Biden, 2020's Warren G Harding

Status Quo Joe by Nancy Ohanian

Before Biden officially announced, I was developing a theory about how he would be the Warren G. Harding of the election cycle. Harding-- once extremely popular, is routinely considered one of the 3 worst presidents in history by presidential scholars-- ran on a platform that could be boiled down to "A Return To Normalcy." And, sure enough, Status Quo Joe, is living up to the theory.

What his campaign represents is the status quo ante-- the normalcy of the time before Trump... when Obama (and Biden, more or less) were inadvertently laying the ground for Trump with their centrist agenda. Biden wants to embrace that agenda. Just Thursday, Biden did an interview for Iowa Starting Line, an interview his handlers probably wish he had never sat for. Biden-- who PolitiFact has shown to be a congenital liar nearly as untethered to truthfulness as Trump-- started off by whining about the campaign and insisting it should be about his actual researchable record but about his say-whatever-you-think-the-audience-wants-to-hear promises. "We’re supposed to be talking about and competing about what we’re going to do about the future. Anybody can go back and pitch something about somebody’s past, out of context. Like, who in God’s name knows anything about busing from your generation?... My decision was made that I’m not going to go back and argue with people about the past. What do you want to do now? I hope we move that way and continue to talk about the future."

Then he went on to try to persuade... himself? someone else? that his great relationships with Senate Republicans will make the country a better place. Was he not milking those relationships while the Senate was screwing over the Obama-Biden administration? No one asked. He seems to have forgotten that Merrick Garland was another of many, many, many exampled of the Obama administration moving right to compromise with the Republicans, who would then just move the goal posts further and further right. Garland was more like a mainstream Republican nominee than a Democratic nominee. Obama, offered him as a compromise to replace Scalia-- a conservative judge Republicans liked a lot, even more than Democrats did. But now Biden is saying he'd nominate him again if he had the chance-- the ultimate in an utterly clueless status quo ante vision.

And with sizable majorities of Americans favoring raising taxes on the wealthy so that they start paying their fair share, where does Biden go? Back to the already way too low rates under Obama. Forget AOC's proposal for a top marginal rate of 70%... Biden told Chris Cuomo on CNN that he'd like to raise the top rate to 39.5% and take the corporate rate from 21% to 28%.

Whatever the question or the topic, State Quo Joe wants to take it back to the way it was under Obama. Medicare-For-All makes no sense to him-- just tweaking an entirely inadequate Obamacare system that was always just a weak incremental first step towards universal healthcare anyway.

Warren G. Harding ran on many of the same premises that make, at least to pundits, a "compelling" case for Biden. Harding's 1920 campaign theme was "A Return to Normalcy," a reference to what life was like before the disruption of the Great War (World War I). Here's how Harding made his case: "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality." As expected, Biden is making a similar case based post-Trumpist disruption to the status quo.

Harding was elected in 1920 and a series of scandals-- both political (Tea Pot Dome being the worst pre-Trump scandal of the 20th Century) and personal (mistresses galore). He appointed pedatory bankster Andrew Mellon Treasury Secretary and Mellon immediately set out to cut taxes for the rich and for corporations. Like Trump, Harding was a moron who didn't understand policy and, also like Trump, had the attention span of a gnat. He explained to a friend that "I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side, and they seem right, and then-- God!-- I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right." Eventually Harding appeared before the Senate himself and asked them to abolish the Excess Profits Tax in corporations while not giving a bonus to soldiers who fought in WWI. Congress passed the veterans bonus bill anyway but Harding vetoed it and his veto was narrowly sustained. His tariff bill was a feeding frenzy for corrupt lobbyists and equally corrupt politicians and eventually a disaster in international trade. At Mellon's insistence, Harding proposed bringing down the top marginal tax rate from 73% to 25%. And, also like Trump, Harding was an anti-union fanatic and pushed massive deregulation of business. His economic policies caused a quickie boost for the economy that eventually led to the Great Depression.

The 1922 midterms were a disaster for the GOP because of Harding's pro-business/pro-rich people policies. The Republicans lost a mind-boggling 82 seats in the House and 8 Senate seats. He died (age 57) a few months later. If Biden is elected I'll predict right now that he will be an even worse, though similar, president than Harding.

The Status Quo Joe Return To "Normalcy"-- A Disaster Waiting In The Wings

Does a "return to normalcy" sound like a good idea after 4 years of Trumpism? It may sound vaguely tempting but it's anything but a good idea. The kind of "normalcy" Biden's campaign is based on is precisely the "normalcy" that plowed the field for the insidious growth of Trumpism. We spent a lot of time writing about that in 2019 and yesterday so did Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Politico: Joe Biden's secret governing plan. Team Biden is already putting a potential cabinet together. "Biden advisers," they wrote, "describe a Return to Normal plan-- a reversal of President Trump's unorthodox, improvisational style. Biden wants known, trusted people around him-- many from the Obama years." Although there are a couple of exceptions, most of the names are at the root cause of Trumpism. Here's the Politico list:

• John Kerry would love to take a new Cabinet position devoted to climate change, or might even accept a curtain call to return as secretary of state.
• Susan Rice, formerly President Obama's national security adviser, is another option for State.
• Mike Bloomberg, who swiftly endorsed Biden after the former mayor's campaign collapsed, would be a top possibility to head the World Bank.
• Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general under Obama who stood up to Trump and was fired, would be a leading contender for attorney general.
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Treasury secretary could help unite the party.
• Jamie Dimon-- chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and mentioned over the years as a potential presidential candidate-- would also be considered for Treasury.
• Anne Finucane, vice chairman of Bank of America, is another possibility for Treasury.

Who would be more like Harding Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon? Not Elizabeth Warren, that's for sure.

They also will toss something over to Mayo Pete, "perhaps as ambassador to the UN, or as U.S. trade representative," either helping to "credential Buttigieg for a future national campaign."

