Reflections on yesterday’s Democratic debate

The debate yesterday involve a lot of cross talk, people speaking over each other and not allowing the person who was asked a question to speak uninterrupted. The moderators did not seem to make a strong enough effort to stop people talking simultaneously so that it was hard to make out what was said. The worst culprit when it came to interruption was Pete Buttigieg, who perhaps should be called Pete Buttinsky in future. It was clear that he sees himself as the establishment hatchet man to go after Bernie Sanders. Even when the moderators directly asked Sanders a question, Buttigieg would start talking immediately over Sanders to try and drown him out. To my mind, he came off as somewhat desperate, knowing that this was his last chance to make an impact. Buttigieg avoided getting into it with Amy Klobuchar this time, since the sharp exchanges last time did not seem to have reflected well on both of them.
[Read more…]

Wow, that was some interview!

Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept interviewed Bernie Sanders’s top national surrogate Sen. Nina Turner and campaign press secretary Briahna Joy Gray about what they experience during the campaign and the racist, misogynistic attacks they face on a regular basis from the media and from members and supporters of rival campaigns, even being called ‘misfit black girls’. You can listen to the 45-minute interview here. I found it utterly gripping. A transcript will soon be added to the link.

[Read more…]

Spinning down Sanders success

It is interesting to watch the media’s attempts to spin Sanders’ third consecutive win in the first three contests (something that has never happened before for either the Democratic or Republican primaries), and especially his runaway win in Nevada, as somehow not being significant.

(Tom Tomorrow)

The satirical publication The Onion has been mocking the mainstream media’s attempts at downplaying the success of the Sanders campaign, with ‘headlines’ such as:

“MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up”

and

“Bernie Sanders Holds Secret Campaign Meeting With 15,000 Working-Class Democratic Donors”

But this is my favorite.

“DNC Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop Sanders”

The reason why Nevada union workers defied their leadership

Despite all the buzz over the Culinary Workers Union being critical of the implications of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare For All proposal on their hard-won own health care plans (which Pete Buttigieg absurdly but typically described as Sanders waging on the union) it looks like he won a plurality of the union vote and some of them gave their reasons for bucking the leadership.
[Read more…]

What to expect in the Democratic debate tonight

The next Democratic debate will take place tonight in Charleston, South Carolina which holds its primary on Saturday. This will also be the last debate before the Super Tuesday primaries next Tuesday, March 3 and so will be the final chance for candidates to make their case to a national audience before those votes are cast. There will be seven people on the stage tonight: Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, and Elizabeth Warren.

Steyer is the new addition from the last debate which means that we will have two billionaires on the stage touting their glorious billionairosity that makes them supremely qualified to take on Trump and become president. After all, phony billionaire and failed businessman Donald Trump became president, so wouldn’t either of them be better positioned to take on Trump than people who are not insanely wealthy? The sad thing is that some people actually buy that argument.
[Read more…]

Don’t mess with the ‘misfit black girls’

Someone named Jason Johnson, a commentator on MSNBC (that is one of the most anti-Sanders mainstream media outlets) and elsewhere, has been promoting the idea that the Bernie Sanders campaign is largely supported by ‘racist white liberals’. This is of course a variation on the Bernie bros narrative that originated in 2015 despite the lack of a strong evidentiary basis and was heavily promoted by Hillary Clinton’s supporters during the 2016 campaign. The originator of the term Robinson Meyer expressed some regret in 2016 for coining a term that had exploded well beyond the very limited usage he had originally intended, especially since the Sanders coalition has grown to be so wide and diverse.
[Read more…]

Harvey Weinstein found guilty on two of five charges

This guy who is truly a monster was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody after the guilty verdict. He faces a range of 5 to 25 years in prison to be announced by the judge later after a sentencing hearing. Ed Pilkington lists the charges he was accused of and those on which he was found guilty.

Count 1: Predatory sexual assault which involves sex crimes against at least two victims, in this count relating to former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley and former Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra. The charge carries a maximum sentence life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.

Count 2: Criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley which carries a maximum sentence 25 years and a minimum sentence 5 years.

Count 3: In this count relating to a woman whom the Guardian has decided not to name and Annabella Sciorra. This charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.

Count 4: First-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years and a minimum sentence of five years.

Count 5: Third-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and no minimum, though a conviction would require Weinstein to register as a sex offender.

Counts 1 and 3 were more serious and could have led to a life in prison, though given Weinstein’s age (67), a maximum sentence of 25 years would be effectively the same.

Of course his lawyers will appeal both the verdict and whatever sentence he gets, unless it is the minimum one that the judge can give.

The need to focus on the big picture

Having all the candidates debate the merits of their various policy platforms is the essence of the primary process, what they are meant to do, so that voters can decide which candidate is most aligned with their own values. So I have no problem with having spirited debates among the candidates. The question is what should be done when it is realized that one candidate is going to be the nominee. At that point, the strategy should change and people should get behind the prospective nominee even if that person hasn’t formally won. The debates on the various policies can then shift to the party platform committee to vote on at the convention. Nathan J. Robinson thinks that that tipping point has already arrived and that Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee. He lays out a strategy for what needs to be done with that realization.
[Read more…]

The phony anti-Sanders narrative starts to crumble

The decisive win by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses where, with currently 60% of the votes counted, he has more than the next three people combined, is finally starting to make the establishment narrative about him crumble. So far he has 46% of the vote, 27 points higher than Joe Biden, handily beating the 13-point margin the polls had predicted before the vote.

Sanders achieved this win with a diverse coalition of volunteers and supporters from across the entire spectrum of voters, spanning age, gender, and ethnicity, and also winning the union vote.
[Read more…]

Buttigieg gets the comeuppance he deserves

One of the things that is often overlooked about Sanders is that, along with Elizabeth Warren, he is a sharp debater. This is because they both have key facts at their fingertips and use them effectively, and also because they do not pull their punches. This, along with his policies, is another reason why I think Sanders is the best person to challenge Donald Trump. His relentless focus on the important issues means he will not be distracted by Trump’s clownish antics and name-calling. But most importantly, he quickly recognizes bullshit and calls it out in no uncertain terms, which will be very effective in countering Trump who as we have seen is full of it.

Here is Bernie Sanders during the last debate rebutting Pete Buttigieg’s repeated assertions that he is a ‘polarizing’ figure.
[Read more…]