Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Obama Sounded Like He Endorsed Bernie And AOC, Not Status Quo Joe

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The video above is most of Obama's predictably eloquent endorsement of Status Quo Joe yesterday, starting with the part where he tries to wash the blood off his hands for having coordinated the successful neoliberal effort to derail the #NotMeUs campaign.

And there's some stuff there that anyone can like. "If I were running today," he said in his endorsement of a virtual corpse who talks about nothing but the good old days between 2008 and 20016, "I wouldn't run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different. There's too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards." That basically, sounds like a critique of the entire Status Quo Joe campaign.

Is he begging Biden to change course and move beyond the Back to Normalcy campaign? "We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that." Did he have any choice here but to insert that absurd assertion that "Joe understands that?" He then claimed that Biden has the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history. Biden isn't the nominee yet but... OK. And, as he said, the world has changed and Biden's foot dragging platform is not all that progressive for 2020-- maybe compared to 1960, but no, not now, not in a significantly changed world, which includes a significantly changed electorate.

He want on to talk about the need for "real structural change" and how we have to confront the "vast inequalities created by the new economy" (which Biden is still utterly clueless about) and economic policies that give young people leaving school "faith in the future-- and relief from crushing student loan debt. so we need to do more than just tinker around the edges"-- which is exactly what Biden's so-called "progressive" overtures of the last week do... tinker around the edges... lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60, which is about 1% of the way to the Medicare for All goal and a disjointed, grudging and very partial debt forgiveness package.

This sounds like the speech Obama would have made if he was endorsing Bernie: "We have to go further, to give everybody a great education, a lasting career and a stable retirement." That's what Bernie's platform is all about, not Status Quo Joe's codified defensive posturing, which no one ever even bothers looking at.

Obama-- far more than Biden-- says we need to go beyond the Affordable Care Act to make healthcare "a reality for everybody." Again, it sounds like he could be endorsing Bernie far more than endorsing Status Quo Joe.

"We have to return the U.S. to the Paris Agreement and lead the world in reducing the pollution that causes climate change. But science tells us we have to go much further. And it's time for us to accelerate progress on bold new green initiatives that make our economy a clean energy innovator, save us money and secure our children's future." OK, not just Bernie here, but AOC and the Green New Deal as well, right?

That's why I want to reiterate something I wrote yesterday, buried in a long post about Andrew Cuomo that many people may have missed:
Maggie Moran, Cuomo's top political operative-- the one not currently serving a prison term-- is surreptitiously fund-raising against AOC and soliciting campaign operatives to work against her reelection.
I haven't heard a peep from the DCCC about this, have you? Doesn't it violate Cheri Bustos' and Nancy Pelosi's rule about Democratic operatives not working against incumbents? Have they banned Moran? Of course not; she's part of their pathetic establishment. Any by the way, I'm sure you noticed that Bernie moved rapidly to endorse Status Quo Joe. Blue Dog loser Dan Lipinski-- and right in Obama's neighborhood-- still hasn't endorsed the progressive who vanquished him, Marie Newman.

Before I turned the video off, Obama was babbling about how the Republicans are not interested progress, just power. And that doesn't also describe the New Dems and Blue Dogs, who make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and have absolute veto power over all progressive initiatives-- which they use without hesitation?

Yesterday, in a letter to their members, Roots Action asked why the Chamber of Commerce would go after AOC and they proffered a few ideas in response.
Here's something AOC said in a recent video published by The Hill that no candidate backed by the Chamber of Commerce would ever say:

"We have to start demanding and organizing from the bottom up, from grassroots movements, from nurses to warehouse workers to grocery store employees to the halls of Congress, demanding that we strip profit motive out of our decisions and reprioritize the public good and the health of everyday people."

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is openly criticizing the class bias of the Governor of New York in finally halting mortgage payments but not rent payments during the COVID-19 crisis. (RootsAction had been pressing for both steps.)

AOC is demanding that the U.S. government extend the census-taking period because of the coronavirus pandemic.

She's expressing appropriate but rare outrage at the xenophobic approach that Trump has taken to talking about coronavirus, and explaining the impacts this has on efforts to halt the spread of the virus.

She's denouncing Amazon's attempted smear campaign against a worker who organized a walk-out.

She's pressing for better responses out of Congress to the current crisis, and she's educating the public about Congress's actions.

