If Saving the Climate Is the Question, Joe Biden Is Not the Answer

CO2 mitigation curves that allow us to keep global warming below 1.5°C, the only mark that keeps the planet reasonable livable. For discussion see "Poised on the Brink: A Tale of Hope and Change." It's rightly said that "the road to 2°C is steep; the road to 1.5°C is a cliff."

by Thomas Neuburger

The most important issue that humans have faced in their history is the impending catastrophic climate disaster. ... 'We have until 2030 to avoid catastrophe.'" — Noam Chomsky, in a new pro-Biden campaign ad, "#VoteTrumpOut"

In a new ad Noam Chomsky correctly says, "The most important issue that humans have faced in their history is the impending catastrophic climate disaster."

He's exactly right, the "impending catastrophic climate disaster" is an existential crisis, a crisis of our existence itself, and if we don't face it with the most radical of solutions between now and 2030, Americans and all of the rest of our species will scramble for cover and triage for most of the rest of this millennium. Scramble for survival, in other words, until the climate system stabilizes into a "hot new normal."

When will all this end? The planet will continue to heat until the day...

 • When humans stop emitting CO2, either by choice, by devolution to pre-manufacturing life, or by extinction; and

 • When all of the secondary effects of the carbon we've already burned have had their say. When loss of ice; loss of temperate zones; loss of wealth, habitat, and farmable arable land; loss of livestock and life-preserving species like bees; global and regional wars, famines and plagues; collapse of our economic systems; collapse of all social systems larger than tribes have each had their moment in the sun, then left the ravaged scene.

Only after these two conditions are met will the climate/life cycle system of the earth reach a new equilibrium and stop adjusting to the effects of human-emitted atmospheric CO2.

The "hot new normal" will not be as friendly as our comfortable old normal, the Holocene, the climate that gave birth to civilized man with all our wonders and delights, but it will at least be a stable and predictable environment for whoever is left to live in it, at least until the next great cataclysm  — a comet, a massive tectonic shift — forces its own rearrangement on our only home in the world.

So Chomsky is not exaggerating. The life of our species and our way of living that life is literally at stake. We could easily go from smart phones everywhere to homeless campfires set on rubbish heaps, a global assembly of disconnected pre-industrial and mostly non-farming societies in not too many generations.

With that as the opener of the ad, the statement of this great urgency, it's appropriate to say that Donald Trump is not the answer — is in fact the perfect inverse of the answer. "Another four years of Trump," Chomsky announces at the beginning, "may literally lead us to the stage where the survival of organized human society is deeply imperiled. ... Trump is the worst person in the world on this issue."

"Get rid of Trump, and then we have opportunities," he concludes. All true.

And yet I find myself wishing, if climate is the existential question, that Joe "Fossil Fuel" Biden was not the only answer on offer. Because I don't think Joe Biden, or whoever fleshes out his empty suit in the next four years, is capable of the radical change these radical times require.

After all, didn't Joe Biden, with the eager, happy help of the entire Democratic leadership, work to defeat the mildest "radical" of my whole life on earth, the rumpled FDR who ran against him?

Biden's own version of the Green New Deal, for example, "wouldn’t ban natural gas and oil fracking," says this glowing report. If Sanders was Biden's enemy, he of the actual Green New Deal, how on earth can Biden be our friend?

Does this mean Don't Vote for Biden? No, nor does it mean Don't Vote. It simply means if climate is your question, this election offers no answer.
  

For Progressives-- Wins, Losses And The Road Forward

Start calling her Congresswoman Bush

Last night there were two gigantic progressive wins-- both in Missouri. After a decade of dogged and vicious Republican opposition in the state legislature and from the governors, the state's voters passed a Constitutional Amendment to give health care to nearly a quarter million of the state's poorest citizens (people earning less than $18,000 annually) through Obamacare Medicaid expansion, making Missouri the 38th state to adopt it. Thanks to massive popularity in St Louis, the amendment passed 52-48% statewide, with right-wing governor Mike Parson continuing to lie that the state can't afford it-- even after a credible study from the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, found that providing health care for more people would actually save the state money. Since the federal government will match 90% of the costs of the newly eligible-- down from 100% had Missouri decided to be part of the program from the beginning-- that state will save about half a billion dollars a year in federal income taxes because residents pay into the system that funds Medicaid expansion without getting the benefits of that expansion."

The other huge progressive win in Missouri was Cori Bush defeating corrupt Congressman Lacy Clay in their St. Louis congressional race:

Cori, a nurse, a Black Lives Matter activist and Berniecrat was great news on a night when other movement activists didn't around the country didn't fare as well. Clay raised $740,525 compared to Bush's $562,309 but a massive $150,000 I.E. on her behalf from Justice Democrats evened the playing field.

The biggest disappointment was that Blue Dog and "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran in Arizona managed to avoid being ousted by another Berniecrat and movement activist, Eva Putzova, who won the districts's biggest and bluest county, Coconino, but was dragged down by the more conservative counties that backed O'Halleran. With 94% of the votes counted, he won 34,095 (58.65%) to 24,037 (41.35%). This was Cori's second try against Clay-- and Eva's first try against O'Halleran. I expect she will try again.

In Michigan, Rashida Tlaib handily beat back a challenge from corporate shill Brenda Jones, with a 2-1 landslide. And in the southwest district, with all precincts now counted, voters have chosen the progressive state legislator, Jon Hoadley over garden variety Democrat Jen Richardson-- 52.3% to 47.7%. Hoadley is in a good position to beat Trump enabler Fred Upton in November.

In Washington state, progressives lost their congressional runs against right-of-center incumbents Rick Larsen and Derek Kilmer and in WA-10, conservative Marilyn Strickland seems to be beating progressive Beth Doglio for first place for the seat opening up after Denny Heck's retirement. It looks like they will square off in November-- with a sharp contrast between a progressive and a conservative.

This morning, Roots Action, led by Berniecrat Norman Solomon, announced that his group has launched a grassroots campaign aimed at "swing voters on the left," to persuade Bernie supporters and other progressives in swing states to "Vote Trump Out-- and Then Challenge Biden."

