Who Would Benefit From A Biden Presidency? And Who Would Benefit If A Progressive Won Instead?

Sleazy lawyer and multimillionaire, Vicente González bought his South Texas congressional seat in 2016 by spending $1,850,000 of his own money against progressive primary opponent Juan Palacios, Jr. González tricked the gullible Congressional Progressive Caucus into endorsing him, went on the radio and made fun of them and their issues and immediately joined the Blue Dogs, where he quickly ran up an "F"-rated voting record. Since 2016 his record has never veered away from a low "F" rating. Vicente González is a member in good standing of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party; when you hear someone use the word "Democrap," they are describing Vicente González and others like him. It was only a matter of time for someone like González to endorse Biden. And yesterday he announced he was withdrawing his endorsement of fellow Texan, Julián Castro, and bestowing it on the more ideologically copacetic Biden. Of Biden's 13 endorsements from current House members, 10 are from conservative New Dems and Blue Dogs. Former House members who have endorsed him are not just New Dems and Blue Dogs, but are also primarily lobbyists, like Al Wynn and Richard Swett. And lobbyists love Biden-- and Biden loves lobbyists.

At the same time González was doing Biden a solid by stabbing Castro in the back, Our Revolution was sending out an e-mail to its list reminding members that "Since his campaign launched, and throughout Thursday's debate, Joe Biden has been trying to scare Americans away from supporting Medicare for All. His lowest moment was when he told seniors in Iowa that under Bernie's plan, 'all the Medicare you have is gone.' In reality, of course, Bernie's proposal does not strip Medicare from seniors; it makes Medicare available to everyone. Corporate Democrats like Joe Biden are backed by unlimited special interest money. They will do anything-- even misrepresent the truth-- to stop us from guaranteeing health care as a human right... President Obama openly said in 2018 that Medicare for All is a 'good idea,' and we could not agree more with Joe Biden's former boss. However, even Obama's endorsement of Medicare for All won't stop Joe Biden from doing everything he can to stop us from guaranteeing health care as a human right in America."

Biden should withdraw from the race and go sit in the corner with a dunce cap on. Ole Status Quo Joe was at it again, this time privately praising pharmaceutical companies, at a high dollar fundraiser in Dallas, despite publicly (and obviously falsely) "supporting" initiatives to cut drug prices. He's a real piece of crap. Bernie: "At a time when their behavior is literally killing people every day, America needs a president who isn't going to appease and compliment drug companies-- we need a president who will take on the pharmaceutical industry-- whether they like it or not. When we defeat Donald Trump, that's exactly what we are going to do."

As Eoin Higgins reported Friday for Common Dreams, Bernie's campaign is also pushing back on Biden's lies about Medicare-for-All. Faiz Shakir, Bernie's campaign manager: "Having a real debate about the healthcare crisis in America is critically important. It's disappointing Joe Biden is echoing the deceptions and falsehoods of the healthcare industry which is spending millions to protect the $100 billion in profits they made last year... Joe Biden may love the insurance industry and the outrageously high premiums, co-payments, and out-of-pocket expenses they charge us. Most Americans don't. It is time to create a healthcare system that works for all of us, and not just the insurance companies and the drug companies."

Business Insider ran an interesting experiment to determine act would happen if all the flotsam and jetsam dropped out now, leaving just Biden, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren as the contenders for the nomination. Bernie and Elizabeth would both surge while Biden has the least to gain. Yep, Status Quo Joe is the one who currently benefits the most from such a large field.

Over the past several weeks, three candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have distinguished themselves as frontrunners: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Yet, at the close of the September primary debates, there are still a total of 18 candidates in the race, most of whom have virtually no shot at becoming president. Biden is polling at an average of roughly 30%, Warren at 19%, and Sanders at 18%, according to an aggregation from RealClearPolitics. The next-closest candidate, Kamala Harris, is stuck at 7%.

The hanger-on candidates are basically real-life statistical noise, making it harder to discern who's actually likely to win the primary race by detracting polling points from their opponents in the lead.