AOC has become such a major presence in opposition to Trump's outrages that he actually urged Dr. Anthony Fauci to move to New York and run against her. (There's no indication that Fauci is taking Trump's joking remark seriously.)
Goal ThermometerSo... I'll take Obama's endorsement of Status Quo Joe seriously when I see one from him for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her reelection battle to hold onto a seat that the Chamber of Commerce-- basically an arm of the Republican Party and the Steny Hoyer wing of the House Dems-- has spent nearly a million dollars to deny her, in favor of corporate shill Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. There are only 12 members of the House on the Blue America "Worthy Incumbents" list (which you can see by tapping the thermometer on the right). There was no hesitation to put AOC on that list and now we think she may well need the support. Republicans and conservative fake Democrats are pouring massive amounts of money into Caruso-Cabrera's planned smear campaign against AOC-- and in New York City, having the Cuomo machine behind you means a great deal. So, take a moment to think about how much worse an already putrid Congress would be without a compelling young leader like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So far... not a peep out of the DCCC about how Democratic operatives are prohibited from working against Democratic incumbents. Someone should ask Cheri Bustos and Nancy Pelosi about that... instead of this.

And this is Chris Martenson's daily pandemic podcast from yesterday... an episode that may be too wonky for most of us this time.


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15 Comments:

At 9:25 AM, Blogger davidchop said...

That wasn't an endorsement, it was an invitation. An invitation to you DWT and all your followers. There's room for you in the Democratic tent, come on in.

By the way this invitation was extended to you 4 years ago and y'all slapped it down. Please don't repeat the mess that was 2016 (e.g. "status quo Joe" and so on).

 
At 10:32 AM, Blogger Librarian Guy said...

Hey davidchop, fuck you with your "offers"-- to support an Elite with votes, knowing they will give us literally NOTHING but more looting for the top 1%, endless wars (which the Dems are now somehow even more enthusiastic about spreading than even the traditionally racist, Dominionist Rethugs), no Healthcare during a deadly pandemic and the chance to die quietly in the Obamavilles (I live near Oakland, Ca. and drove by one yesterday) of homeless tents and shacks they will grant us to live in.

I have voted Dem for 4 decades but am DONE with them, except for those at the very margins like AOC, after Bernie was so easily crushed for simply advocating mild, overdue reforms. Even a rat is not stupid enough to keep pressing a lever when no food pellet results, and I will ONLY be voting for 3rd parties or those who are genuinely socialist or anti-authoritarian. If you haven't noticed, this is not a "business as usual" time!!

 
At 10:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actions speak louder than words, and pretty much since 2008, Obama has demonstrated pretty clearly what his political priorities are. This nod to progressive interests is just rhetorical posturing.

If you want to know what he actually believes -- the failure to back AOC is one tell. Also, look at his silence on what is happening in the real economy with respect to companies like Amazon (where his former staffers now represent management interests, not workers). When it comes to things like the ACA too, pay attention to former staffers like HHS director Sebelius who has joined with former GOP Majority Leader and for-profit hospital heir Bill Frist to push a new Medicare Advantage scheme. At this point, Obama looks like a bigger fraud than Elizabeth Warren does post primary.

Obama isn't going to do squat to advance any of these causes, the same way that he punted on immigration reform (was going to do it on year 1), or the EFCA (Cardcheck), or the public option in health care when he had the chance. The same is true with respect to foreclosures and his prioritization of Banks over homeowners.

It isn't likely, but it is theoretically possible that Biden will see the light and Obama will pressure him too. But at this point it seems more like a suckers wager. The guy has intervened at least twice since 2016 -- with Tom Perez in the DNC race in 2017 and with Biden in 2020 -- to preserve the nexus of corporate lobbyists and party insiders over any chance at building a party that is more directly accountable to small donors and ordinary people. People are still going to have to vote their conscience in 2020. But for me at least, my view of Obama has gone from one of believing in hope and change in 2008, to seeing the guy as one of the biggest frauds in national politics and just another self-serving, political hack. He's more concerned with how people perceive his legacy, than he ever has been in actually helping working people.

 
At 10:51 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Please don't repeat the mess that was 2016 ..."

How about the "Democratic" Party not repeat the mess that was 2016 by putting up an unelectable candidate who can't generate popular support, who is running on a terrible platform of "Nothing will significantly change" when drastic change is blatantly and obviously necessary?

Everything Librarian Guy said applies for me as well, except that I live in SoCal. We have plenty of Obamavilles where I live as well.