The Vote Trump Out swing-states initiative will include a highly-targeted social-media program and other digital outreach, utilizing messages from national and state progressive luminaries-- people who are widely respected on the left in ways that establishment Democrats are not. The campaign will urge progressives in the dozen battleground states to vote for Joe Biden rather than sit out the election or cast a third-party protest vote. Directed heavily toward young people, the effort will be entirely independent of-- and often in opposition to-- corporate Democratic leaders.

The RootsAction campaign has assembled a group of national endorsers who are likely to be persuasive to progressives on the fence about voting for Biden. They include: Ady Barkan, Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Marjorie Cohn, RoseAnn DeMoro, Barbara Ehrenreich, Daniel Ellsberg, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jim Hightower, Rep. Ro Khanna, Jamie Margolin, Annabel Park, Linda Sarsour, Winnie Wong and James Zogby.

The #VoteTrumpOut campaign will assert that-- while President Trump is unfailingly immune to progressive persuasion or protest-- the fight for a full progressive agenda (ranging from major climate initiatives and anti-racism to universal healthcare, free public college and taxing the wealthy) would have the potential to win some victories with Biden in the White House.

The campaign’s mission statement declares: "We are not going to minimize our disagreements with Joe Biden. But we’re also clear-eyed about where things stand: supporting the Democratic nominee in swing states is the only way to defeat Trump... If Biden wins, we’ll be at his door on day one, demanding the kinds of structural reforms that advance racial, economic and environmental justice."

Renowned linguist, author and political activist Noam Chomsky contributed this comment to the initiative: "I live in the swing state of Arizona, and I’d vote for a lamp post to get Trump out." Chomsky is featured in a campaign-launch video [above].

"Our organization fought fiercely in the primaries for Bernie and against Biden," said RootsAction.org cofounders Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon. "But the general election is far less about Biden than it is about Trump-- the most dangerous president in modern U.S. history, who opposes virtually every policy and principle that progressives are fighting for."

   

Your Criminal President

38,386 new cases today-- you running from that, Pig Man?

Yesterday saw a horrifying new high in cases in states across the country thanks to Trump and, in most cases, the foolish governors (and idiot citizens) who echo-ed his ignorant pronouncements about COVID-19. From the beginning, Trump refused to take the pandemic seriously, which s why the U.S. has been hit so much harder than any country in the world. Today's new cases by governor:

• Gavin Newsom (D-CA) +4,966
• Greg Abbott (R-TX) +6,177
• Doug Ducey (R-AZ) +1,795
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL) +5,511
• Brian Kemp (R-GA) +1,703

On top of those, other knee-jerk Trumpified governors who fucked up their states and are part of the second spike of Wave I include Henry McMaster (R-SC), Bill Lee (R-TN), Kay Ivey (R-AL), Tate Reeves (R-MS), Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Mike Parson (R-MO) and Kevin Stitt (R-OK).





On MSNBC yesterday, Republic strategist Steve Schmidt commented on Trump's pandemic leadership:

Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.

Pretty powerful stuff. But we don't have to go to a Republican operative for this kind of brutal analysis of the Orange Menace. In an interview with Michael Brooks a few days ago, Noam Chomsky explained why he see's Señor T as "the worst criminal in human history." Hard to beat that!

Answering a question about former Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, Chomsky first expressed his contempt for the GOP. "Bolsonaro," he said, "fired the heads of the executive divisions, which were looking into his family. His executive statement was that 'Nobody’s going to fuck around with my family,' which is pretty similar to what just happened here. Bolsonaro sees himself as a kind of clone of Trump. Tragedy and farce. Trump is very similar. He just fired all of the inspectors general who were put into place to monitor corruption and malfeasance in executive offices. They were beginning to inquire into this fetid swamp that he’s created in Washington, so he fired them all. And like any tin-pot dictator, he went out of his way to humiliate the senior Republican senator, Charles Grassley, who had spent his career setting this system in implementation. Not a peep from the Republican Party. They’ve disappeared as a party. It’s worse than the old Communist Party. The leader gives an order; we [fall] on our knees.

Brooks then asked him to "explain why what Donald Trump is doing institutionally actually is unique and does matter on its own terms." Chomsky was ready:

This sounds strong, but it’s true: Trump is the worst criminal in history, undeniably. There has never been a figure in political history who was so passionately dedicated to destroying the projects for organized human life on earth in the near future.

That is not an exaggeration. People are focused now on the protests; the pandemic is serious enough that we will emerge from it at terrible cost. The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster in the White House, who has killed tens of thousands of Americans, making this the worst place in the world [for the coronavirus]. We will emerge [from the pandemic, but] we’re not going to emerge from another crime that Trump has committed, the heating of the globe. The worst of it is coming-- we’re not going to emerge from that.

The ice sheets are melting; they’re not going to recover. That leads to exponential increase in global warming. Arctic glaciers, for example, could flood the world. Recent studies indicate that on the present course, in about fifty years, much of the habitable part of the world will be unlivable. You won’t be able to live in parts of South Asia, parts of the Middle East, parts of the United States. We’re approaching the point of 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were about twenty-five feet higher than they are now. And it’s worse than that. The Scripps Oceanographic Institute just came out with a study that estimated that we are coming ominously close to a point [similar to] 3 million years ago, when sea levels were fifty to eighty feet higher than they are today.

All around the world, countries are trying to do something about it. But there is one country which is led by a president who wants to escalate the crisis, to race toward the abyss, to maximize the use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous of them, and to dismantle the regulatory apparatus that limits their impact. There is no crime like this in human history. Nothing. This is a unique individual. And it’s not as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Of course he does. It’s as if he doesn’t care. If he can pour more profits into his pockets and the pockets of his rich constituency tomorrow, who cares if the world disappears in a couple of generations?

As far as the government is concerned, we’re seeing something pretty interesting. Parliamentary democracy has been around for 350 years, starting in England in 1689 with the so-called Glorious Revolution, when sovereignty was transferred from the royalty to the parliament. The beginnings of parliamentary democracy in the United States [came] about a century later. Parliamentary democracy is not just based on laws and constitutions. In fact, the British constitution is maybe a dozen words. It’s based on trust and good faith, the assumption that people will act like human beings.