So: What if we just got rid of them? How would things shake out between Biden, Bernie, and Warren?

Thanks to the unique way Insider conducts its polls, we can test exactly that. Unlike most polling organizations, Insider/Surveymonkey's poll asks would-be voters which candidates they would be happy with if they were to become president, rather than naming just one candidate. Using that data, we ran a mathematical model that analyzed what it would look like if we eliminated every candidate except for the top three and re-allocated those voters to Biden, Sanders, and Warren.

If we Thanos-snapped Harris, Buttigieg, Booker, O'Rourke, Yang, Klobuchar, Castro, Bennet, Bullock, Delaney, Gabbard, Ryan, Williamson, Steyer, and De Blasio out of existence, here's what the field would look like, according to the polls we've conducted this summer:

For Biden, we'd have a situation where 30% of his fans would like him and him alone, 37.4% percent deciding between him and Sanders or him and Warren, and a third of his supporters fine with all three.

That's compared to a current situation where 16.1% of those satisfied with him are satisfied with him alone, 15% have him as one of two choices, and 18% have him as one of three candidates they're satisfied with.

For Sanders, we'd have 24% of his backers liking him alone, 42% supporting either Warren or Biden, and a third liking all three.

Right now, 15% of his supporters like him alone, 18% of them like him and just one other person, and 19% like him and two other people, with the remaining supporters deciding between four or more. Those numbers are better than Biden's.

For Warren, 15% of her fans would approve of her and her alone, which is three times her current level but still half of Biden's lockdown rate. 51% of them would be satisfied with her and one other person, and a third would approve of all three.

As of now, only 5% like her and her alone, 12% like her and one other person, and 19% like her and two others.

It's also important to note that some things don't change. As of now, overall, Warren is known and satisfactory for 45% of Democrats, about 46% of respondents know of Sanders and would be satisfied with him, and 47% would be fine with Biden. Those numbers are the same whether you've got three contenders or 19.

The "Existential Battle" Is for Control of the Democratic Party

Steve Kornacki, MSNBC's so-called "numbers guy," visually misrepresents Sanders' strength against Trump, then lies about the erroneous graphic: "Elizabeth Warren, she’s been running second place, she is running second place on the Democratic side. She leads Trump by 5 points." The graphic shows that Kornacki is obviously wrong. Warren is in third place, and Sanders' margin against Trump is greater than Warren's.

by Thomas Neuburger

Sanders is the revolutionary. His election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector. That’s what a vote for “change” would mean in 2020.
     –Matt Taibbi

We've been hearing quite a bit about how the 2020 election is an "existential battle" for control of the nation's future, and that Trump's re-election poses an "existential threat." For example:

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: "we are in a fight for our democracy and our decency; we are engaged in an existential battle to defend objective reality".

Chauncey DeVega, Salon: "Trump is promising an authoritarian "national renewal" to his white supporters through a fake populism that nurtures feelings of grievance and victimhood -- feelings that can only be remedied through loyalty to the Great Leader and Dear Father. Political violence will be necessary -- and is already taking place across the country -- because TrumpWorld and its members believe that they are in an existential battle for survival."

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, reporting from Iowa: "In a mid-June appearance in Iowa, Biden tipped off reporters that he’d be making remarks about Trump. Dressed in dark-wash dad jeans and blue shirt, he became the 10,000th Democrat this year to call the president an 'existential threat.'"

That 2020 existential battle, of course, is always cast as between the Democrats and the Republicans.

But there's another existential battle going on, one that will occur before the main event — the battle for control of the Democratic Party. In the long run, that battle may turn out to be more important than the one that immediately follows it.