And in the mix for VP, according to VandeHei and Allen, are Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris (if not Attorney General), Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar, Tammy Duckworth, Val Demings... "One adviser told us when we asked who the V.P. pick would be: 'Whoever Jim Clyburn wants it to be.'"

They also note that the chief of staff "would likely be Ron Klain, who held that job for him when he was veep." And Michèle Flournoy, an Obama undersecretary of defense, would be the favorite to run Biden's Pentagon.

Biden, a throw-back institutionalist, relishes an emphasis on governing, norms and restoring alliances. That includes respect for experts, and for the art and science of governing. This evolving plan is all in Biden's comfort zone-- all meant to send a public signal of stability.

Remember, Harding, who ran on a platform that could be boiled down to "A Return To Normalcy," won in a landslide and was once extremely popular. Today his short stint in the White House-- he won in 1920 and died in 1923-- is routinely considered one of the 3 worst presidencies in history.

What Biden's campaign represents is the status quo ante-- the normalcy of the time before Trump... when Obama (and Biden, more or less) were inadvertently laying the ground for Trump with their centrist agenda. Biden wants to re-embrace that agenda today. He seems to have persuaded himself that his "great relationships" with Senate Republicans will make the country a better place and that it will all be one great big Grand Bargain of he's in the White House. Was he not milking those relationships while the Senate was screwing over the Obama-Biden administration? He seems to have forgotten that Merrick Garland was another of many, many, many examples of the Obama administration moving right to compromise with the Republicans, who would then just move the goal posts further and further right. Garland was more like a mainstream Republican nominee than a Democratic nominee. Obama, offered him as a compromise to replace Scalia. And now Biden is saying he'd nominate him again if he had the chance-- the ultimate in an utterly clueless status quo ante vision.

And with sizable majorities of Americans favoring raising taxes on the wealthy so that they start paying their fair share, where does Biden go? Back to the already way too low rates under Obama. Forget AOC's proposal for a top marginal rate of 70%... Biden told Chris Cuomo on CNN that he'd like to raise the top rate to 39.5% and take the corporate rate from 21% to 28%.

Whatever the question or the topic, State Quo Joe wants to take it back to the way it was under Obama. Medicare-For-All makes no sense to him-- just tweaking an entirely inadequate Obamacare system that was always just a weak incremental first step towards universal healthcare anyway.

Warren G. Harding ran on many of the same premises that make, at least to pundits and other status quo Democrats, a "compelling" case for Biden. In the 1920 campaign, "A Return to Normalcy," was a reference to what life was like before the disruption of the Great War (World War I). Here's how Harding made his case: "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality." As expected, Biden is making a similar case based post-Trumpist disruption to the status quo.

By the way, the 1922 midterms were a complete disaster for the GOP because of Harding's pro-business/pro-rich people policies. The Republicans lost a mind-boggling 82 seats in the House and 8 Senate seats. Harding died (age 57) a few months later. If Biden is elected I'll predict right now that he will be an even worse, though similar, president than Harding.

As Chris Hedges noted yesterday, "There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden. The oligarchs, with Trump or Biden, will win again. We will lose. The oligarchs made it abundantly clear, should Bernie Sanders miraculously become the Democratic Party nominee, they would join forces with the Republicans to crush him. Trump would, if Sanders was the nominee, instantly be shorn by the Democratic Party elites of his demons and his propensity for tyranny. Sanders would be red-baited-- as he was viciously Friday in the New York Times’ 'As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity'-- and turned into a figure of derision and ridicule. The oligarchs preach the sermon of the least-worst to us when they attempt to ram a Hillary Clinton or a Biden down our throats but ignore it for themselves. They prefer Biden over Trump, but they can live with either. Only one thing matters to the oligarchs. It is not democracy. It is not truth. It is not the consent of the governed. It is not income inequality. It is not the surveillance state. It is not endless war. It is not jobs. It is not the climate. It is the primacy of corporate power-- which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class in misery-- and the continued increase and consolidation of their wealth."

The Democrats will once again offer up a least-worst alternative while, in fact, doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward corporate totalitarianism. What the public wants and deserves will again be ignored for what the corporate lobbyists demand. If we do not respond soon to the social and economic catastrophe that has been visited on most of the population, we will be unable to thwart the rise of corporate tyranny and a Christian fascism.

We need to reintegrate those who have been pushed aside back into the society, to heal the ruptured social bonds, to give workers dignity, empowerment and protection. We need a universal health care system, especially as we barrel toward a global pandemic. We need programs that provide employment with sustainable wages, job protection and pensions. We need quality public education for all Americans. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and end the squandering of our resources on war. We need to halt corporate pillage and regulate Wall Street and corporations. We need to respond with radical and immediate measures to curb carbon emissions and save ourselves from ecocide and extinction. We don’t need a “Punch and Judy” show between Trump and Biden. But that, along with corporate tyranny, is what we seem fated to get, unless we take to the streets and tear the house down.

Post-Trump, America Needs Something Better Than Another Back To Normalcy President

It would be a tragic mistake for Democrats to pick a 2020 nominee based solely on ousting Trump. Electability is always an important consideration but it should never-- not even now-- be the only consideration. Almost any reasonably decent candidate should be able to beat Trump. It's not about them; it's not even about Trump. It's about us. Is there a candidate offering us something we want from our government? Chances are, whomever can get it together to win the primary is going to beat Trump.

Right now wikipedia is keeping a running list of potential Democratic nominees. 6 have declared: ridiculous New Dem multimillionaire ex-Congressman John Delaney, Richard Ojeda, Michael Arth, Ken Nwadike (the Free Hugs Guy), Robby Wells and Andrew Yang. Washington Governor Jay Inslee and spiritual teacher and author Marianne Williamson have exploratory committees. And then there are two dozen who have "expressed interest," from Bernie and Biden to Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Bloomberg and Tracy Flick.

