Biden Can't Win; He Can Only Count On Trump Losing, Which Appears Likely

My friend Dorothy Reik was recently elected to the L.A. County Democratic Party Central Committee. She received more votes than anyone else who has ever run for that position. Ever! Yesterday, Reik wrote to subscribers of her influential daily update list that "Bernie was on Chris Hayes last night and Velshi this morning. He also hosts town halls on line. Where is Biden??? The sad truth is that the Democratic establishment was not worried that Bernie would lose-- their biggest fear was that he would WIN!"

The Democratic Party is operating on a theory that anyone can beat Trump because no matter how much he spends and no matter what tactics he uses, the election will be a referendum on him and a pile of dogshit will beat him. So the Democratic establishment has chosen a pile of dogshit to run-- and if the pile of dogshit becomes too untenable, they have several more piles in the wings and ready to go. Anyone but Bernie (or Elizabeth).

Even senior citizens-- the mainstay, along with the evangelicals, of the Republican coalition-- are abandoning Trump because of his horrific response to the pandemic. "For years," wrote a NY Times team pf reporters, "Republicans and Mr. Trump have relied on older Americans, the United States’ largest voting bloc, to offset Democrats’ advantage with younger voters. But seniors are also the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, and the Trump campaign’s internal polls show his support among voters over age 65 softening to a concerning degree, people familiar with the numbers said. A recent Morning Consult poll found that Mr. Trump’s approval rating on the handling of the coronavirus was lower with seniors than with any other group other than young voters." In several polls ole Status Quo Joe holds a 10-point advantage among voters who are 65 and older. Meanwhile, Señor Trumpanzee has basically moved on from anything but pretending to focus on controlling the pandemic to pushing an "agenda to restore the country to a place that will lift his campaign," no matter how many (old) people die in the process.

This week the U.S. will clock in with a million and a half infections and come close to the 100,000 deaths mark, about a quarter of whom are residents of nursing homes.

Trump is shedding supporters from elderly voters but Biden isn't exactly setting the younger electorate on fire with enthusiasm. Reporting for NBC News on the results of a focus group by Global Strategy Group on behalf of NextGen America, Sahil Kapur wrote last week that Biden is in no danger of losing young voters to Trump. "But he faces a lack of enthusiasm among Millennials and Gen Z voters with the potential to decide his fate if they stay home or vote for a third-party candidate. Many of these voters preferred Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and perceive Biden as a blank slate. They aren’t sure that he’s a change agent or that his policies match the scale of their problems. Some worry about his age and fitness. Most seem open to supporting Biden to stop Trump but need to hear more from him... But the election is six months away and if the new focus groups are any indication, Biden is still ill-defined for many young voters. 'Biden is unknown,' the Global Strategy Group study concluded. 'He became the nominee in the middle of the coronavirus crisis. Like many other voters, these ones are still getting to know Joe.'"

On Friday, Billboard reported that so far musicians who backed Bernie are sitting out the Biden campaign. Bernie's high-profile musician supporters who actively campaigned for him included Ariana Grande, Jack White, Neil Young, Cardi B, the Strokes, Halsey, Snoop Dogg, Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Public Enemy, Roger Waters, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Sonic Youth, Norah Jones, Jello Biafra, Pussy Riot, the Wonder Years, Sacred Reich, Ani DiFranco, Michael Stipe, Ozomatli, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Billy Bragg, and Killer Mike. These artists and their fans aren't Democrats. As far as their politics go, they are looking for agents of change-- like Bernie-- not partisan hacks-- like Biden. Billboard reached out to nearly 20 high-profile Sanders backers in the music world asking to talk about whether they'd shift support to Biden and received quick declines or no response.

Generally speaking, artists lean progressive, and many say they can't stomach the thought of a centrist, especially one with #MeToo issues, in the Oval Office. Strange Ranger, a Philadelphia indie-rock band, released a 20-track, multi-artist compilation to raise money for Sanders' campaign in January and plan a follow-up, but will change the beneficiary to the social-justice group Groundswell Fund rather than the presumptive Democratic nominee. Drummer Nathan Tucker and singer Isaac Eiger don't plan to campaign or fundraise for Biden and will support progressive down-ballot candidates instead. "I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Biden, but I'm not inspired by Joe Biden," Eiger says. "I don't know who is."

