Thoughts on the “Sanders Surge”

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Bernie Sanders is now the undisputed frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Last week, in the Iowa caucuses, Sanders won the popular vote by a clear margin in both the first and second rounds.

On Monday, he took the lead in a national Quinnipiac University poll for the first time in the 2020 Democratic race.

And yesterday, in New Hampshire, Sanders won with a narrow victory over former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Joe Biden came in fifth.

What a difference a year makes. When he launched his second presidential campaign, in February 2019, the independent senator from Vermont was mocked and written off by much of the pundit class. The Washington Post’s Henry Olsen called him a “one-hit wonder,” adding: “After a few concerts that attract ever more ‘selective’ audiences, he will likely drop out and retire, his influence consigned to history.” (On Monday night, a whopping 7,500 people turned out for a Sanders rally headlined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as rock band The Strokes, in Durham, New Hampshire.)

. . . No wonder Democratic Party elites are panicking. We hear the same tired arguments about Sanders lacking “electability.” These arguments conveniently ignore the fact that Sanders beats Trump in head-to-head polling; that the Vermont senator is the most popular member of the Senate; and that this self-proclaimed socialist has both the highest “net favorability rating” among Democratic voters as well as the most enthusiastic base.

Plus, the only way to test “electability” is through actual elections, and so far Sanders is two for two.

Iowa and New Hampshire, though, weren’t only victories for the senator from Vermont; they were also victories for Sanders’s signature issue, Medicare for All. Asked last week in an entrance poll how they felt about “replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone,” 57 percent of Iowa caucus-goers said they backed it, while only 38 percent were opposed.

In New Hampshire, on Tuesday, again almost six in 10 voters said they supported a Medicare for All system over the current private insurance system, according to an early exit poll.

Yet again, the pundits and prognosticators were wrong. “Iowa Democrats worry ‘Medicare for All’ hurts key industry,” read the headline in the Associated Press in December. “In Iowa, Single Payer ‘Medicare For All’ Loses Ground,” declared Forbes in August. “Medicare For All Isn’t That Popular – Even Among Democrats,” proclaimed FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver a month earlier.

“We’ve heard a lot about how Bernie Sanders is so ‘wildly out-of-touch’ with the Democratic electorate,” observed CNN contributor Kirsten Powers on Tuesday night. “Well, that’s not actually true.”

The message from Iowa and New Hampshire is clear. It was a big, big mistake to write off both Bernie Sanders and his No. 1 policy proposal. So going forward, will his critics make that same mistake again?

– Mehdi Hasan
Excerpted from “The Pundits Wrote Off Bernie’s Candidacy.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, He Proved Them Wrong”
The Intercept
February 12, 2020

As Bernie Sanders continues to increase his standing in the Democratic primary, and his opponents in both parties feel the pain, there is an effort to paint him as an extremist of some sort. Someone who might even lose to Trump because of this alleged “radicalism.” But it’s not that easy to make the case on the basis of facts.

He has a 40-year track record as a politician. The things he is saying now are mostly what he has shouted from the mountain tops for pretty much the whole time. The main difference is that now, other Democratic politicians have joined him: on a $15 minimum wage, student-debt relief, free tuition at public universities, expanding Social Security, reducing income inequality, and some even on Medicare for All.

His actions speak even more consistently than his words: he understands that politics is about compromise. He fights hard for what he has promised to voters, but then takes the best deal he can win if it will advance the ball down the field, and prepares to fight again the next day.

. . . Sanders’ program is targeted at correcting a very harmful transformation of the U.S. economy that has taken place over the past 40 years.

Unlike the first three decades after World War II, when income gains were broadly shared as the economy grew, most of the increase in income has gone to those who already had much more than their share. Since 1993, for example, the top 1% of families captured an astounding 48% of the growth in this country’s income.

No wonder so many Americans feel like the system is rigged against them.

That right-wing transformation was mostly launched by the Reagan team, but it came to be accepted, and even deepened by some liberal political leaders as well. Perhaps this normalization of the radical changes of the past few decades is why some commentators perceive Bernie’s program – designed to reverse this damage – as “radical.”

Here it is important to note that the fight over this right-wing transformation has never been so much about “the market” versus “the state.” Almost every economy in the world is a mixture of both.

But the Reagan “revolution” and the counter-reforms that followed (e.g., the WTO, NAFTA, financial deregulation, permanent normal trade relations with China, anti-labor legislation and practices) were not so much about changing the relative weight of market and government.

Rather what changed most is that both markets and government were harnessed vastly more to redistribute income and wealth upward. The result is an America that is unique among high-income countries in the percentage of people who are employed full-time and yet struggling to get by, not to mention the more than 10 million children in poverty and more than half a million homeless people.