On CNN Sunday, the Democrats' great GOP ally Rick Santorum warned Jake Tapper that Democrats have to pick someone unexpected to win-- he'd probably like Beto or Alexandria, or maybe Richard Ojeda, Pete Buttigieg, or Julian Castro to be the nominee-- and not someone "expected." He said "When the Democrats win, they pick someone unexpected. Or someone that is not the favorite-- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter-- when they pick John Kerry or Al Gore or Hillary Clinton, they lose. So I'm hoping for Bernie [Sanders] or Elizabeth [Warren] or somebody like that. Some tired, old-- Joe Biden, put them out there and we'll win. If they pick someone new then I think they have a chance." Another Tapper guest, Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger, said it couldn't be anyone "far left" and then went on to define Nancy Pelosi and anyone who isn't from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party as being far left. He's sad that it's taking too long for the Democrats to transform themselves into the Eisenhower Republican Party while the GOP has moved so rapidly and decisively transforming themselves into a Hitlerite fascist party. Kinzinger was pumping for a nice safe corporate whore, Joe Biden and said he could beat Trump. "He can attract the kind of people voting for Donald Trump, the middle class, the blue-collar workers. I think he's the one that can take that away. If you put somebody like Bernie Sanders up, it's just out of the stream of what people want." Luckily Nina Turner was on the panel as well and she corrected both GOP doofuses: "Let me tell you something, wanting people to have a $15 an hour minimum wage, wanting to make sure that people have Medicare for all... there is no far-left, so don't paint Sanders and other people like that." Sure they do. Turner wants Democrats to win; Kinzinger and Santorium want Republicans to win. Is that so complicated?

2020 isn't just an opportunity to get rid of Trump. It's also an opportunity to replace him with someone as good as he is horrible-- with the great president America hasn't seen in over 7 decades! It's a chance to pick a candidate based on a vision for moving America forward. In 1920-- exactly a century ago-- the country went for a schlemiel who had a campaign theme everyone get behind: a return to normalcy (after the Great War). They wound up with a catastrophe: Warren G. Harding, the beginning of a downward spiral that led directly to the Great Depression and World War II. The Return to Normalcy candidate for the centenary is of course Joe Biden, the ultimate status quo or status quo ante candidate with nothing to offer except "not Trump."

Well-meaning Republicans-- not just sneaking partisans like Santorum-- will also be urging Democrats to nominate Biden or one of the other blind establishment centrists (say a Hickenlooper or, worse stir, a Bloomberg). Sunday night, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, 2 "good" Republicans-- James Comey and Nicolle Wallace-- begged Democrats for a back to normalcy candidate. They hate Trump, although perhaps for somewhat different reasons than normal people hate Trump. They think he stole their putrid conservative party. They just want to bring back more putrid conservatism. That isn't what we want though, is it.

When CNN reports that "former FBI Director James Comey asked American voters Sunday night to end Donald Trump's presidency with a 'landslide' victory for his opponent in 2020," it sounds sweet to us. "All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021," said Comey, who "all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election. 'I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be,' Comey told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, 'but they have to win. They have to win.'" We know that but what comes after we win is important to us too.

Over the course of more than an hour, Comey repeatedly derided Trump's character, again likening the atmosphere around the President to what he saw in prosecuting mafia figures and suggested that Trump's tweets could eventually amount to witness tampering. Asked if Trump might be an unindicted co-conspirator in some of the crimes recently described by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey said he didn't know, "but if he's not there, he's certainly close."

Still, Comey said he hoped that Trump would be swept out of office without being impeached. Framing the rise of Trumpism as a political ill the country needed to exorcise at the ballot, he expressed a hope that Americans would "in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values."

"Removal by impeachment would muddy that," he said, and potentially leave a third of the country feeling like their chosen leader had been removed in a "coup."

Trump's decision to fire Comey in May 2017 was a key factor in the appointment of Mueller, who was handed the job by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of Comey's dismissal and the subsequent leak of a memo in which he recounted Trump asking that he end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In a book and in public statements, Comey has become a leading critic of Trump-- and Trump has berated him in turn, relentlessly and usually on Twitter.

Hours earlier, Trump attacked Comey in a pair of testy morning tweets, claiming without evidence that the former FBI chief had lied on Friday in his testimony to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.

Comey laughed at the idea Trump had even looked over the actual testimony, joking to Wallace before she could read the tweets, "He's finished reading the 253 pages?"

After hearing the words out loud, he turned serious.

"My reaction to it is actually disturbing to me, which is kind of, 'Eh, there he goes again.' I thought I was 'Lyin' James Comey' now I'm 'Leakin' James Comey'. But I kind of shrug and sometimes smile and laugh about it and then I have a secondary reaction, which is to be horrified at my own numb reaction," Comey said. "We have to remind ourselves the President of the United States of America is publicly announcing that people are committing crimes, that they should be in jail."

Asked if Trump's tweets could be viewed as witness tampering, Comey answered carefully-- insisting he had no insight into Mueller's thinking.

"I'm not prepared to judge it," Comey said, "but again, if I were prosecuting a case in the Southern District of New York and a prominent person started attacking my witnesses, I'd want to know so what's going on there and does that cross the line from free speech, which we have to keep protected, into something else?"

Speaking about the period before the 2016 election, Comey was unsparing of Republican congressional leaders who he said opposed making public intelligence community concerns over Russian interference.

"To their everlasting shame, the leaders-- (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell, (House Speaker Paul) Ryan-- refused," Comey said. "I think they're going to have a hard time explaining that to history."

He had kinder words for former President Barack Obama, describing the Democrat as a foil to Trump in almost every way.

"I was struck that Barack Obama is the best listener as a leader I had ever seen and Donald Trump is the worst I've ever seen," Comey said. "Obama had the confidence to be quiet and try and get that. Donald Trump is a deeply, deeply insecure person, so I don't see any prospect that he would be able to be quiet for long enough to hear the truth."

