cares enough, that they’re all so invested in Joe Biden, that it is of no interest to them whether he has been accused of a horrific sexual attack.

Personally, I have long believed Joe Biden is an incredibly weak candidate against Donald Trump. I think that has been proven even more by his handling of the crisis, which is troubling even to people close to his campaign. Some people disagreed with me, thought I was overstating things. I don’t see how they can disagree now, though. After all, Joe Biden’s entire pitch against Trump was his “character.” He wanted to make the election not about what Democrats could do for people, but about what kind of man Trump is and what kind of man Joe Biden is. As the one supposedly without “malarkey.” Biden, it was theorized, would win.

But with Tara Reade’s powerfully persuasive testimony, it’s going to be very difficult to make even the one argument that Biden had left. Reade is a lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary in the 2016 primary, but Trump will use his hundreds of millions of dollars to play her interviews far and wide, so that every American knows her name. And of course we do not even know whether more women will come forward to accuse Biden of inappropriate behavior-- more, that is, than the eight who already have. Trump, of course, has plenty of assault allegations of his own. But do Democrats really want to be put in the position of having to argue that their guy is the one with “character” because slightly fewer women have accused him of sexually assaulting them? How on earth do any of them plan to handle this? They won’t be able to ignore the claims against Biden, because Trump will talk about them constantly. Democratic spokespeople will either have to try to smear and discredit Biden’s accuser (“Reade once wrote a dumb blog post about Russia, ergo she is a Russian spy” is the current best attempt on this front), or say that it somehow means Biden committing an outright sex crime against a staffer doesn’t matter. I would encourage all Democrats to game out how this scenario would go. Let’s be real: Joe Biden is done, and the only question is whether you still want him to get the nomination before it becomes clear just how completely done he is. We can stop Biden now while there’s time to replace him, or we can watch with horror as the general election becomes about whether or not the Democratic candidate raped a staffer. (Tara does not refer to the incident as rape, but if you listen to her description it can be characterized that way, and I do not think Democrats especially want to have a public discussion over whether nonconsensual digital penetration is better characterized as rape or assault.)

Look, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to run a guy with a dismal record, who has flopped at the moment he most needed to step up and lead, and who now faces a credible assault allegation and other credible allegations of inappropriate behavior. You could run a popular FDR-style social democrat, who has exactly the message and the agenda that this historic crisis needs. Why let Trump be reelected needlessly? Are Democrats so completely committed to destroying the possibility of the progressive agenda Sanders supports that they’d literally commit party suicide if it meant stopping Bernie from increasing unemployment benefits and improving healthcare financing? This has gotten nuts. While they are in lockdown, everyone needs to have a long think about the primary and reevaluate it carefully. We should admit Bernie is clearly right for the moment, and his supporters need to pick up the fight again.

What Next?

It is strange to talk about an election in a pandemic. What is on people’s minds is the immediate crisis and how it touches their lives. But the pandemic is as bad as it is because of the way the 2016 general election went, and we need to make sure that we do not reelect the man who is killing us.

I am not in a position to tell the Bernie campaign what it should do, but here is how I can imagine this going, if it is to be successful: The states that have not yet voted need to all push their primaries back to June. Heavy pressure should be put on Wisconsin to push back its April 7 primary, because it would be irresponsible not to. (Florida pressed ahead and, predictably, now poll workers are sick.) All states must become vote-by-mail. This protects voters from contracting coronavirus, and also buys time to make the case and turn public perception around.

The Bernie campaign specializes in online organizing, and since everyone is trapped at home, now is a perfect time. Bernie already has the right idea, which is that right now the campaign needs to be far more about helping people get through the horror of the coronavirus crisis than pushing his presidential agenda. However, he also needs to find a way to once again make the case that people need to vote for him. I think using the Bernie contact network as a way of helping connect people and support them during the crisis is critical. I should be getting texts that say: “Hi, I’m X from Bernie Sanders’ campaign. We want to know whether you need anything and if you are okay. If you need someone to talk to, or there is something we are able to help arrange for you, we are here.” I have not gotten such a text yet, but the scripts are apparently trending in this direction.

This crisis is not just a health crisis and an economic crisis. It is a social crisis. The Bernie campaign will not be able to get people healthcare or pay their bills. But what it can do is help connect them with others at a time when we are isolated and scared. It is not well-enough understood that right now, many people have effectively been trapped in solitary confinement indefinitely. A 95-year-old friend of mine in a retirement home has become incredibly depressed, because he can receive no visits and go nowhere, and just has to sit alone watching horrible depressing news on the television all day. Old people have been cut off from seeing their spouses, and when you don’t have too many years left, every day is precious. Young people, too, unable to see their friends or coworkers in person, are adjusting to lives of terrible loneliness.

For everyone, the question right now, after taking care of yourself, is how you can support others using the resources you have. The Bernie campaign does not have ventilators or paychecks. What it has is a vast communications network for getting people together. If young Bernie supporters were willing to just chat with older people who have been isolated and are desperately on their own, it would not just be a public service but if done in large numbers might begin to fix the candidate’s “older voter” problem.

In fact, one thing Sanders needs to do is emphasize the particular needs of senior citizens, which he has rarely done, perhaps out of fear that people will notice he is one himself. Coronavirus is a plague that affects the old most of all, and the right is talking about them in horrible eugenicist language, as if they are expendable. I hear plenty of commentators saying “well, we’ll just isolate the elderly indefinitely, as they are highly at risk, and let the young and healthy out.” They do not understand the kind of mass torture they are talking about inflicting on old people, not to mention the fact that “young and healthy” does not protect you from this plague.

Those who are enduring solitary quarantine  are hurting. It is hard to be alone if you don’t want to be. The Bernie campaign can help pair strangers, especially older ones, to support each other and check in. Millions will do this, because we’re trapped at home. They can help people get through this. And yes, in the process, they need to figure out how to get people to vote for Bernie. But most of all, the Bernie campaign needs to let people know that they are there for them. (It can build upon and support the under-publicized mutual aid work that leftist groups like the DSA are already doing.)

There also needs to be a very clear agenda. Yes, Bernie has a coronavirus plan, but much of it is aspirational. We need a short list of feasible demands to rally around and pressure politicians over. They need to be memorable, like “Medicare for All” is memorable, so that everyone can easily recite the plan. I should know it by heart because I hear about it constantly. Sanders supporter and public health expert Abdul El-Sayed has already explained what he would do to combat coronavirus. Condense it, demand it.

  I do not know how this will go. But no matter what happens politically, even something like connecting older people with social support will do a whole lot of good in addressing the painful isolation we are now enduring in addition to the virus and the economic crash. We need a strategy for reaching people (and ultimately for getting those mail-in ballots turned in). Because the world has changed, and this is once again a race that might be won.

And it must be won, because Donald Trump must be crushed and the planet must be saved. What is happening right now is unconscionable and should strengthen our resolve to get people free healthcare and a social safety net that keeps anyone from having to make the terrible choice of either losing their job or risking death. Bernie supporters may rightly feel terrified, but they should also get a new burst of energy, because now more than ever is the time to fight for those you do not know. We can still win this thing.