"People are always saying to pick the lesser of two evils, or whatever, but it's pretty disappointing to have to choose evil at all," adds Linnea Siggelkow, the Canadian pop singer and Sanders supporter who goes by Ellis. "So I have my hands up at this point."

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders for the presidential nomination, artists handled these conflicts in different ways. Sanders backer Miley Cyrus became an enthusiastic Clinton supporter, while Killer Mike said supporting Trump or Clinton came down to "voting for the same thing." Cardi B took the Cyrus road after Sanders dropped out this year: “I’m just gonna go with Joe Biden because I cannot see the next step of America being ran by number 45,” she said.

"It's just a no-brainer," adds Melissa Etheridge, who backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren but appeared at a virtual fundraiser for Biden in April. "We can bring on change. It'll just be a little slower with Biden, but at least it will be leadership, for heaven's sakes." Actor-singer Billy Porter is more blunt: "Biden is my candidate because there is no other candidate, period," he says. "We must play the game we're in, and the game we're in is there's a monster in the White House who needs to get out and every one of his cronies needs to get out. Period. Y'all took your toys and went home when Bernie wasn't the candidate last time and that's why we lost. Line up and fix it!"

Complicating artists' 2020 political plans, whether they support Biden or down-ballot candidates or causes, is an inability to hold large public rallies due to COVID-19 lockdowns. It's unlikely, for example, that Bruce Springsteen will draw 11th-hour supporters in Pennsylvania or Beyoncé and Jay-Z will fill stadiums in Ohio in November. How will they adapt? By moving online, of course.

..."Online efforts are extremely scalable," says Carolyn DeWitt, president of Rock the Vote, which is known for its festival voter-registration efforts but has pivoted to lower-overhead virtual organizing over the years. "Setting up a table at a concert, you are bound to get a handful of individuals to register to vote. Online, you can use influencers to reach millions."

That's not to say voter registration is pandemic-proof. When concerts shut down March 12, PLUS1, which supports nonprofits and social-justice groups and focuses in part on voter registration, lost nearly $2 million in 1.7 million of canceled ticket sales; the group quickly launched a COVID-19 relief fund that has raised $250,000 for artists, venues and other music entities. "Financially, right now, we haven't reserved any of that for our partner organizations that do voter registration," says Marika Shaw, the group's founder and CEO. "And it sucks."

But even without Sanders in the race and large rallies questionable for the rest of this year, artist-focused political groups remain confident they can boost voter education through online efforts. "There's a part of me that's skeptical, but the other half is, 'Instead of being at this show and having to text this number with a beer in your hand, you'll go to this website and fill in this form,'" adds Kyle Frenette, former manager of Sanders supporter Bon Iver, who founded a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote group called 46 for 46. "The results could be surprising. People are at home and looking for things to watch. It's not limited to that time and place."

Recently former Onion editor, Joe Garden, put together a piece for Vice: Area Man Regrets Helping Turn Joe Biden Into a Meme "If you’ve ever thought of Joe Biden as a clueless but lovable clod, a well-meaning klutz who is predictable, friendly, and ultimately electable," wrote Garden, "I am in small part responsible for that image. And I’m sorry. I worked at The Onion for 19 years as a writer and features editor. By the time I left in 2012, the publication had developed its take on Vice President Biden: 'creepy but harmless,' with the emphasis on 'harmless.' We lampooned him as an uncle you’d shake your head at but not think twice about-- the sort of guy who’d wink and say, 'Don’t let your meat loaf!' as a farewell. For many people, the image of Biden that most readily springs to mind is the one of Diamond Joe, shirtless and grinning, washing his Trans Am in the White House driveway."

Garden thought of Biden as "little more than a political necessity: the older, more conservative white guy who softened Barack Obama’s image in regions where the prospect of a black president was too radical. A deeper dive on Biden never felt necessary." He's changed his mind and wrote that he now realizes "how badly we screwed up. Instead of viciously skewering a public figure who deserved scrutiny, we let him off easy. The joke was funny, but it didn’t hit hard enough."

I’ve since changed my mind. Today, Biden is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, despite women calling him out for touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable at public events, and despite objections from the left wing of the party. He has said he has “no empathy” for the problems millennials are experiencing and claimed that Republicans will embrace bipartisanship after Trump is defeated.