Speaker... 2020?

Hillary surrogates used to whisper that if were was elected president he wouldn't be able to get anything through Congress because he hand allies there (other than Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna and Alan Grayson). Now there are way more than that behind Bernie and his programs and in 2020 there should enough to swing Congress towards the widely popular ideas he's running on, from Medicare-for-All and Job Guarantee to Free state universities and the Green New Deal. In 2020, we need to elect Bernie and and House ready for his programs. No more New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Two silly-as-whoopie-cushions updates (a little early morning humor): Third Way wants Beto-- imagine a BETO/Lieberman ticket!!-- and, even more hilarious, Biden has been hiring DCCC staffers... which should be enough to guarantee him a sad, sad DOA campaign.

Trump Says He And Kim Jung Un "Fell In Love" And Status Quo Joe Says Mike Pence Is "Decent"-- They're Both Screwed Up

A couple of years ago, when The Blade asked Mayor Pete about the experience of being openly gay in a state where Pence was governor, Buttigieg called Pence a "super-nice guy," immediately adding that he pursues "divisive and backward-looking policies... The thing about Mike Pence is, he’s a super-nice guy, who just genuinely believes this stuff. He operates from a different reality than the rest of us operate from. He’s written that cigarettes don’t kill, he thinks climate change is made up. He must assume that people get up in the morning one day and decide to be gay. And so, as nice as he’ll be to you in person, when it comes to policy, like a moth to a flame, he goes in for these divisive and backward-looking policies and I think is having the same influence in the White House right now that he did as governor." Pence has a long history in the public arena. He's always been a corrupt scam artist, a self-serving backstabber, self-righteous hypocrite and an embarrassing opportunist. "Nice" is the wrong word.

Last Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Reid Epstein noticed that Status Quo Joe Biden, at an event in Omaha, called Pence a "decent guy." That's Biden's instinct-- institutionalized, back to normalcy hypocrisy in an age where people want straight talk, not bullshit. Even Chris Cillizza seems to have noticed:

Biden is a political anachronism. He's been in politics for almost 50 years; he was first elected to the Senate in 1972! Politics back then (and all the way through the mid- to late-1990s) was far more genteel and polite than it is now. Biden is a hail-fellow-well-met sort of guy. My guess is he has called roughly 200,000 people (NOTE: This is an estimate) a "decent guy" over the course of his political life. That doesn't mean he agrees with them. Or that he even likes them. Rather, it's a reflection of the general collegiality that reigned in politics when Biden came up in the game.

Things have changed drastically since then, however. And this kerfuffle is a sign of things to come for Biden. He is a benefit-of-the-doubt guy running to lead a party who views the other side as not just dumb and incompetent, but evil. This may be the first time who Biden is as a politician runs directly into the new governing reality of the Democratic Party.

Calling a dangerous monster "a decent guy" will just be another item on the long list for Biden to explain on his national apology tour-- AKA, presidential campaign, which already includes his anti-integration politics, his decades of full-blown corporate corruption, his lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key posture on criminal justice, his myriad women problems (that go way beyond his treatment of Anita Hill). Status Quo Joe was the wrong guy for the Democrats to nominate for president every time he's tried running for president-- and he's more the wrong guy now than he was decades ago, back when his Beltway buddies like Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus and Richard Shelby (still a Democrat at the time) were pushing him to.

It's not just Biden still walking among us. Just when you thought Claire McCaskill had finally left the national stage, MSNBC dragged her into their increasingly conservative ring of paid guests. And, sure, she "counts" as a Democrat, even though she said that said she'll "fight anyone" who looks down on the people from her state of Missouri who voted for Señor Trumpanzee. Televised Mud-wresting, I hope. The recently defeated conservative Democrat, who alienated her base with her voting record, told David Axelrod onthe Axe Files that "[Trump] tapped that vein of frustration and anger. And if somebody is frustrated and angry that they don't think the world is giving them a fair shot based on their hard work, you need to listen to that and understand it, and not look down your nose at it and call them names and say they're all racists or they're all this or they're all that, because it's just not true... I know these people that voted for Donald Trump, and some of them I don't care much for and don't like much, but a whole bunch of them I get. And I hate it when people in Washington, especially people from bright blue states just said, 'Well, the only people voting for Trump are stupid people.' No that's not true."

As a senator, McCaskill never worked to bring these people along in a progressive direction, not only because that's way too hard a task for someone as intellectually lazy and disinterested as she is, but also because she doesn't believe in the progressive agenda herself. McCaskill found it far easier to make political hay by demonizing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez than to explain why Medicare-For-All would be a godsend to her constituents, something she doesn't even believe. It's fine to be supportive and respectful of non-racist Trump voters in a red state like Missouri but... what next? Can you do what Bernie does and show these folks why real populism is what will save them and their families? Not if you're a corporate conservative like McCaskill... or Status Quo Joe. Conservatives don't think like progressives. And they're in the wrong party... if they're Democrats.

Warren G. Harding was a very successful candidate and his "Back To Normalcy" platform had great appeal. He won handily and started out as a popular president. It's almost impossible to find a credible list of the three worst presidents in American history that doesn't include Harding. Let's not make the same mistake again.

Beware: The Joe Biden Return To Normalcy

Biden has started-- and aborted-- four runs for president in the past. His brand of Republican-lite centrism is worshipped Inside the Beltway. Outside? Not so much. He never polled outside single digits-- low single digits. Early Monday, Atlantic columnist Edward-Isaac Dovere asserted that as Biden contemplates a 2020 run, he is focused on whether primary voters will support a centrist septuagenarian. He's riding very high in the polls right now-- but the overwhelming majority of people who back him don't know his sexist, racist corporate, pro-war record. And if he runs, they'll find out who the real Joe Biden is. Most of the low-info voters selecting him in polls, just see him as a stand-in for Obama-- and someone who can beat Trump.