Take Richard Nixon. Pretty rotten guy, but when the time came that he had to leave office, he left office quietly. Nobody is expecting that with Trump. He doesn’t act like a human being. He’s off somewhere else. He [doesn’t] even make appointments that can be confirmed by the Senate. Why bother? I don’t like somebody, I’ll throw them out. One Republican, Lisa Murkowski, dares to raise a small question about his nobility, [and he] came down on her with a ton of bricks-- I’m going to destroy you.



It’s not fascism. It’s what I said before: tin-pot dictator of some small country where they have coups every couple of years. That’s the mentality.

Congress, the Senate, happens to be in the hands of a soul mate of his, Mitch McConnell-- in many ways the real evil genius of this administration, dedicated to destroying democracy long before Trump. When [Barack] Obama was elected, McConnell said openly to the public, “My main goal is to ensure that Obama can achieve nothing.” Okay. That’s saying, “I want to destroy parliamentary democracy,” which is based, as I said, in good faith and trust in the interchange.

The Senate. the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body, is reduced to passing legislation that will enrich the very rich, empowering the corporate sector, and making judicial appointments to stack the judiciary with young, ultraright, mostly incompetent justices who can ensure for a generation that no matter what the public wants, they’ll be able to block it.

It’s a deep hatred of democracy and fear of democracy. That’s not unusual among the elites; they don’t like democracy for obvious reasons. But this is something special.

That’s on top of the pandemic, on top of the global warming crisis, the crisis of nuclear weapons, which is equally severe. Trump is dismantling the entire arms-control regime, greatly increasing the risk of destruction, virtually inviting enemies to develop weapons to destroy us that we [won’t be able to] stop.

Trump is taking the worst aspects of capitalism, particularly the neoliberal version of capitalism, and amplifying them. Let’s just take the pandemic. Why is there a pandemic? In 2003, after the SARS epidemic, which was a coronavirus, it was well understood by scientists — they were saying, “Another coronavirus, much more serious than this, is very likely. Now here are the steps we have to take to prepare for it.” Somebody has to take the steps. Well, there is a pharmaceutical industry, but extraordinarily wealthy, huge labs can’t do it. You don’t spend money on something that might be important ten years from now-- stopping a future catastrophe is not profitable. That’s a capitalist crisis.

Government has the resources; they have great labs. But then comes something called Ronald Reagan, at the beginning of the neoliberal assault on the population, arguing that government is the problem, not the solution-- meaning we have to take decisions away from government. Government is influenced by people. Now we have to put [decisions] in the hands of unaccountable private institutions which have no influence from the public. In the United States, that’s sometimes called libertarianism. That’s the beginning of the neoliberal assault.

George H. W. Bush established a presidential scientific advisory council board. Obama called it into office, correctly, the first day of his administration and asked them to prepare a pandemic warning reaction system. A couple of weeks later, they came back with a system that was put in place. January 2017, the wrecker comes into office. First days of his administration, [Trump] dismantles the whole system to respond to a pandemic; started defunding the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] (CDC) and every health-related aspect of government, year after year. Eliminated programs of American scientists in China working with Chinese scientists to identify potential coronavirus threats and throws it out. So when [the coronavirus] hit, the United States was uniquely unprepared-- thanks to the wrecker.

And then it got worse. He refused to react to it. Other countries responded to it, some of them very well and very quickly. It’s almost gone, mostly under control. Not in the United States. He didn’t care. For months, US intelligence couldn’t get the White House to say, “There’s a serious crisis.” Finally, according to reports, he noticed that the stock market was declining, and then said, “We have to do something.” What he has done is just chaos.

But a large part of the problem is pre-Trump. Why aren’t the hospitals ready? Well, they run on a business model. That’s neoliberalism. It has to be just-in-time delivery. They don’t want to lose a cent. So we don’t have an extra hospital bed; we have to make sure the CEOs of the private hospitals get millions of dollars a year in compensation. Can’t have an extra bed-- you cut into that. So everything’s parroted above. The nursing homes, which are privately owned, are reduced to minimal functioning, because we can make more money that way, if we’re a private-equity corporation that owns them. Now we can contribute to Trump’s campaign so he can have a photo-op with us, telling us how wonderful we are for destroying the nursing homes, killing all the elderly people.


It goes deep into issues well before Trump, but he is a unique phenomenon-- again, the worst criminal in human history, so his minor crimes are to destroy American democracy and to amplify a pandemic killing over a hundred thousand people. But those are minor crimes by his standards.

Republican Leaders Are Ginning Up The Social Distancing Protests, Not The GOP Grassroots

Noam Chomsky couldn't be more correct: Señor Trumpanzee is culpable in the deaths of thousands of Americans by using the coronavirus pandemic to boost his electoral prospects and line the pockets of big business. And he's not alone. The Republican Party is right there with him.

The memo was specifically for Louisiana, a red state with a Democratic governor, by it outlines how the GOP plans to stir up protests and undermine orders meant to stem the pandemic. I don't know if it applies to other states' Republican parties, but my guess is that it does. The talking points came from GOP operative Jay Connaughton and was addressed to state Senator Sharon Hewitt of Slidell, but has circulated to all Republican legislators in the state.

Last week Lamar White wrote at the Bayou Brief that Governor John Bel Edwards' "orders are in conformance with the guidelines issued by the White House and follow the recommendations of public health experts and medical professionals... Covid-19 has now killed more people in Louisiana than those who perished as a consequence of the Federal Flood after Hurricane Katrina. More than one out of every 1,000 residents of New Orleans have died from the virus, which had been disproportionately affected when the novel Coronavirus was first reported in the state. Since then, the pandemic has spread to all 64 parishes.

The GOP memorandum contains a series of factual distortions about the state’s response and falsely claims that Gov. Edwards’s order was made against the advice of the Trump White House. The White House actually recommended Edwards take the exact approach that he’s now implementing, telling governors to ensure their states have satisfied a set of criteria before ordering a “phased reopening.”