...To be clear, Biden won’t wind up in the same layer of hell as Trump, and I don’t believe The Onion’s Biden is solely responsible for this early popularity of real-life Biden. We were just one small link in a chain of institutions that didn’t scrutinize Biden closely enough. I wish we had looked more at his actual career in politics-- which includes opposition to busing as a way to integrate schools and support for predatory financial institutions-- and tried to really puncture him, rather than just turning him into a clown. We helped make him more likable by inventing a version of Biden that never existed.

I still think those Onion articles are funny. The Onion’s approach to covering public figures was to establish consistent, world-building takes that rewarded the reader, and our Biden was an endlessly refillable character with good visuals, one that made us laugh. It still makes me laugh.

But I’m afraid it didn’t go deep enough. His aforementioned handsiness may not be ultimately disqualifying, but his failure to honestly understand why it would be upsetting (he’s joked about it in public) certainly should be. And his insistence that we can rectify our current political discord with some good old-fashioned bipartisan dealmaking seems hopelessly out of touch and ignores all the times Democrats reached their hands across the aisle, only to be met with open flame from the right.

Satire isn’t dead, and it shouldn’t be cast aside. It will always have a place in the social order, and that is to tell the truth by constructing a fiction, to amplify society’s negative traits to a comical extent so you can see the ugliness that’s always been there.

On that score, The Onion’s Biden stories didn’t measure up. We knew through inside sources that at the time people in the White House loved those pieces, and that should have been a red flag. As a guideline, if the people you’re satirizing aren’t mad, then you should dig deeper. I hope that my alma mater, and everyone else in comedy, follows this rule now that Diamond Joe is back.

ClimateBrad observed yesterday that the Biden campaign likes the approach The Onion took on their pile of dogshit so much, that they're using that version to try to win over the electorate! Michael Scherer and Sean Sullivan wrote that "While the Trump campaign online has embraced a macho and combative approach-- 'This account punches back 10x harder,' runs the motto of one campaign Twitter account-- the Biden team has been seeking to develop a more uplifting identity online, embracing the candidate's life story and making light of his love of ice cream and aviator sunglasses. 'Trump's angles on social media are always dark, and they are always mean-spirited,' said Ben Cobley, a Biden digital organizer. He said Biden wanted to build a community around the more positive side of social media, populated by inspiring memes and cat videos. 'We want to lean into that side of the Internet because that side also plays very well.'" They might want to try to figure out why Democratic enthusiasm for their candidate is lagging so badly.

Watch Trump's Reelection Campaign Circle The Bowl-- And Drag The GOP Down With It

Don't Be So Sure by Chip Proser

In the August IBD/TIPP poll of registered voters, which closed before the Trump supporter massacred 22 people in an El Paso Walmart and before China signaled they had stopped buying America agricultural products-- a signal that there is likely to be a depression in the farm belt next year-- Trump's job approval dropped from 43% to 40%. The poll shows, Status Quo Joe (54-41%), Bernie (50-45%), Elizabeth Warren (49-45%) and Kamala (47-45%) all beating him. Meanwhile, Latino Decisions poll was also just released. First of all...

They pollsters asked respondents who they would vote for if the election were held today:

Arizona

• Trump: 14%
• Democrat: 65%

California

• Trump: 18%
• Democrat: 67%

Florida

• Trump: 29%
• Democrat: 53%

Nevada

• Trump: 22%
• Democrat: 59%

Texas

• Trump: 20%
• Democrat: 62%

NATIONAL

• Trump: 21%
• Democrat: 62%

There are a number of things working to bring Trump's numbers down further. First among Latinos-- the NY Times reported Monday night that "Trump’s re-election campaign has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an 'invasion' at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter. Since January, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word 'invasion'-- part of a barrage of advertising focused on immigration, a dominant theme of his re-election messaging." The ads target white nationalist types and the result is what we saw in El Paso over the weekend.

Then in rural America, a major Trump base of support, a depression is looming because of Trump's trade war and unbelievably inept negotiating skills. After Trump's threats to put another 10% tariff on $300 billion of products from China, China stopped buying U.S. agricultural goods. Kate Rooney reported for CNBC that farmers in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, to name a few states, would have to find new customers... pronto. Only Mexico, Canada and Japan buy more American agricultural products than China, worth $5.9 billion annually. The Minister of Commerce announced that China was "suspending" purchases of American grain and other products and blamed Trump.

China is one of the largest buyers of U.S. agriculture. Bloomberg News reported that Beijing may stop importing them completely in response to new tariffs by the United States. According to reports by Chinese State media, it would also consider slapping tariffs on U.S. agricultural products that it already bought.