Biden hasn't announced yet... but he's running. "Top positions for a campaign," wrote Dovere, "have been sketched out. Donor outreach has accelerated, with Biden himself telling staff at some events to write down the names of people who say they’re eager to help. A list of potential 'day-one endorsers' among elected officials has been prepared. Basic staff outreach is happening. Biden has even joked to people that he’s upped his daily workout to get in shape." Biden has told rich people he's sucking up to that "I’m 70 percent there, but I’m not all the way there."

That same 70 percent line has been circulating among Biden allies for weeks: This looks like it’s happening, but don’t write off the 30 percent chance that it doesn’t. In that time, people who’ve spoken to Biden and those around him say, he is still anguishing over both whether there’s a path to victory and whether running is the right thing to do for those closest to him, knowing that his record would be attacked and sensitive questions about his family would be aired in public.

...A Sanders candidacy would likely encourage Biden to run because he doesn’t agree with the Vermont senator’s policies and thinks they’re losing politics.

In a primary, Biden and his advisers believe, all those left-tilting candidates would divide support and leave him with a sizable number of more moderate voters.

“We’ve got a little bit of our own lane. We just need to go own it,” said a third person who’s been in touch with Biden’s top aides. “He’s well aware that this isn’t going to be easy, he’s going to have to fight for it, but I don’t think he’s viewing this thing through the lens of matching up against any one candidate.”

In late January, Biden’s aides made this case in talking points they circulated to allies who were being asked about his plans. “Joe Biden is someone who can reassert what our core values are. He can answer the big questions facing this country with real moral authority,” reads one section.

The campaign manager, if there is a campaign, would be Greg Schultz, Biden’s longtime political director and currently the head of his American Possibilities PAC. The communications director would be Kate Bedingfield, his last communications director at the White House. Steve Ricchetti, his chief of staff at the White House, who’s stayed with him over the past two years, will serve in a similar role for the campaign, assisted by the longtime political consultant Mike Donilon.

Ricchetti and Donilon have told people that they are now as close as they can get without having the final word from Biden. One major focus: how to quickly build a base of small-dollar donors, which is of particular concern because Biden has always struggled with fundraising and doesn’t have a large existing email list.

...[B]ig questions remain.

Among the biggest: How would he answer for his role in the Anita Hill hearings; for backing the 1994 Crime Bill, with harsh sentencing guidelines; and for supporting corporate-tilting financial legislation during his decades representing Delaware in the Senate? Still, Biden and his team look at the midterm results and think they’re proof that this may be more of a moment for him than people realize. More people won elections in November talking about protecting Obamacare, for example, than calling for Medicare for All.

Then there’s the Obama endorsement question. The two remain friends and speak on the phone. Even as the former president counseled other Democrats looking at presidential runs, he has generally avoided the topic of 2020 with Biden, and Biden hasn’t brought it up.

But if Biden runs, he’ll be running in part on the Obama-Biden record, which would raise the question of an endorsement. If Obama did endorse or even just strategically praised his former VP, he’d be putting his thumb on the scale in a way that backfired in 2016, when he did it for Clinton. Obama advisers stress that the former president thinks highly of Biden. But they deflected the question of whether this admiration would lead to an endorsement by saying they didn’t want to get ahead of the former vice president’s decision-making process.

Biden, meanwhile, is not assuming he’d get an endorsement, especially with Obama publicly and privately stressing that he does not feel like he should be the one deciding the future direction of the party.

Biden’s team has also been weighing how, if he runs, he’ll position himself within the field: as a statesman and party elder, but eager to avoid any of the inevitability that happened with Clinton. He would be attempting to run a first-among-equals campaign, which Biden allies think might be helped by all those in the Democratic chattering class who doubt he could pull it off in a changed party and political environment.

The people who believe in a Biden candidacy think it begins with his working- and middle-class white base. He also has African American support he earned from being part of Obama’s team, hero status within the LGBT community for jumping out front in support of gay marriage, and a connection to many young people nostalgic for the presidency they grew up with.

Warren G. Harding ran on many of the same premises that make a "compelling" case for Biden. Harding's 1920 campaign theme was "A Return to Normalcy," a reference to what life was like before the disruption of the Great War (World War I). Here's how Harding made his case: "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality." Biden can be expected to make a similar case after the disruption of Trump.

Harding was elected in 1920 and a series of scandals-- both political (Tea Pot Dome being the worst pre-Trump scandal) and personal (mistresses galore). He appointed pedatory bankster Andrew Mellon Treasury Secretary and Mellon immediately set out to cut taxes for the rich and for corporations. Like Trump, Harding was a moron who didn't understand policy and, also like Trump, had the attention span of a gnat. He explained to a friend that "I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side, and they seem right, and then-- God!-- I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right." Eventually Harding appeared before the Senate himself and asked them to abolish the Excess Profits Tax in corporations while not giving a bonus to soldiers who fought in WWI. Congress passed the veterans bonus bill anyway but Harding vetoed it and his veto was narrowly sustained. His tariff bill was a feeding frenzy for corrupt lobbyists and equally corrupt politicians and eventually a disaster in international trade. At Mellon's insistence, Harding proposed bringing down the top marginal tax rate from 73% to 25%. And, also like Trump, Harding was an anti-union fanatic and pushed massive deregulation of business. His economic policies caused a quickie boost for the economy that eventually led to the Great Depression.

The 1922 midterms were a disaster for the GOP because of Harding's pro-business/pro-rich people policies. The Republicans lost a mind-boggling 82 seats in the House and 8 Senate seats. He died (age 57) a few months later. He is widely considered one of the 3 worst presidents in history. If Biden is elected I'll predict right now that he will be an even worse, though similar, president than Harding.