Sanders, in his reform program, seeks to use both markets and government to reverse this massive upward redistribution of income and wealth.

– Mark Weisbrot
Excerpted from “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Radical
– He’s a Pragmatist Who Fights to Un-Rig the System”
Common Dreams
February 11, 2020

None of the transformative policies Sanders has proposed – a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and debt-free college the most notable among them – embody the change he represents as much as the label he proudly carries: democratic socialist. It’s a term Republicans have weaponized against liberals so frequently that most Democratic politicians simply reject the tag out of hand. Sanders does not, and his success frightens establishment Democrats who worry that the socialism label remains a potent pejorative among the swing voters they’ll need to defeat President Trump in key battlegrounds this fall. On the day after Iowa’s caucuses, Trump devoted an entire section of his State of the Union address to a warning against the advance of socialism, while Joe Biden spent his final days in New Hampshire cautioning that Sanders’s “democratic socialist” label would bring down Democrats running alongside him on November’s ballot.

Neither attack worked, and to Sanders’s supporters, his surge to the top is evidence that socialism as an epithet has lost its sting. “If you look at the history of this country and the left, there have been times when our ideas have been popular and millions of working people have stood up for them,” Maria Svart, the national director of the Sanders-backing Democratic Socialists of America, told me. “And I think the time is coming again for us to do that.

“The socialist bogeyman idea,” she continued, “has been used for decades to prevent people from bringing up alternative ideas, and Bernie winning validates our ideas and demonstrates that people, especially young people, are willing to confront capitalism.”

The recent evidence for whether Sanders’s identity as a democratic socialist would hurt him in a general-election matchup with Trump is mixed. He fared no worse against the president when pollsters identified him as a socialist in a survey conducted by the progressive group Data for Progress. But socialism remained broadly unpopular in a poll released last month by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal: Just 19 percent of respondents said they had a positive view of socialism, compared with 53 percent who held a negative view. That was roughly the inverse of how people in the poll felt about capitalism.

Rather than renounce the term, he has sought in both of his presidential campaigns to define it as part of a “quintessentially American” tradition, a descendant of mainstream liberals such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Martin Luther King Jr. (who were also demonized by their opponents as socialists while they were alive). “We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights,” Sanders said in a speech in June. “That is what I mean by democratic socialism.”

More recently, Sanders has argued that the U.S. is already “a socialist society” that redistributes national wealth to corporations through tax breaks and subsidies. “The difference between my socialism and Trump’s socialism is, I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

– Russell Berman
Excerpted from “The Night Socialism Went Mainstream”
The Atlantic
February 11, 2020

Unlike so many elites who ascend through the ranks of party politics, Sanders was precariously-employed well into his early adulthood, living in a small ramshackle Burlington apartment and struggling to pay the bills. This ineluctably shaped his formative experiences and political orientation in a way that most of the well-heeled American political class will never intuitively understand. But conversely, it has enabled him to connect with millions of ordinary working class people who, rightly, do not believe that these detached elites prioritize their interests.

In the five years he has been a nationally-known figure, Sanders has successfully de-mystified democratic socialism -- his self-applied label – by placing the emphasis on “democratic.” Making sure always to affix the word “democratic” ahead of “socialism” conveys his determination to attach the Sanders-style political project to the historical aspirations of the Demoratic Party. Hence, he delivered a treatise-style speech last year in Washington, DC defining what he means by socialism, and called not for the total nationalization of all industry or the expropriation of private property, but “to complete what Roosevelt started” – that being Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the revered Democratic president who led the country to victory in World War II and created the modern social welfare state.

In situating “democratic socialism” squarely within the ambit of the present-day Democratic Party – rather than as some outside agitating force – Sanders has fused his radical past with the more mainstream present.

. . . There will certainly be resistance to Sanders as he strides toward the nomination; older, monied Democratic power brokers will struggle to reconcile how their party could’ve been overtaken by a socialist movement, as qualified as the “socialism” moniker may be in Sanders’ telling. Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and one of the richest men in the United States, has launched his own parallel campaign with the not-so-subtle subtext of being a last-ditch insurance policy against Sanders for panicked rich liberals. (And Sanders has already declared the DNC’s sudden accommodation of Bloomberg “an outrage.”) The ensuing clash – modulated socialism versus oligarchic, friendly-faced capitalism – will be epic.