Those stories helped exacerbate fears on Wall Street pushing stocks to their worst day of the year. Now that China has confirmed the reports, it could add to pressure on equities. Stock futures fell Monday, implying a 480 point drop Tuesday.

U.S. farming has been a hot-button issue in the ongoing trade war. The president said that he had secured large quantities of agricultural purchases when he met with President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in June. Trump later accused China of not following through, leading him to announce on Thursday 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports.

China, which has historically managed its currency, let the yuan break to its lowest level against the dollar in more than 10 years on Monday.

The Treasury Department labeled China as a currency manipulator on Monday evening, following tweets by the president with that same accusation. “This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time,” Trump said. Later in the day, he tweeted that it is “now even more obvious to everyone that Americans are not paying for the Tariffs-- they are being paid for compliments of China, and the U.S. is taking in tens of Billions of Dollars.”

And a third crisis for the GOP-- obviously of their own making-- is the box they find themselves in over gun violence and domestic terrorism. This morning, reporting for Bloomberg News, Sahil Kapur wrote that Republicans "Fear Extinction In The Suburbs" Over Gun Control. "After two gruesome mass shootings in a 24-hour span," he wrote, "some Republicans are raising alarms that their opposition to new firearm limits is making the party toxic to the suburban women and college graduates who will shape the 2020 election.

“Republicans are headed for extinction in the suburbs if they don’t distance themselves from the NRA. The GOP needs to put forth solutions to help eradicate the gun violence epidemic,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and oil-and-gas executive who supports President Donald Trump.

Last year, Eberhart said, he was having lunch with Rick Scott when the then-Florida governor learned of the massacre unfolding in Parkland. It marked the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, as a gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 17 people. Eighteen months later, as the country reels from killing sprees in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Eberhart said it’s time to join Democrats and majorities of Americans who want to ban those types of guns.

“The GOP needs to make several moves such as universal background checks, eliminating loopholes and banning military-style assault weapons to neutralize the issue,” he said. “Otherwise, Republicans will lose suburban voters just like they did in the midterms on health care.”

While most Republicans have opposed expanding background checks and banning assault-rifles, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said Monday he cut a deal with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on “red flag” legislation to assist and encourage states to keep guns away from people who are found to pose an imminent risk of violence. Many Democrats said that wasn’t enough and called for a renewal of the assault-weapons ban and universal background checks, among other measures.

The 2018 election reflected a changing landscape on guns. Republicans were swept out of the House majority after losing suburban bastions where they were once dominant-- in places like Orange County, California, and around Dallas and Houston in Texas. Voters in 2018 favored stricter gun control by a margin of 22 percentage points, and those who did backed Democrats by a margin of 76% to 22%, according to exit polls. Gun policy ranked as the No. 4 concern, and voters who cited it as their top issue voted for Democrats by a margin of 70% to 29%.

And the mood has changed since 2016.

The gun issue propelled Trump in key states like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania among voters who opposed Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support for gun control, said Republican strategist Brad Todd, whose firm polled on the issue. Todd said swing voters may still “see upsides and downsides to both approaches” on gun policy.

There have been 255 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts incidents where at least four people were shot or killed, not including the shooter. With the presidential election 15 months away, it’s unclear just how salient the issue of guns will be in shaping voter behavior.

The renewed debate captures a dilemma for Trump as he revs up his re-election campaign with appeals to rural Americans steeped in a rich gun culture. But he risks alienating upper-income suburbanites, who can make or break his prospects, if he’s seen as unwilling to take action to stop frequent mass shootings.

All of the major Democratic candidates are running on gun control measures, including tougher background checks and banning assault weapons, setting up a stark contrast with Trump.

“Every time the country experiences a tragedy of this nature the Republican brand takes a hit,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former congressman who lost his suburban Miami-area district to a Democrat in 2018. “Because many, many Americans perceive that Republicans are unwilling to act on gun reform, due to the influence of the NRA and other organizations.”

“Certainly in swing suburban districts there is broad support for” policies like universal background checks and 72-hour waiting periods, Curbelo said. “A lot of voters, especially young voters, have lost their patience with this issue.”

A Marist poll last month, commissioned by NPR and PBS, found that 57% of American adults support banning “the sale of semi-automatic assault guns such as the AK-47 or the AR-15,” while 41% oppose it. Support for such bans was 62% among suburbanites, 74% among women in the suburbs and small cities, and 65% among white college graduates.