The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part IV, Joe Biden

Joe Biden by Nancy Ohanian

Eventually, Bernie will be up against an Establishment shill for the Democratic nomination. At this moment the most likely corporate Dem to make it that far is Joe Biden (a 76 year old gaffe-machine), who was a U.S. Senator from 1973 to 2009 when he was sworn in as Obama's Vice President. A corporate-friendly party hack in all things, Biden started running for president in 1988, always a fave among big donors, Beltway insiders and clueless media types, but never gaining any traction with actual voters. Monday night, out promoting a book in Missoula, Montana-- this cycle's Hillary Clinton told students that "I'll be as straight with you as I can. I think I'm the most qualified person in the country to be president. The issues that we face as a country today are the issues that have been in my wheelhouse, that I've worked on my whole life. No one should run for the job unless they believe that they would be qualified doing the job. I've been doing this my whole adult life, and the issues that are the most consequential relating to the plight of the middle class and our foreign policy are things that I have-- even my critics would acknowledge, I may not be right but I know a great deal about it." He's the anti-populist corporate America craves.

Disclaimer: Unlike former Hillary booster Cher, I've never been a Biden fan. Hillary boosters who refuse to learn the lessons that brought us Trump, tend to like Biden. Biden has nothing to offer anyone except a celebration of his own careerism and a long biography and a mostly dull, sometimes checkered, past. His "vision" is hackneyed and ancient. He defines a kind of status quo ante that looks attractive in light of Trump-exhaustion. He's the return to normalcy candidate, the 2020 Warren G. Harding. Exactly 100 years on! A notorious plagiarizer, I can imagine Biden mouthing "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality."

I never believed Biden's blue collar Amtrak Joe shtik. To me he was always a greasy slime ball politician and Trump-like huckster selling credit cards for the big banks. Mark Bowden likes him but got that aspect right in an Atlantic profile in 2010:

Biden is a salesman-- a high-level one, but a salesman at heart. His father sold cars back in Wilmington, and the son has all the same moves. He is a virtuoso talker. That fluency is not a gift but an accomplishment: attaining it meant defeating a severe boyhood stutter, a feat in which he still takes pride. His prodigious loquacity is not about vanity, as his critics claim-- although Biden is as vain as the next successful man. It’s about selling. It’s about the deal. In fact, that’s one of his favorite expressions: Here’s the deal.

In What It Takes, the monumental chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign, author Richard Ben Cramer had this to say about Biden, then in his first formal run for the presidency:

Joe can literally talk fast. It’s like the stutter left it all pent up, and when he starts talking deal, he goes at a gallop … He’ll talk that deal until it is shimmering before your eyes in God’s holy light … like the Taj Mahal.

For most of his adult life, Biden has been selling himself. In 2008, he began selling Barack Obama. The vice presidency is a perfectly respectable office, to be sure, but historically it has been a ticket more often to obscurity than to distinction. It has few official duties or responsibilities that rise above the ceremonial. It was most famously described by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s two-term VP, John Nance Garner, as being worth less than “a bucket of warm piss.”

After Obama chose Biden for his ticket, Biden's close relationship to the banking industry was brought up again. ProPublica did a good job just over a decade ago, noting that Biden had been particularly cozy with MBNA, a financial services company from Delaware, a subsidiary of Bank of America and Biden's single largest contributor and his son's employer-- as a lobbyist-- right out of college. A the quid pro quo? Biden has been extremely helpful to MBNA and the credit card industry, the key supporter of an industry-favorite bill-- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005"-- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy. THAT'S Joe Biden.

[Biden] was one of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Mr. Obama voted for it.

Mr. Biden also went against Mr. Obama to help defeat amendments aimed at strengthening protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military; Mr. Biden argued that the amendments were unnecessary because the legislation already carved out exemptions for those debtors. And he was one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Mr. Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.

Biden is Bernie's biggest threat for the nomination. Democrats get a chance to pick between another Hillary status quo nothing candidate (Uncle Joe) or... someone actually great. What do you think they'll do? I don't have to do one of these for Michael Avenatti, since-- thankfully-- he became the first potential candidate to drop out. Hopefully CNN President Jeff Zucker isn't taking his place in the roundup. The earlier potential presidential candidates we were less than enthusiastic about:

Part I- Tulsi Gabbard

Part II- Kirsten Gillibrand

Part III- Michael Bloomberg

Pete Buttigieg destroys Biden's Warren G Harding-like "back to normalcy" campaign

Rumblings On The Right... Of The Democratic Party

Democratic Hopefuls by Nancy Ohanian

There are now 21 Democrats running for the party nomination. Other than Biden, the front runners are all either progressives or running as progressives. But what about on the right of the party? Biden owns this lane... but he doesn't he really have it to himself. McKinsey Pete is waiting to move in and swallow up the establishment when Biden (inevitably) slips and breaks a political hip. Many inside the Democratic status quo establishment prefer steady-as-she-goes Pete to the less self-controlled Biden. Pete, for the establishment, was a less quirky version of Beto or Biden, a text-book moderate with a shiny blue cover.

Then there are the two entrants from Colorado competing for the lane. Frackenlooper penned an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal Sunday: I’m Running to Save Capitalism, his anti-socialism rant. But his anti-Medicare (For-All) pitch-- not all that dissimilar to The Journal's own reactionary OpEd, The Burdens ofBernieCare, yesterday-- was nothing compared to the ratings of one of the most conservative-- and ineffective-- Democrats in the Senate, Michael Bennet (yes, he's running too).

Bennet's was a full-frontal conservative attack on progressivism, especially on Medicare (For All) on CNN. He actually repeats the twisted GOP lies you hear from the Fox propaganda machine that seem really strange coming out of the mouth of a politicians with a "D" next to his name. That's "D" for Democrat; as far as his ProgressivePunch grade, Bennet had a solid "F," at all times and in any circumstance, one of the Senate's 10 worst Democrats, always someone who can be counted on to muddy up the Democratic brand and make casual voters say that there's no difference between the two parties.