So fuck that "moderate 1985 Reagan Republican" and the high ass he rode in on. He can take that "invitation" and stuff it where the sun don't shine - if he can get it past your thick skull.

 
At 10:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ralph Nader called Obama the biggest political coward in US politics and that cowardice has infested the majority of Dem voters. That is why Clayborn can carry SC, and Obama, the ghost of change, consolidated the Dems behind another cowardly candidate, Biden based on a platform of doing nothing. He even says that he knows "there is nothing more powerful then million of voices calling for change" yet he called for silencing those voices & behind the scenes on Super Tuesday, and based on his cowardly " I get it" (i.e. U get nothing). He most likely played a role in the launching the 2 front assault on Bernie by Bloomberg.

 
At 11:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obama is a liar who sold his soul at the crossroads for power and wealth.

 
At 12:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow. I see others also have seen the light.

nodding in agreement with those above not named david. obamanation SAID he wanted a PO but had already bargained it away. and so on.

hope and change has now morphed into biden's mantra -- nothing shall change, I guess because anything positive applied to biden would obviously be horse crap.

if nothing shall change, why is he worth voting for?

 
At 1:12 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The argument for Biden still boils down to harm mitigation.

Trump sucks. Nothing redeeming about him. He's doing things that are undermining civil liberties. He and his cronies are looting this country. If he's given four more years to consolidate his power, there may not be future elections. The judges that he's appointing as well are actively hostile to the interests of the American people broadly.

Biden is bad, a lot of the people around him are garbage. Some of the biggest scumbags in politics are likely to be in a Biden administration (the worst of the Biden people will be on par with the best of Trump's people -- but there will be people in Biden's cabinet that aren't complete garbage). Biden and Co. will not reverse any of the trends that made Trump's election possible. But he will do some incremental moves that should limit some of the damage. e.g. restoring DACA protections. A Dem president may also be more receptive to pressure (e.g. that is the reason that a program like DACA even exists -- activists made it clear to Obama in 2012 that if he didn't do something, after having sold people out on immigration reform, that people were going to sit out the election in 2012). Once in power, people like to stay in power, and none of these Dems are likely to be able to move further to the right and peel off even more right-wing support.

Also, part of the issue is that the Dems are a dangerously inept opposition party. The GOP is an even more dangerous party when its in power, but they are a highly capable opposition party. If Biden gets involved in self-dealing, the GOP will probably be more opportunistic about pursuing these kind of issues in a way that the Dems have not been with the Trump family.

Biden lies a lot, but he isn't a guy governed by malice. He's a narcissist, but not a malignant one. Trump is a liar filled with malice. His narcissism is more dangerous for the world and the country. If people live in swing states, they should probably vote for Biden, if he is the nominee. But I can't really say that 100%. What I can say with 100% certainty is that no one should vote for Trump. If people stay at home or vote third party, I see that as basically the same as doing nothing.

 
At 1:22 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Going along with the Democratic Party equals doing nothing.

 
At 1:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

a ringing endorsement, 1:12?

why do you still go along with the charade of choice?

America. a nation of retarded sheep.

 
At 3:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Essentially we're basically a republican nation and the presidential election is now a choice of the type of republican you want in that office. Kinda like a corporate controlled jungle primary where the two top vote gatherers run in the final & are both republicans. Which republican is better? Well we should let the republicans decide that as it's their party and they will do nothing for us. #neverrepublican

 
At 4:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Poster at 3:04 pm.

It is so naive of you to have the temerity to even pose the question, "Which republican is better?". Haven't you learnt anything from DWT? Any Republican that has the letter "D" behind his/her name is automatically always the lesser evil, and thereby the one whom you simply must vote for.

 
At 6:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

obamanation should be recognized for his one and only true talent:

he can fool 65 million people into thinking he's endorsing a progressive when he's really endorsing a retarded Mussolini.

For that to be true, those 65 million must be morons. But we should already have known that this was true.

 
At 9:41 AM, Blogger someITguy said...

Corbyn lost one election, and was gone.


Eight years of Obama's leadership was accompanied by the near extinction of the Democratic Party, at a time when a Republican should not have been able to win a race for dogcatcher, based on the results of their policies.

Nobody should want his advice. He himself should not expect anyone to want it.

And yet he is running the show.

 
At 11:50 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

someITguy has rebooted to a higher release of the OS.

As good a distillation of all that is wrong with the democrap party as I've ever read.

the names obamanation, Clinton, Pelosi are interchangeable and no meaning is lost.

damn, guy. excellent!

 

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