But the survey found broad opposition to banning semi-automatic assault weapons among the core elements of Trump’s coalition-- 67% among Republicans, 67% among conservatives, 65% among white men without college degrees, and 51% among rural Americans.

The party’s longstanding opposition to gun control is a product of party leaders working to consolidate single-issue firearm owners voters who reliably turn out in elections and tend to view any new restrictions as a threat to their Second Amendment rights.

It explains why most Republicans oppose even modest measures like universal background checks, which received 89% national support in the Marist poll, including large majorities across all demographic and party affiliations. The NRA opposes that proposal, too.

“The NRA is committed to the safe and lawful use of firearms by those exercising their Second Amendment freedoms,” the NRA said in a statement Sunday, adding that it “will not participate in the politicizing of these tragedies” but will work to pursue practical solutions.

Earlier this year, eight House Republicans from suburban or competitive districts voted with Democrats to pass a bill that would impose background checks on buyers for gun sales considered private, which are not currently required by federal law.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has refused to consider the bill, and Trump has threatened to veto it.

In a statement Monday, Trump denounced the “twisted” killers over the weekend and called for new “red flag” laws to keep firearms away from people found to be dangerous. He blamed the internet, social media and violent video games for pushing people toward violence, though he suggested easy access to guns wasn’t the problem.

“Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” he said.

Irony? Take my word on this one-- he isn't capable of it.

Bernie's Ready To Fight It Out On Medicare-For-All-- Are Status Quo Joe And Kamala?

When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of women's voices in the media. I'm old. But I remember always wanting to read Eleanor Clift in Newsweek, not so much because I agreed with her but because she was the only woman around writing about politics. She's even older than I am-- and older than Biden, Trump and Bernie. Now Newsweek has her writing for the Daily Beast and she's still a media representative of an establishment point of view. Yesterday, her post was sadly lame: Embracing Medicare for All Will Put the Democratic Party on Life Support. She doesn't understand and insists "Democrats must steer clear of this disaster waiting to happen." What disaster? People learning the details of Medicare-for-All. She calls it "a nice catchphrase, but... a poison pill that the Democratic candidates should not swallow whole." She's getting her information from from lobbyists and publicists paid handsomely by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Medicare-For-All. Poor old Eleanor was an easy mark. She should watch this brand new Secular Talk video to see where she's been misled:




Asked for a show of hands which Democrats support Medicare for All, Elizabeth Warren led the charge to declare, “I’m with Bernie.” New York Mayor Bill De Blasio joined her. On the second night, Kamala Harris raised her hand to back Sanders, then following the debate thought better of it, saying she misunderstood the question.

So should the whole "I'm with Bernie" contingent of fake progressive candidates who aren't really with Bernie, don't really understand Medicare-for-All and don't really embrace Medicare-for-All-- and won't fight for it if they get elected. Let's start with the shallowest-- policy-wise-- of the candidates: Kamala Harris. She's also the least serious of the top Democratic candidates-- good actor but no core-- none. "Kamala Harris Says Medicare for All Wouldn’t End Private Insurance," wrote Sahil Kapur, who added "It Would." If she was paying attention instead of worrying about political positioning, she's know that. Kapur's use of "but" is a dead giveaway: "She favors single payer but wants a role for private insurance. Kamala Harris says she supports Medicare for All, and she has cosponsored legislation with Bernie Sanders. But unlike her Democratic presidential rival, she says the plan wouldn’t end private insurance. That’s misleading. The measure would outlaw all private insurance for medically necessary services but allow a sliver to remain for supplemental coverage. It would force the roughly 150 million Americans who are insured through their employer to switch to a government-run program.

Harris is trying to find a narrow path between two competing constituencies in the Democratic Party. On one side are progressives who passionately support so-called single payer insurance and are pushing the party to the left. On the other is the party establishment [+ establishment, or corporate, media], which believes that calling for an end to private insurance for millions would be political suicide against President Donald Trump in 2020.

...The issue has tripped up the California senator almost from the moment she began her candidacy. During the debates in Miami last week, Harris and Sanders raised their hands when NBC’s Lester Holt asked which candidates would “abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan.” She retreated the next day, saying she thought Holt was referring to her personal insurance plan and answered “no” when asked if private coverage insurance should end.