Bennet, pontificating on New Day: "When you tell people the first thing about Medicare for All-- either that it takes insurance away from 180 million Americans that have it through their employer or the taxes we would have to pay to afford that $30 trillion program-- that 70 percent support falls to the mid-30s. I think we need to level with the American people."

Today, insightful DC-based journalist Skip Kaltenheuser asserted that "Any litmus test for candidates ought to start with condemnation and rejection of all dark money, and with demands for complete transparency of donors. The Democratic Party needs to cultivate squads of candidates like Eliot Ness’s Untouchables. Candidates need to channel the late William Proxmire (D-WI), who despite heading the Senate Banking Committee, turned down the legalized bribes he could easily have cultivated and kept up the pepper on banks. That’s the only way for the Democratic Party to cultivate credibility with Independents. It’s hard to imagine more superfluous groups and functions than big dark money groups creating levers of well-heeled influence ostensibly to inform candidates how to target voters with viable messages for working people. If candidates don’t know by now, why are they running? Have they never listened to speeches by Bernie? Bernie seems to have come up with very viable messages without knocking on dark money doors or incurring IOU’s coming due down the road."

You read something like that and you know what's coming: another attack on Status Quo Joe. Last week, the Center for Responsive Politics, reported on the Biden-connected Future Majority 501(c)(4) nonprofit-- a new "dark money" group, labeling itself the strategy center for Democrats in 2020. They expect to spend as much as $60 million combatting Trump's lies is wing states next year. They claim they will help Democrats "craft messaging that they are fighting for working people while countering conservative talking points."

They will not disclose the source of their funds. Why? What are they hiding? Why are they Democrats? Are the crooks and gangsters supposed to be in the other party? And why are all these efforts associated with people like Bidena nd the Clintons and never with straight-forward values-driven Democrats like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren?

Earlier this year, Democratic fundraiser Matthew Tompkins formed a super PAC called America’s Future Majority Fund PAC. He is also listed as the custodian of records for an identically-named nonprofit run by Riddle and is listed as governor on incorporation records for Future Majority. The two long worked together at New Leaders Council (NLC), a nonprofit that helps recruit young progressive leaders. ["Progressive" meaning Democratic Party not actually progressive in any sense of the word.]

The revolving door between the new nonprofit and NLC doesn’t end there. Incorporation records show Future Majority’s incorporator is Cathedral Strategies LLC, a limited-liability company with a paper trail linked to Brett Avery Seifried, who was general counsel of NLC.

With Tompkins, links between Future Majority and presidential contender Joe Biden begin to emerge. The Hill reported that Tompkins recently launched a pro-Biden super PAC, titled For the People PAC, with the aim of raising tens of millions of dollars to support Biden’s campaign.

The group hasn’t emerged in FEC filings yet, but the Washington Free Beacon reported that Tompkins established a committee called Biden PAC on April 26. The same day it was established, the PAC renamed itself to G Street and removed Tompkins as its treasurer.

Several of the operatives tied to Future Majority have long histories in former President Barack Obama’s political circles.

Dustin Robinson is listed as the designated agent for Future Majority in D.C. incorporation records and the agent for America’s Future Majority Fund in FEC records. He also served as NLC’s communication director and worked as an organizer for Organizing for Action (OFA), a 501(c)(4) nonprofit created by former Obama campaign aides to pick up where the campaign left off.

Future Majority is also enlisting Philip Munger, who served as an OFA director, and Julianna Smoot, a deputy campaign manager on Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection effort who went on to serve as the director of Obama’s foundation and treasurer of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Incorporation records reveal another group named Future Majority existed-- at least on paper-- from 2008 until 2011. Potentially an earlier iteration of the newly launched nonprofit, the group’s listed agent was Ivan Frishberg, OFA’s climate-change manager.

OFA shifted its direction in early 2019 to become All On The Line, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gerrymandering primarily in Republican-gerrymandered states.

Although Obama isn’t poised to endorse a particular candidate in the crowded Democratic primary leading up to the 2020 presidential election, former Obama aides appear to be laying the groundwork to support their candidate of choice-- whoever that may be.

Biden’s campaign has said it doesn’t welcome support from super PACs, following a similar stance to most 2020 Democrats. Whether these public disavowals make an impact remains to be seen, as super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with candidates and may independently spend to support or oppose any candidate-- with or without their permission.

Tompkins did not respond to a request for comment on whether the pro-Biden super PAC will work with Future Majority. Future Majority did not respond to a request for comment on whether it will back a candidate in the primary.

Tompkins isn’t the only person linked to Future Majority to throw support behind Biden. Actress Alyssa Milano, who is reportedly working to promote the group on social media, strongly defended Biden in a recent interview with MSNBC, putting an emphasis on nominating a candidate who has the best chance of beating “this horrible, horrible president.” Biden has pitched himself as having the best chance of beating President Donald Trump-- and the polls, for the time being, back up his argument.

Riddle told Politico he is worried about 2020 Democrats being labeled as socialists-- an increasingly common Republican talking point entering 2020. On its about us page, Future Majority, urges Democrats to use the terminology “Smart Capitalism” when describing economic plans. The group also subtly pushes back on Medicare-for-All, calling for Democrats to improve healthcare by “strengthening the Affordable Care Act and protecting Medicare and Social Security.”

Although Future Majority is not required to disclose its donors, the group told Politico it is backed by Democratic megadonors Philip Munger, Dan Tierney and Keith Mestrich [members of the "anyone but Benir or Elizabeth Warren cabal]. Munger has already given to 2020 hopefuls-- the maximum $5,600 to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and $5,600 to Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-CA) congressional committee. Tierney has given to four 2020 Democrats thus far-- $2,800 to former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and $5,600 to Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg.

Future Majority is soliciting donations through ActBlue Civics, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that acts as a fundraising conduit for other overtly political nonprofits such as Demand Justice and Priorities USA. On its donate page, the nonprofit uses language such as “Let’s Win! Donate now to support Future Majority!” to describe its activities.