The Trump administration also makes it abundantly clear that plans for a phased reopening are at the “governors’ discretion,” and recommends that any phased reopening-- which could only occur after meeting the initial “gating criteria” listed below-- consider “local circumstances.” As an example, the White House distinguishes between urban areas with severe outbreaks and “rural and suburban areas where outbreaks have not occurred or have been mild.”

...Trump has repeatedly singled out Edwards, a Democrat, for his coordination with his administration, praising the governor’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic on more than one occasion. “In the case of Louisiana, we have a very good governor, John Bel Edwards, though he’s a Democrat,” Trump told Fox News.

Vice President Mike Pence also praised the state’s response under Edwards. “I have to say how proud we are, despite the heartbreaking loss of people in our community and the families who’ve lost loved ones, New Orleans has made great progress, and Louisiana has made great progress by putting the health of their neighbors first.” Pence told WWLTV on Monday.

In a list of talking points outlined in the Louisiana GOP document, legislators are encouraged to argue that they are “disappointed in the Governor’s decision to delay the restart of our economy” (emphasis added), and to share the fact that some cities in Louisiana are closer to Dallas, Jackson, and Houston” than they are to New Orleans, though the memo leaves out the words “New Orleans.”

Already, legislators have lifted passages from the memo- often verbatim- to share on social media. One of the first members to do so was Hewitt herself:

Hewitt also prompted her followers to sign a petition, which is mentioned in the memo to legislators as well, by sharing a tweet from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, announcing the state’s decision to no longer require visitors from Louisiana self-quarantine for 14 days. Abbott’s order created an almost entirely unworkable regime that attempted to force non-commercial traffic arriving from Interstates 10 and 20 into a check-in area (in the case of I-20, the area was located nearly five miles from the state border).

“Texas Governor lifts the quarantine of Louisiana citizens entering his state, but our LA Governor keeps us locked down,” Hewitt declared, misapprehending a “stay at home order” as an order preventing citizens from traveling anywhere. The Slidell lawmaker also failed to appreciate the justification Abbott provided for eliminating the requirement, which had been widely seen as an act of political theater.

“Louisiana has done a good job of corralling the coronavirus and because their increased rate of new coronavirus cases is less than what we have in the state of Texas now, it’s important for these people who either have families who live across the Louisiana border, or they may be living in Louisiana but working in the state of Texas, or they may need to come to the state of Texas for doing business-- whatever the case may be-- it was determined by the doctors and the data that it was fine at this time for people to be able to come into the state of Texas from Louisiana,” Abbott said.

While Abbott announced he would also let Texas’s statewide “stay at home order” lapse on Thursday, his directive is phased approach, and, like Edwards’s order, it follows the guidelines set out by the White House. 200 of 254 of Texas’s counties report no deaths as a result of the virus, compared with only 10 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes.

Although Texas’s population is 6.1 times larger, Louisiana has reported more than three times the number of Covid-19 fatalities than the Lone Star State.

As of yesterday Louisiana was reporting 6,844 cases per million and 496 deaths per million. Texas is reporting 1,376 cases per million and 39 deaths per million. The Louisiana Republicans are counting on no one bothering to look up the numbers.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), a medical doctor and far right extremist, "is," wrote Melanie Zanona for Politico, "fed up with being locked down. He wants the freedom to get his nails done, even if it means steepening the curve and killing more people. Maryland is having one of the worst pandemic experiences in the country. From Sunday to Monday there were 786 more cases bringing the total to 33,373, and 39 more deaths, bringing that total to 1,683. Maryland's cases per million: 5,520, the 8th worst in the country, even though Maryland is just the 19th most populous state!

Harris fumed at a teletownhall that "They promised 2 million dead at the beginning of this... The media has a vested interest in making things sound worse so that you tune in the next day." A million was predicted if no precautions-- like social distancing-- were taken. And that's exactly what crackpots like Harris want to try now. He screamed and yelled-- without wearing a mask-- at a reopen America protest. And he's not the only one. Zanona wrote that "A growing list of House hard-liners say they have reached their breaking point with the stay-at-home orders, which flipped a switch on the once-booming economy in a bid to limit the spread of coronavirus.

In recent weeks, Republicans have been angrily lashing out at the media, local and state officials and House Democratic leadership over the continued shutdown-- and are now actively encouraging the fired-up protesters swarming state capitols across the country.

“It’s ludicrous, it’s arbitrary and it’s absolutely unnecessary,” said Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), whose state has been one of the earliest to lift coronavirus restrictions. “In some cases, there’s no evidence whatsoever that they eliminate the spread of Covid-19. It’s just abusive, dictatorial, tyrannical-type leadership.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is also cheering on the protests.

"It's organic, it's nonpartisan, and it's basically an effort to send a message to government,” he said. “It's clear people across all spectrums are feeling the pain of these government actions."

The push among GOP lawmakers to end isolation orders comes as activist groups look to mobilize the conservative grassroots just as they fueled the tea party movement a decade ago. The move is intended not only to give the economy a boost but also potentially build momentum on the right ahead of the November elections.

“Time will tell if this will turn into a tea party-type movement,” Hice said of the growing social unrest. “Part of me is hopeful this will begin a movement of Americans taking a stand for constitutional liberties that have been eroding for quite some time, but rapidly eroding through this pandemic.”

Yet for all the heated protests taking place-- and as several states begin to wind down restrictions-- the desire to immediately end the lockdowns remains a minority opinion. According to new polling, most Americans do not feel comfortable with their states reopening salons, gyms, movie theaters and other businesses.

That might explain why some Republicans have taken a more measured approach to the debate, acknowledging it’s difficult to strike a balance between public health concerns and the need to get the economy humming again. And even if the economy is technically reopened, it’s not clear there will be many customers if fear of the virus is widespread.

"No matter what decision you make, there's going to be people second-guessing it,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is up for reelection this fall. “You need to do it gradually and you need to be careful... We all know how to manage risks in our own life-- that's if we have good information and know how to do that. But right now people are being inundated.”

President Donald Trump-- who has also encouraged protesters with tweets to "liberate" Democratic-run states-- recently tapped a bipartisan congressional task force to explore ways to get the nation back to work. It's a sign the White House wants some bipartisan buy-in for reopening the economy, one of the most consequential decisions that will be made during the pandemic.