She ran into a similar problem in January, when her campaign walked back a comment she made at a CNN town hall calling for getting “rid of” private insurance structures.

Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said the intent of the Sanders bill is clear.

“As a practical matter, Senator Sanders’ Medicare for all bill would mean the end of private health insurance,” he said. “Employer health benefits would no longer exist, and private insurance would be prohibited from duplicating the coverage under Medicare.”

Sanders last week criticized Harris for splitting hairs, without mentioning her by name.

“If you support Medicare for All, you have to be willing to end the greed of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries,” he said. “That means boldly transforming our dysfunctional system by ending the use of private health insurance, except to cover non-essential care like cosmetic surgeries.”

In an email, Harris spokesman Ian Sams responded: “Kamala’s position is and has always been every American would get insurance through the single payer plan, and private insurance would exist to cover anything supplemental, as is expressly outlined in the Medicare for All bill. Seems like Bernie is saying that, too.”

Other 2020 candidates-- Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand-- also cosponsored Sanders’s bill.

Warren has given a far more direct endorsement than Harris of the idea of eliminating private insurance.

“I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All,” she said on the first night of the Democratic debates. “There are a lot of politicians who say, oh, it’s just not possible, we just can’t do it, have a lot of political reasons for this. What they’re really telling you is they just won’t fight for it.”

At the other end of the spectrum is former Vice President Joe Biden, who said he wants to build on Obamacare by adding a government-run plan to the menu of options, a provision that progressives tried and failed to add in 2009 amid opposition from centrist Democrats.

“Everyone, whether they have private insurance or employer insurance and no insurance, they, in fact, can buy in the exchange to a Medicare-like plan,” Biden said in the debate.

Hedging her position, Harris has also cosponsored “Medicare X” legislation by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, another Democratic presidential candidate who’s running as a moderate. That measure would preserve private coverage while allowing Americans to buy into a government-run plan. But she said Friday on MSNBC she favors single payer with only supplemental private insurance.

Harris continued to defend that position in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, saying that losing one’s private insurance doesn’t mean losing one’s doctor.

“I am for Medicare for All,” she told reporters. “I think that that if you talk with people extensively enough, nobody’s in the position of really trying to defend their insurance company. What they want to know is that they’re going to be able to keep their doctor under Medicare for All. They will be.”

Single payer proponents argue that a “public option” isn’t feasible as it would attract only the sickest people and drive up costs; they say a national program that covers everybody is necessary to pool risk and keep prices down. But Democrats who prefer a government option argue that it’s the most pragmatic way to extend coverage.

At a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa, on Wednesday, Biden seemed to take aim at Harris and others who he said wanted to “start over” on health care.

“I fundamentally disagree with anyone who says scrap Obamacare,” he said. “I’m against any Republican who wants to scrap it, I’m against any Democrat who wants to scrap it.”

Over the weekend, House Medicare for All lead sponsor, Pramila Jayapal, wasn't playing any of Harris' word games. She launched a damn righteous tweet storm to set the record straight, especially on Biden's lies and misinformation.

In his CNN interview Friday, the hapless Biden said he supports allowing Americans to buy into Medicare instead of going all the way to Medicare for All, which he slammed as disruptive and costly despite studies showing it would save the U.S. trillions of dollars in overall healthcare spending, something he clearly can't wrap his frozen old brain around.

Biden: "If they like their employer-based insurance, which a lot of unions broke their neck to get, a lot of people like theirs, they shouldn't have to give it up. If you don't go my way and you go their way you have to give up all that. What's gonna happen when you have 300 million people landing on a healthcare plan. How long is that going to take? What's it going to do?"

I can only imagine Pramila's brain exploding when she heard the clueless and increasingly senile doofus regurgitating Republican Party talking points that have been used against Social Security and Medicare for decades. "This argument that 'unions broke their neck to get employer-based insurance' is an OLD argument that isn't relevant today," she tweeted.

Unions understand what's at stake even if the completely out of touch Biden doesn't and never will. After all, Bernie-- and Pramila's-- Medicare for All legislation cover every medically necessary service, including dental, vision and long-term care, leaving virtually no room for private insurers to cover anything except nose jobs and tummy tucks.

Which Way Is The Democratic Party Really Headed?