Matt Taibbi, from the same article:

[T]he undeniable truth is that the Democratic race is about Sanders. Most of the candidates either support Medicare for All or try to sound like they do. They also tend to support a $15 minimum wage and call for wealth taxes, a Green New Deal, antitrust actions, and some rejection of corporate donors. Even Joe Biden, he of the lengthy career deep-throating credit-card-industry bucks, has parroted Sanders’ anti-corporate themes, noting that the Constitution reads “ ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Donors.’ ”

There is an irony in the fact that Sanders has become the bête noire of Clintonian politics, given that Sanders represents the culmination of Bill’s 1992 electoral formula: “Change versus more of the same.”

Decades later, this is no longer just a marketing formulation. About 20 of the candidates exist somewhere on the spectrum of traditional Democratic politics, with Klobuchar, Mayor Pete, and Biden on one side, and Warren on the more progressive end. Sanders is the revolutionary. His election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector. That’s what a vote for “change” would mean in 2020.

Before mainstream Democrats can begin the "existential battle" with the forces of Trump and Republicanism, they have to win the existential battle against the force that wants to force change on their own party.

They're engaged in that battle today, and it seems almost all of the "liberal media," sensing the existential nature of the threat, is helping them win it. Katie Halper, in a second perceptive piece on the media's obvious anti-Sanders bias, "MSNBC’s Anti-Sanders Bias Is Getting Truly Ridiculous," writes: "When MSNBC legal analyst Mimi Rocah (7/21/19) said that Bernie Sanders 'made [her] skin crawl,' though she 'can’t even identify for you what exactly it is,' she was just expressing more overtly the anti-Sanders bias that pervades the network."

Halper then documents instance after instance of this bias, from graphics that show Sanders in fourth place in a poll in which he placed second...

.@MSNBC just posted this poll.
Why is Bernie listed below Warren? pic.twitter.com/GD8nO0xMJO

— Geoff Campbell (MiamiGator) One of the Squad (@GeoffMiami) July 7, 2019

to Steve Kornacki presenting a different misleading graphic from a different poll, then reinforcing the visual error with a verbal lie (see above), to political analyst Zerlina Maxwell (and former Clinton staffer, though this was never mentioned) blaming Sanders on-air for not mentioning race until 23 minutes into a speech, when in fact he mentioned it at the five-minute mark.

Maxwell corrected her misrepresentation later when challenged about it...

.@ZerlinaMaxwell, I appreciate your work but you said Bernie didn't talk about race / gender until 23 min in.

At 3min: he thanked @shaunking for his work on criminal justice reform.

At 6min: he discussed fighting Trump's sexism + racism.

13min: he discussed mass incarceration. pic.twitter.com/x7B2F2PNhM

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) March 2, 2019

...but only on Twitter, and only while reinforcing her scorn for Sanders.

MSNBC is clearly acting as a messaging arm of the Democratic Party mainstream in its battle with progressives in general and Sanders in particular, and Zerlina Maxwell, who's been variously employed by that mainstream, from her work with Clinton to her work on MSNBC, is an agent in that effort.

Let me repeat what Matt Taibbi wrote: "[Sanders'] election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector."

Before this election becomes a referendum on Trump, it will be a referendum on the Democratic Party, on whether voters in the Democratic primary, as many of them as are permitted to participate in it, will choose to continue the Party as currently constituted, or force on it sudden, radical and transformational change.

If the nation wishes true deliverance, not just from Trump and Republicans, but from the painful state that got Trump elected in the first place, it will first have to believe in a savior. 

Will it choose as its savior a radically overhauled Democratic Party? Or will it trust its salvation to a Party that, in the words of the Onion's fictional, but accurate Nancy Pelosi, offers as "our core 2020 argument" that "we are infinitesimally less objectionable than our opposition."

Welcome to the Democratic primary. In the long run, if mainstream Democrats win the first existential battle of 2020 and enter the second unreformed, how much of the nation will truly rally to their side and help them defeat the current Trump, or the next one, or the next one after that?

Will the nation still seek delivery from their pain, even after Trump is defeated, if indeed he is? And if they do, will they find it in an unreconstructed, money-driven Democratic Party, or go looking elsewhere again, perhaps to an elsewhere worse than the elsewhere the current Trump emerged from?