Coronavirus casualties are still climbing, with over 80,000 Americans dead from the virus thus far. Republicans who have been clamoring to reopen the country have faced accusations from Democrats that they care more about the economy than people’s lives.

Many GOP lawmakers, however, counter that continuing the lockdown carries its own set of health risks, pointing to the increase in suicides and routine health exams getting pushed to the back burner.

“We need to get back to our way of life, because there are serious mental health issues,” said House GOP Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). “You’re seeing suicides on the rise.”

Others have given more blunt assessments. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN) told a local radio station last month that the health risks are the "lesser of two evils” compared with the economic damage from the virus.

Republicans have also begun to decry the stay-at-home orders as a violation of constitutional rights-- a call to arms that plays directly to the right’s fears about government overreach.

“Power has gone to their heads, and they believe government is the answer to everything,” said GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona, who accused Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot of going “ballistic” with her threats to jail people who violate social distancing orders.

Meanwhile, Hice and Biggs wrote a letter to Trump over Easter weekend voicing concern that virus-related restrictions on public gatherings are infringing on Americans’ religious freedoms. They've complained that in some places, you can buy alcohol and a lottery ticket but can't attend your place of worship.

“Just because we have a pandemic does not mean our constitutional rights evaporate or disappear,” Hice said. “I believe there’s a tremendous abuse of civil liberties in certain cases across the country, and I’m hopeful some of these people will be held accountable.”

Attorney General William Barr has said the Department of Justice is monitoring the stay-at-home orders to ensure they don’t violate civil liberties, and he didn’t rule out stepping in if states go too far.

Republicans have also slammed various reports of law enforcement aggressively going after people and businesses who violate the rules.

“I don’t think [the police] should be going after them at all... It’s overkill,” Biggs said. “That’s where you begin saying, have we crossed the line? In some states, have we become martial law?”

The debate over reopening the country is also playing out in the Capitol. The Senate returned to D.C. last week, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has delayed the House’s return, citing recommendations from the Capitol physician.

Republicans hammered Pelosi for keeping lawmakers away from Washington in the middle of a crisis that requires congressional action. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is seeking signatures for a letter calling on the GOP to come back to D.C. no matter what this week and blaming the high infection and death rates in New York on "poor leadership at the state level."

“This is why we, as Republicans, must demonstrate leadership for the country by safely and responsibly coming back to work in Washington in order to minimize an impending economic calamity which could ultimately cost lives and dramatically increase misery across the United States,” the letter states, according to a draft copy obtained by Politico.

Some lawmakers have defiantly chosen not to wear masks in the Capitol. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), however, vigorously defended his decision not to wear a facial covering, maintaining that he is immune to the virus because he already contracted it in March while also denouncing the “Nanny State.”

“Modern medicine shows us that immunity is based on having antibodies,” Paul tweeted. “Why are fake news media and [petty] tyrants denying medical science? They so want to have everyone submit to busybody rules and regulations that they can’t stand it that someone might be immune and therefore immune to their people controls.”

Last week, the YouGov poll for The Economist asked if voters thought stay-at-home orders are an infringement of constitutional rights. 66% said no and just 19% said yes. But when you break that down by party, it looks very different. 85% of Democrats and 64% of independents say stay-at-home orders do not infringe on constitutional rights, while just 46% of Republicans agree with them that it isn't. Who thinks it is an infringement? 6% of Democrats, 19% of independents and 35% of Republicans. That's how out of step with the mainstream Republicans are!

The effectiveness of social distancing measures in limiting the spread of COVID-19 is agreed on by most of the population-- 90% of Democrats, 83% of independents and even 79% of Republicans. It is their leaders and a small radical contingent of extremists stirring up these protests. The answer to this question was important: "Many U.S. states have already announced plans to reopen large sectors of their economy. Do you believe it is likely or unlikely that this will result in an increase in COVID-19 cases ?" Overall 75% of voters think reopening will increase cases-- 87% of Democrats, 74% of independents and 61% of Republicans. 29% of Republicans disagree; they're going to be in for a big shock.

Another poll, this one for the Associated Press, reported that "55% of Americans disapprove of the protests that have popped up in some states as some Americans begin chafing at public health measures that have decimated the global economy. Thirty-one percent approve of the demonstrations."

Audrey Denney is the progressive Democrat running in pretty red terrain in a seat help by GOP radical Doug LaMalfa in northeast California. Yesterday she told us that "While Congressman LaMalfa believes we should disregard CDC reopening guidelines and that we should fully fling open our communities yesterday without any regard to public safety, I am grateful for the science and data based plan put forward by the state of California. No matter how worn down we are by the last two months, we must use data acquired from testing, contact tracing and tracking to establish how quickly or how slowly our communities and economies are able lessen our current stay at home guidelines. The only path forward to achieve our collective wellbeing is through facts, not emotions."

Chris Armitage is also running for a seat occupied by a Trump enabler, his in eastern Washington and the incumbent is shameless Cathy McMorris Rodgers. "Watching my opponent, who claims to be 'Pro-Life,'" he told us last night, "act as if human life doesn't matter, is unsurprising. This savage hypocrisy puts their dishonesty in full view and will cost them votes."

Lisa Ring's opponent is Buddy Carter in Georgia's coastal region, another one who has abdicated any pretense of independence to support whatever insane scheme Trump has cooked up. "Instead of advocating legislation assisting folks in staying home until the virus has waned and we have the resources to deal with it as responsible leaders should, Rep. Buddy Carter has joined his GOP colleagues in pushing to open everything immediately. In his weekly email, Carter highlighted expanded testing and stated, 'We must get back to work and fully reopen our economy, and testing will be critical to get us there.' I wonder if Carter and his donors in the pharmaceutical industry are looking for the many ways they will profit from a pandemic that has devastated his constituents and the rest of the country."