Greg Sargent summed up Tuesday's SOTU speech very well: "Trump's State of the Union speech repeated all of his most reprehensible lies, and suggests he still won't accept the new reality in Washington." Sargent boded that he "demanded total capitulation" from Pelosi and that "he won;'t get it." Even aside from the disdain-- if not contempt-- in which most voters hold Trump, the Democrats have the issues. Trump can try to paint Medicare-For-All, free public college, a livable minimum wage and taxing the super-rich as "socialism," but polls show that most voters support all of them-- and by wide margins. Yesterday Elizabeth Warren sent this smile graphic out to her supporters, showing that a new poll shows how popular her Ultra-Millionaire Tax is:

"Insiders in Washington," she wrote "like to label any idea that might challenge the wealthy and the well-connected as 'radical' or 'outside the mainstream,' but we’ve got news for them: America is far more progressive than they think. When it comes to the core economic issues we’re fighting for-- raising the minimum wage, expanding Social Security, paid family leave, debt-free college-- a majority of all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, agree."

And this report from Amanda Gordon for yesterday's Bloomberg News, Mega-Rich at Palm Beach Soiree Dismiss Democrats' Tax Proposals plays right into the Democrats' hands. "The party at the Norton Museum of Art Saturday night," wrote Gordon, "had all the trappings of the Palm Beach high season-- those Stubbs & Wootton slippers, some fabulous gowns, and, with President Trump ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, a healthy disregard for the tax plans being floated by a wide field of potential Democrat candidates in 2020."

“They’re going to eat themselves alive,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.

“Those plans are so antithetical for what’s good for growth in our country, they’ll go nowhere,” Citadel founder Ken Griffin said. Improving public K-12 education would be a much better way to address inequality than tax increases that are “trying to destroy the wealth creators of our society,” he added.

But maybe there was “literally zero” chatter about the Democrats’ tax proposals, as Griffin put it, because everybody was chattering about Lord Norman Foster’s expansion of the museum, which reopens next week. The gala celebrating the occasion captured, in one night, the energy and ambition of a new Palm Beach.

Griffin brought some of that energy as he dashed into the museum without stopping to look at his name in letters on the new building in West Palm Beach. He had a lot of people to catch up with before sitting down on gold cushions with Leonard Lauder and the architect to dine on melon and shrimp, filet and Bananas Foster.

An obvious topic was Griffin’s recent home purchases-- a $123 million house in London and a $238 million New York apartment designed by Robert A.M. Stern.

Sahil Kapur also wites for Bloomberg News and yesterday he was writing how the Democrats candidates for president are swinging left in a return to the party's FDR roots. "A flurry of proposals to slap new taxes on the ultra-wealthy, extend Medicare to all Americans and make college debt-free reflect a rapidly changing Democratic Party that sees a sharp left turn as the path to defeating President Donald Trump," he wrote. "Some of the party’s top 2020 presidential hopefuls are wading into uncharted political waters in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to mitigating income inequality."

He wasn't talking about Biden, Bloomberg, McAuliffe, Delaney. Klobuchar, Bennet, Hickenlooper, the "centrists." Beto may attempt to run as a progressivish candidate as well; no way to tell yet. Gillibrand, Tulsi and Harris all decided to run as progressives despite their records. (Tulsi seems to have genuinely transformed; the other 2 appear to be opportunists.) Castro and Booker are doing the progressive thing as well now.

Actual progressives, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Marianne Williamson and, I think, Jay Inslee fit Kapur's description better. Kapur warns them that "moderate Democrats warn that the party wins elections not by indulging its most liberal impulses but by hewing to the political center. And Trump has made clear he’s ready to use the leftward tilt by Democrats as a wedge issue in 2020." He seems to be reporting that enormously popular proposals-- take Medicare-For-All, debt-free college, and making the rich pay their fair share of taxes-- are going to hurt progressives. Not everyone agrees.

"The Democrats are swinging for the fences this time," said Stephanie Kelton, an economist who advised Sanders in his bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination. "You’re seeing kind of a return to the roots of the Democratic Party in the FDR era."

Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in the 1930s, Democratic contenders are pushing tax hikes on the wealthy to finance an expansion of government security programs. They’re also seeking to make good on Roosevelt’s "Second Bill of Rights" that he proposed in the 1944 State of the Union, one year before he died and the goal fizzled.

"The things that FDR enumerated in that speech-- the right to a living wage and job and education and housing and secure retirement-- that’s big stuff, and you have someone on the Democratic side with legislation for almost everything on that agenda," Kelton said.