While groups operating as purported social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code are allowed to engage in some political activities, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prohibits them from having politics as their primary purpose. But the IRS has not established any “bright line” rules governing what constitutes too much politicking.

“The IRS has allowed the determination of political activity to operate within a grey area,” said Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “A group like Future Majority can likely feel comfortable pushing the legal envelope expecting the IRS will let them get away with it.”

Lack of clarity in IRS or FEC rules allows politically-active nonprofits to make a major impact in federal elections-- totaling $1 billion in all-time FEC-reported dark money as of 2018. Dark money was dominated by conservative groups for several consecutive cycles prior to 2018, when liberal groups shelled out more on FEC-reported outside spending than their conservative counterparts.

The surprising shift was sparked by the emergence of Majority Forward, a Senate Democrat leadership-linked 501(c)(4) nonprofit that spent a cycle-high $40 million. It also contributed directly to super PACs, including a $1.1 million contribution to the closely-aligned Senate Majority PAC.

As Hamilton Nolan mentioned in a Guardian OpEd last month-- Clinton-era Politics Refuses To Die. Joe Biden Is Its Zombie That Staggers On, Biden is wrong in thinking that "he’s well positioned because after the shock of the Trump years, people want to go back to where we were." As we've mentioned all year, the Biden campaign is nothing but a brain-dead resuscitation of Warren G. Harding's Back to Normalcy campaign, which led to, arguably, the worst presidency ever (until the current one). "You cannot," explained Nolan, "understand politics in America until you understand that in the Democratic party, which ostensibly represents the left side of our nation’s political spectrum, there are a significant number of people who genuinely believe that Joe Biden is the best possible presidential nominee. Their belief is not cynical, or at least not wholly cynical."

His constituency is real. It is not illuminating to think of them just as centrists, arguing for the gentlest sprinkling of sugar over the top of America’s poison. It’s better to think of them as zombies: the product of three decades of self-serving, triangulating brainwashing. They are the Democrats who had their eyelids propped open and were forced to watch the Clinton era, year after year after year. It is not so much that they do not, deep down, harbor a vague wish for a better world; it is that, like stray dogs dining exclusively on garbage, life has taught them that this is the best that they will ever get.

Consider what it says about the state of America’s political system that in the left party, the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination did not think twice about kicking off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a union-busting law firm, days before appearing at a major union-hosted rally. And why should he? He gets the money, and then he gets the union support. He knows his audience well. This is how Democratic politics has been done in Joe Biden’s lifetime. This is how it works.

It is not remarkable in the least for Joe Biden to come right out of the gate by filling his coffers with money from telecom and health insurance executives. Who is going to tell him that he shouldn’t? The lobbyists advising his campaign? The zillionaire media executives feting him in a Hollywood mansion? The superstructure of Obama administration functionaries who see him as the most established of the establishment brand names? For the people who matter, Joe Biden is doing just what he is expected to do.

And that is just it. Millions of people-- including, most importantly, Joe Biden himself-- have yet to see any evidence that he is not playing the game exactly as it should be played.

We are talking about a person who built his career as the credit card industry’s man in Washington, while simultaneously cultivating a reputation as a down-to-earth everyman. We are talking about a man who voted against gay marriage when it was unpopular-- and then won plaudits for his bravery by changing his mind years later, when it was popular. We are talking about a man who played a key role in launching America’s war on drugs and mass incarceration epidemic, yet who is widely perceived as a sensitive man with hard-won empathy after losing a son. We are talking about a man who voted in favor of the Iraq war even while giving every indication that he knew it was a bad idea.

Later, he apologized. After that, he became the vice-president for a president whose bona fides on the left were based in large part on his opposition to that war. And now, he will try to ride his connection to that popular ex-president into the White House. And all of the pundits will say that he is the man to beat, and all of the money will come flooding in, and the corporate executives will wink at him even as the firefighters union gives him that big labor endorsement. He is well on his way to uniting everyone who likes to watch the world burn.

I am not mad at Joe Biden. He is a type. His type is “The Old Way of Doing Things.” Now that he is in the race, his type is represented. He rounds out the field. Now, Democratic voters truly have the entire buffet of choices, from “True Leftist Insurgent” to “Bland, Winning Young Résumé-Polisher” to “Indistinguishable Ambitious Congresspersons” to “The Same Old Kind of White Guy As Always.”

This is nothing to fear. This is healthy. This is a perfect referendum on where our country is now. Joe Biden, the avatar of the past, believes that he’s well positioned because after the shock of the Trump years, people want to go back to where we were. Wrong. People want to go somewhere new. I fully expect Joe Biden to step out of his campaign headquarters and fall directly into the huge pit that has opened up as America moved tectonically to the left. There is nothing scary about the candidate that represents the political philosophy that produced in the public the deadly cynicism that gave us Donald Trump. This plain fact will never be accepted by the sort of people who believe that Joe Biden is the answer, because accepting it is an indictment of an entire generation of leaders who consider themselves quite successful.

The Republican party has long been a corrupt tool for serving the interests of the rich by lying to the poor; dwelling on their role in bringing us here is like scolding an alligator for biting off your hand after you stuck it in his mouth. The Democrats are the ones who were supposed to save us. It was their failure in this duty that allowed the catastrophes to pile up. They failed to stop the post-Reagan explosion of economic inequality; they failed to stop the militarism that has embroiled us in endless war; they failed to argue for things like healthcare and education as rights rather than purchases; they fed our most vulnerable citizens to an evil machine labeled “criminal justice” in exchange for votes from racists. They earned their turn in power by agreeing not to use that power for the common good. And here we are: incredibly divided, hopelessly unequal, justifiably sick of our broken institutions, and very, very angry.

Good luck on the campaign trail, Joe. You’re about to meet an America that has already left you behind. I’m sorry you’ll have to find out the hard way.