Kathy Ellis has a tough race in a deep red district. But that doesn't prevent her from talking with the people there in southeast Missouri about how to make their lives better. "The decision by Republican leadership to sacrifice lives in an effort to line their own pockets is shameful. Since the beginning of this crisis, my opponent Rep. Jason Smith, has applauded Republican leadership, claiming that we must 're-open' our state immediately because  'there’s a lot of people that will make more money sitting at home on unemployment than if they’re at their job.' Seriously. Look, nothing about this situation is ideal, and our Republican leadership has made the entire situation much, much worse. But, our priority has to be the health and safety (and lives) of our neighbors, which is why I strongly oppose 're-opening' our country. This feeling is echoed by the large majority of Americans, and folks like Smith and other Republican leaders should be ashamed of themselves for using political ploys and American lives to build campaign support."

Texas progressive Julie Oliver is also taking on a Trump clone, Roger Williams. She told us that "The leadership at the Federal and State levels has been anything but leadership. State leaders in Texas continue to weaponize the ignorance surrounding Coronavirus, and in doing so, jeopardize the lives of thousands of Texans, including those serving on the front lines. And it's so unnecessary. There were opportunities to thoughtfully navigate this pandemic to not only save lives but to save the economy, but those opportunities were squandered by Republicans who have an insatiable desire to rile up their base."

Appreciating Bernie In Our Era Of Hobson’s Choices

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

One thing we know for certain about what weighed on Bernie’s decision to suspend his campaign is that there are things we do not know for certain. Before and after the October 1st medical adventure his heart embarked on, I wrote he’d be ticking like a Timex and coming from behind like Seabiscuit, both prediction and prayer. I acknowledge my disappointment but refrain from judgment on what I believe to be a clean call. Bernie's not infallible, but I believe he makes clean calls. That belief is why so many support him.

The Covid19 virus was a game-changer that undermined Bernie’s campaign strengths and his chances of overcoming the battery of establishment cannons arrayed against him, the pressure of which would buckle most people half his age. And unlike Perez and Biden, whatever the latest tune they whistle, Bernie wouldn’t have people risking lives in primaries in a game of Covid19 Russian roulette. Biden has a minefield of banana peels before him, but waiting for him to slip from the grasp of his army of handlers and do a face-plant is not a political strategy that inspires. It’s understandable that someone with Bernie’s integrity would focus instead on his ideals and proposals, which to anyone not in a coma or a special interest pocket make more sense with each passing day.

Biden Blunders by Nancy Ohanian

As Naomi Klein has observed, “...during times of crisis, people also are risk-averse. I think the timing of this was such, with the inability to continue campaigning in person, with people just reaching for something that looked and felt safe, I don’t think it was possible to translate that shift in openness to these kinds of policies with a huge electoral swing from Biden towards Bernie, although I was certainly hoping for it up until Bernie’s announcement last night. But while hoping for it, I was keenly aware that the polls were not reflecting it, that it wasn’t happening and that people are not up for that kind of political seesaw in this moment of tumult."

There’ve been logical, solid analyses, as by the anchors of the online political show Rising, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, that the Democratic establishment will eventually blow off anyone not brandishing a ball bat with nails in it, that whatever promises Bernie might elicit from making nice, they’ll be written in sand washed away by the high tide of big donors. And no matter what Bernie says or does, he will be blamed again if Trump wins, as CNN is already about the business of. As in 2016, how dare Bernie practice democracy and provide the country with a choice and an awareness of issues best left concealed from view.

Some might despair that with Bernie stepping back, the progressive movement has lost its lynchpin. Bernie countered that nicely with accomplishments noted in his statement that he was suspending his campaign, (not cremating it, as many in the media have implied), while staying on the ballot to hold and earn delegates to influence the party. Progressive candidates inspired by Bernie certainly aren’t fading away. Charles Booker, running against Mitch McConnell, stated “…make no mistake: our fight for Medicare for All, racial justice, a Green New Deal, and an economy that works for all of us is nowhere close to over.” Mark Gamba, the mayor Milwaukee, Oregon, running against incumbent Blue Dog, Kuirt Schrader, reaffirmed his goals of changing the healthcare system, boldly addressing climate change and holding corporate interests accountable for damage they cause. The grassroots movements supporting such candidates aren’t fading away either.

Here’s Biden’s statement on Bernie stepping out of the race, pre-canned by strategists for sure, but I’d have to say it’s not a bad statement from the point of view of conning people to fill in the blanks with whatever they hope Joe is saying about health care, etc.... Trump was masterful at letting people hear what they wanted. If he’s not too addled, he may be again. But maybe Joe can limp along for awhile on a lack of specificity and a media tossing him softballs, until Biden figures out the peril of not making solid, substantive commitments and standing by them.

Maybe Biden can ride to victory atop a platform of low expectations other than not being Trump. But if Biden wins with wishy-washy, with simply not being Trump, he’ll have nothing resembling a mandate, only a load of disappointed people when he turns out to be Mr. Cellophane, moved about with puppet strings by big donors to whom Bernie, with his small donor cornucopia, must have looked like one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables. Spurning the money of big donors and owing them nothing made Bernie a dangerous man.

Howie has repeatedly contrasted Biden’s weaknesses and Bernie’s strengths, so I’ll just offer a couple glimpses that glare out.

Recently the Biden camp conferred with Eric Holder about Biden's campaign and his vice-presidential pick. Holder who ushered, covertly from colleagues who’d have been aghast, the pardon of finance criminal fugitive Marc Rich for Bill Clinton’s signature on Clinton's last day in office, after which Rich’s ex-wife donated huge sums to the Clinton library. Does anyone doubt that had that happened a year earlier Clinton would have been impeached, and properly so? Holder, who prosecuted whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, a top counterintelligence agent who exposed CIA torture, just to ruin him and to send a message to others, putting this hero in prison, initially with an effort to throw away the key. Holder, who let bankers off the legal hook laying the groundwork for his law firm, and therefore Holder, to reap fortunes servicing those banks. Read what Holder did to bank whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld on behalf of foreign banks hiding Americans’ money. That’s the short list.

Holder was Wall Street’s early Manchurian candidate for President. He fizzled like a wet fuse, but he's been waiting in the wings if opportunity knocks, raising his profile with an anti-gerrymandering organization that’s run like a campaign. If Biden hadn’t already committed to a female vice-president, I’d bet Holder would pull a Cheney and recommend himself. He’ll certainly be influential in a Biden administration, again looking out for protecting his client bankers from facing serious consequences for misdeeds and greedy maneuvers that are again setting Americans-- and the world-- up for another fall.