The Democratic hunger for more liberal policy prescriptions-- as well as leaders who reflect the demographics of a party reliant on young people, minorities and women-- was evident in the 2018 elections as upstarts like Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Boston and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York ousted longtime Democratic incumbents.

"People are sick of half-measures," said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii. "Americans are struggling mightily to get into the middle class, or stay in the middle class, and the job of the Democratic Party is to come up with a real program to solve those problems."

The issue that has most energized the progressive base is a "Medicare for all" system that would establish a federal insurance program and scrap most private insurance. Legislation called the Medicare For All Act, unveiled in 2017 by Sanders, of Vermont, has been cosponsored by 2020 hopefuls in the Senate like Harris of California, Warren of Massachusetts, Booker of New Jersey, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Sanders plans to reintroduce the Medicare For All Act in the new Congress.

At a CNN town hall last week in Iowa, Harris offered a ringing endorsement of Medicare for all and said she’d do away with private insurance. "Let’s eliminate all of that," she said, after describing its hassles. Warren took a more cautious approach, declining twice on Bloomberg TV to say if she’s scrap private insurers as part of her plan, saying that she sees "lots of paths" to universal coverage.

“We know where we’re aiming, and that is every American has health care at a price they can afford,” Warren said.

The eagerness among Democratic hopefuls to reverse the party’s centrist turn in the 1990s is drawing pushback from some of its architects, who credit the shift for Bill Clinton’s success in breaking years of Republican dominance in presidential elections.

"Our view is that Medicare for all would be a catastrophic idea for the Democratic nominee to run on in 2020," said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for the centrist Democratic group Third Way.



Bennett said progressive litmus tests like single payer are "dangerous" if the party wants to unseat Trump. "Medicare for all does well on Twitter and in riling up base voters, but in the end is not going to be politically resonant in the places where Democrats simply must win, which is the former blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania," he said.

But Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election in November by more than 10 points in Wisconsin on an unabashedly progressive platform that included Medicare for all. In an interview, she rejected the idea that running to the left would hurt her party’s prospects in the state, which Trump won in 2016. Democratic candidates are "all pushing in the direction that anyone from Wisconsin would want," she said.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump previewed how he would use the shift in the campaign with a dire comparison to the chaos in socialist Venezuela.

“Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” he said, adding, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Still, recent national surveys show strong support across party lines for sharp tax hikes on the affluent, including Warren’s annual tax on wealth above $50 million and Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal of tax rates up to 70 percent on incomes above $10 million.

...While outspoken progressives like Ocasio-Cortez drove the conversation, Democrats took control of the House in 2018 by capturing seats from Republicans in moderate districts. Many of those Democrats are keeping their distance from Medicare for all and other ideas gaining steam on the left, wary of how they’d fare with more conservative voters.

"We can’t forget that the way we won the House majority was through the middle," said Representative Josh Gottheimer, who won a competitive district in northern New Jersey.

Incredible how conservatism and corruption are so totally connected in politics

The early tone of the Democratic primary debate provides a marked contrast from Hillary Clinton’s winning 2016 campaign. She rejected Medicare for all and debt-free college in favor of ideas she described as more pragmatic, such as improving the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and incremental steps to mitigate student debt.

She won, but not before an unexpectedly strong challenge from Sanders.

"Hillary had a progressive approach but it was a pragmatic progressive approach. Bernie’s approach was-- you could call it more progressive but he was not pragmatic,” said Adrienne Elrod, a former spokeswoman for Clinton’s 2016 campaign. "But one of the reasons Bernie did catch on is he really spoke to income inequality. Bernie’s message tended to stick out."

Elrod said that Medicare for all is popular because "people are seeing that the ACA, especially with the individual mandate gone, is not working for them. Their health care costs are still escalating. It’s an issue that’s going to drive this election, so anyone who takes a half-assed approach to it and does not support a more progressive health care position is going to lose."

Medicare for all may face opposition from more moderate Democrats weighing a run. Former Vice President Joe Biden has long resisted the idea, though he hasn’t discussed it recently. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is considering a run for the Democratic nomination, said recently that it would "bankrupt for us for a very long time." Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

"There’s still that middle section of the country that wants a more moderate approach to governing. So yes, there’s always a danger," Elrod said. "But you’re not going to get through a Democratic primary if you take moderate stances on very high-profile important economic issues like health care like income inequality."