American Dream Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

My point is that no one had to worry about Bernie consulting with Eric Holder. Instead Bernie would be throwing a wrench in the revolving door to keep Holder’s ilk out of his administration. Bernie would never have floated the idea of Jamie Dimon as a swell potential member of an administration, perhaps Secretary of the Treasury, as Biden’s camp did. Want some intriguing reading? Read a bit on Dimon here, and on JPMorganChase here, courtesy of Wall Street on Parade. I’m confident that after the election, when the revolving door starts spinning, Bernie will be shouting the dangers loud and clear, channeling public anger that Biden would be a fool not to pay attention to.

By the way, Wall Street called the shots on many of President Obama’s picks, including Holder for Attorney General and Hillary for Secretary of State. That insight came courtesy of WikiLeaks, so one can sense the establishment fervor to destroy Assange. And Wall Street on Parade reports that in the 2020 presidential primaries one Wall Street firm was an instrumental supporter of five different Democratic candidates. Should that leave us wondering at the impressive orchestration of the Super Tuesday endorsements, that maybe some candidates, beyond shooting for Veep or major posts, were being jockeyed to derail progressives and elevate Biden?

Establishment vs Bernie by Nancy Ohanian

Both of Bernie’s presidential campaigns laid bare the hapless state of much of mainstream, corporate media. Take the Washington Post. Does anyone think Jeff Bezos bought that paper because, like Citizen Kane, he thought it might be fun to run a newspaper? The man has a Washington agenda. The Bezos Brigaiders on the editorial pages and covering the campaign are well aware of how many newspapers have hit the skids, with major staff layoffs that leave many journalists scrambling to find public relations work. They don’t have to be geniuses to figure out what the world’s richest man doesn’t like. Bezos doesn’t like antitrust enforcement and close scrutiny and regulation of monopolies. He doesn’t care much for paying taxes. He doesn’t like to be embarrassed and pushed by potential legislation that would penalize him if he doesn’t raise wages and improve working conditions for expendable workers toiling in warehouses and grocery stores and delivering his goods. He doesn’t like unions. So none of the Bezos Brigaiders needs to be told he doesn’t like Bernie Sanders, whose major supporters include Amazon workers and who throws a spotlight on that company's excesses. And so these members of the press decided squashing Bernie is worth shredding their journalistic credibility, continuing a pattern Thomas Frank wonderfully described in 2016 in a Harper’s magazine article, Swat Team.

The New York Times opinion page and campaign coverage has been as relentless whacking Bernie. One can only marvel at how the Gray Lady has become so in the tank for the Wall Street establishment it still won’t acknowledge the folly of Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act, that had separated commercial and investment banking since FDR, becoming a major cause of the 2008 economic debacle. Both Clinton and Rubin were richly rewarded for that, from speaking fees and foundation contributions for Clinton to a job for Rubin with stunning compensation. In Washington, quid pro quo often takes its time, but it gets there.

Did it ever look to you like a contest between those two papers to find the most deranged and angry looking images they could of Bernie? Propaganda 101.

We’ve been treated to the comic spectacle of Comcast media players like Chuck Todd, putting their Orwellian knives into Bernie and his health care proposals between commercials for health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And a number of NPR reporters and analysts behaved as if they’re auditioning for Comcast, putting words in interviewee’s mouths and cutting them short if what they said wasn’t supporting the narrative. They all ought get plaques engraved with “But How Will You Pay For It?” Particularly if the big banks start tumbling economic dominoes that most media has routinely ignored.

So we can thank Bernie for making the media fix so apparent that many of us now seek out alternative media voices, voices that represent a much better use of one’s time.

Freedom of the Press by Nancy Ohanian

Consider corporate media's willingness to avert its gaze from a foreign power meddling American elections. I’m not speaking of Russia, the influence of which on the 2016 election I think greatly over-played, to the detriment of focus on critical issues and on what the Trump grifter class is up to. Whatever Russia did I doubt it had much impact next to the tabloids in the grocery store checkout line, let alone our home-grown dark money networks of the Kochs, Mercers and others from the oligarch rogues gallery. More attention should have been paid to the influence of foreign companies' American subsidiaries, including banks. No, I’m speaking of Israel, whose confederates and advocates in the US spent fortunes running ads attacking Bernie in the primaries, supporting the narrative of Bernie being unelectable. Just imagine if it had been Russia, how quickly those covertly undermining our democracy on a behalf of a foreign power would earn the accusation of betraying our country. Just because Bernie called for decency and morality in the treatment of Palestinians systematically oppressed in every way imaginable. That oppression was often done with American indifference or complicity, which Bernie was perceived as a threat to.

Predictably, media was then complicit with ludicrous and flimsy intelligence claims-- intelligence loosely defined-- that Bernie topped Russia’s wish list.

Ironically, Bernie went along a bit with the Russia narrative, something for which he’s been criticized. I’ve no idea how much he really bought into that party orthodoxy. Some purists won’t like what I’m about to say. Things are relative, and running a presidential campaign isn’t the same as seeking sainthood. Look how fast media stood Bernie before a firing squad for giving a harmless nod to educational and medical accomplishments in Cuba, painting him as a fellow traveler to discredit him, particularly in Florida.

On balance, Bernie has given it to us straight more than any other candidate. His consistent drumbeat has changed the conversation. On healthcare, 55% of voters now support single payer health care, only 35% oppose it. Major programs to counter climate change and develop related jobs are now a top priority of many, particularly younger voters. Bernie provided an articulation of the growing wealth gap that helped people better understand what they already sensed going on around them, and the campaign finance fix behind much of it. He provided hope that there was a way to do something about it. Where would the conversation be were it not for Bernie?

While I like and respect some of those who’ve been critical of Bernie over dis and dat, no offense to them but I think Noam Chomsky is better than most in assessing the immediacy of the big picture. Here’s some of his comments on Bernie ending his presidential run.

Chomsky on Democracy Now:

"If Trump is reelected, it’s a indescribable disaster. It means that the policies of the past four years, which have been extremely destructive to the American population, to the world, will be continued and probably accelerated. What this is going to mean for health is bad enough...It will get worse. What this means for the environment or the threat of nuclear war, which no one is talking about but is extremely serious, is indescribable.

Suppose Biden is elected. I would anticipate it would be essentially a continuation of Obama-- nothing very great, but at least not totally destructive, and opportunities for an organized public to change what is being done, to impose pressures.”

“It’s common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed. I think that’s a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion. Issues that were unthinkable a couple years ago are now right in the middle of attention.

The worst crime he committed, in the eyes of the establishment, is not the policy he’s proposing; it’s the fact that he was able to inspire popular movements, which had already been developing-- Occupy, Black Lives Matter, many others-- and turn them into an activist movement, which doesn’t just show up every couple years to push a leader and then go home, but applies constant pressure, constant activism and so on. That could affect a Biden administration.”

In the end, we should appreciate Bernie for the enemies he’s chosen, domestic and foreign. And we should appreciate him for the voice he’ll provide as interesting times compound.

Who's More Senile, Trump Or Biden?

Massachusetts Democrats were asked to for one-word descriptions of each presidential candidate. That's Biden's above. Aside from Bloomberg's it's the only one that is predominantly negative. "Old," "creepy," "boring," "tired" and especially "senile" are pretty bad indications. Politico seems to be describing the "senile" aspect in a post from Spartanburg, South Carolina they ran yesterday. Biden, basically, sounded like my grandmother before she passed away. When he was asked about women’s empowerment and reproductive rights, "he rambled for 19 minutes, and wound up discussing how unfair it is for women’s outfits to be discussed in rape cases-- a topic that wasn’t implied in the question."

“I’m going to make a controversial statement,” Biden acknowledged, before diving in. “If someone in this room got up, took off all her clothes and walked out the door, no man has a right to touch her. Zero.”

The crowd politely applauded.

The former vice president kept going: “She can be arrested for indecent exposure!”

No applause followed. Some in the crowd wore puzzled expressions when Biden then mentioned how police or even parents of rape victims face questions about their clothing.

“Did you have underwear on? Were you wearing a bra? How short was your skirt? What did you say?” Biden said in a mock colloquy of a rape victim being questioned. He also mentioned a case of a woman who refused to date a man, resulting in an attack from “two goons [who] slashed her face with razors.”

This is Joe Biden, unplugged on the campaign trail: edgy, meandering, graphic, oddball-- all attributes that are features, not bugs, of his presidential campaign.

His undisciplined and unorthodox speaking style failed to serve him well in the first three early voting states where he struggled to catch fire. He frequently left audiences bored or confused, or committed gaffes that sandbagged his campaign for days.

But here in South Carolina, Biden has had more success as voters have focused on other aspects of his candidacy-- like his loyalty to former President Barack Obama or his empathy.

Politico also reported that Biden's moribund campaign got a last minute infusion of cash from a few fat cats trying to stop Bernie. $2.5 million went into his slimy Unite The Country superPAC, although Biden has basically abandoned reaching out to everyone but rich donors petrified their taxess will go up when Bernie is president, and the African-Americans who don't already think Obama endorsed Bloomberg.

The Pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, which spent $4.5 million in Iowa, spent only $1.3 million on TV ads in the weeks that followed in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, according to Advertising Analytics. And after Biden’s poor performance in the Iowa caucuses, some of the former vice president’s donors privately weighed helping one of his rivals-- often Mike Bloomberg, whose campaign has courted donor support even though the billionaire former New York City mayor is self-funding his campaign.

Biden’s campaign was the last major campaign to reserve advertising in Super Tuesday states, and those reservations were only a “low six-figure” digital ad buy made by the campaign this Wednesday.

...The day after Super Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both Biden supporters, will be among the hosts of a Los Angeles fundraiser for Biden held by former Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing.

I hope some of these people decide to pay attention to Noah Chomsky, author and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT... but I'm guessing they don't because if they did they wouldn't be supporting Biden in the first place. Last November, during an interview with C.J. Polychroniou for TruthOut, Chomsky noted that "The dark forces were gathering long before Trump appeared to mobilize them. It’s worth recalling that in previous Republican primaries, candidates that emerged from the base-- Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum-- were intolerable to the conservative establishment and were crushed. In 2016, those efforts failed. None of this is too surprising. In recent years, the Republican Party has dedicated itself [with] such fervor to its constituency of wealth and private power that a voting base had to be mobilized on grounds unrelated to its primary policy objectives-- with many dark forces. And it’s also worth recalling that there are parallels elsewhere, notably in Europe, with the collapse of centrist parties. Much of what has been happening can be traced to the neoliberal assault on the general population launched a generation ago, leaving in its wake quite understandable anger, frustration and search for scapegoats-- terrain that can readily be plowed by demagogues and con artists of the Trump variety."

TruthOut: "The power brokers in the Democratic Party are out to kill the left wing, and this time includes not only Bernie Sanders but also Elizabeth Warren. If that happens, how will it impact Trump’s chances of getting re-elected?"

Chomsky: "The donor class is clearly perturbed by Warren’s critique of wealth and corporate power, and even more so by Sanders, who committed a major crime: inspiring a popular movement that doesn’t just show up every four years to push a button and then leave matters to their betters, but continues its activism and the engagement in public affairs that is none of their business, according to long-standing democratic theory. The intense hatred of [Labour Party leader Jeremy] Corbyn in England, I think, has a similar basis. These have been concerns of the self-described “men of best quality” since the first modern democratic revolution in 17th-century England, and they haven’t abated.

"The consequences are hard to predict. If the donor class succeeds in nominating a centrist candidate, progressive activist forces might be disillusioned and reluctant to do the work on the ground that will be needed to prevent the tragedy-- repeat, tragedy-- of four more years of Trumpism. If a progressive candidate does gain the nomination, centrist power and wealth may back away, again opening the path to tragedy. It will be a fateful year. It will be even more important than usual to remain level-headed and to think through with care the consequences of action, and inaction."