– Michael Tracey
Excerpted from “The Bernie Revolution”
Die Weltwoche
February 12, 2020

Sanders has been a punching bag for the media establishment for some time. In explaining its decision to pass over Sanders to endorse, strangely, both Warren and Klobuchar, the New York Times editorial board wrote “we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.” Their competitors have been little different. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Jennifer Rubin have made Trump-Sanders comparisons a writerly tick. Last April, Milbank said both Sanders has emerged as “the Donald Trump of the left,” citing their “flair for demagoguery” and speeches with “Trumpian flourishes.” Rubin for her part has been banging that drum as daily practice, accusing Sanders in January of “playing Trumpian politics.” As if a politician advocating for healthcare and against student debt somehow equaled Trump's authoritarian and racist [extremism].

. . . In consistently undercutting Sanders, news organizations do themselves no favors, also undercutting their own credibility in a time when they sell themselves as a corrective to disinformation (The Washington Post’s slogan is now “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” while the New York Times ran a “The Truth Is Worth It” ad campaign).

. . . Perhaps [the mainstream media’s seeming pattern of anti-Bernie bias is] built-in from how top editors staff their sections and producers choose their regular commentators. Among major media outlets, there is only one single democratic socialist (New York Times’ Elizabeth Bruenig), even though 39 percent of Americans have a positive view of socialism, and the Scandinavian-style policies are resoundingly popular. Meanwhile, many outlets feature conservatives and NeverTrumpers (Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, Rick Wilson), a statistically tiny political group: 6 percent of Republicans don’t approve of Trump, according to Gallup. For an ecosystem of reporters whose sources include many donors, lobbyists, and lobbyist-and-donor-funded politicians, the popularity of a democratic socialist is confounding. And the disinterest of editors and producers in representing the views of a rather large movement has made for a giant blind spot about the size of New Hampshire . . . or Trump in 2016.

– Mari Uyehara
Excerpted from “Why Does Mainstream Media
Keep Attacking Bernie Sanders as He Wins?”
GQ
February 12, 2020

[There has been] a five-year corporate media assault on Bernie Sanders. There was a notorious one-day period that FAIR, the media watch group, documented on the eve of the pivotal Michigan primary in 2016, where the newspaper owned by the richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post, published 16 negative articles about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours. And that pattern has continued. And what we’ve seen in recent weeks, as Bernie’s strength has risen, is an escalation of the war on Bernie, not a 100% war on Bernie, but the vast preponderance of coverage of Bernie from corporate media.

And people need to remember that if you, for instance, don’t trust Comcast, why would you trust a network that is owned by Comcast? These are class interests being worked out where the top strata of ownership and investors hires the CEO, hires the managing editors, hires the reporters. And so, what we’re seeing, and not to be rhetorical about it, but we really are seeing a class war underway.

And Bernie Sanders is very clear about who he aligns with. He aligns with working people. He aligns with the elderly. He aligns with children who need neonatal care and nutrition, one to five. He is fighting for people who don’t have power in the society and suffer from lack of power. And he’s fighting against those who have too much power. And so, the net effect is, it’s not only the Democratic National Committee that Bernie is up against. I think, even more significantly, the Bernie Sanders campaign, which now I think truly is a movement, or a constellation of movements – the Bernie Sanders campaign is up against the oligarchy. And that oligarchy’s biggest and strongest arm are the corporate media outlets.

– Norman Solomon
Excerpted from “Despite Corporate Media’s 'War on Bernie,'
Sanders Rides Wave of Support into New Hampshire Primary”
Democracy Now!
January 30, 2020

NEXT: Bernie Sanders and the Corporate Media

Related Off-site Links:
Sanders Surges to Eight Point Lead in National Poll – BerniePost.com, February 10, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Wins New Hampshire Primary, Making Him the New National Frontrunner – Eliza Relman (Business Insider, February 12, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Won the New Hampshire Primary in a Show of Staying Power for His Movement – Ruby Cramer (BuzzFeed, February 12, 2020).
With Back-to-Back Wins for Sanders, Pundits Proven Wrong in Iowa and New Hampshire – Mehdi Hasan (The Intercept via Common Dreams, February 12, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Got More Young Voters in New Hampshire Than Everyone Else Combined – German Lopez (Vox, February 12, 2020).
The Bernie Sanders Campaign Can Help Inspire the U.S, Working Class to Fight for Itself – Chris Maisano (Jacobin, February 11, 2020).
Sanders Crushes Trump by 18 Points Among Independent Voters in New National General Election Poll – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, February 11, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Says Vice President "Will Not Be an Old White Guy" If He Wins Nomination – James Walker (Newsweek, February 13, 2020).
Progressives to Voters Skeptical of Bernie Sanders: This “Big Tent” Movement Is a Winning and Practical Choice – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, February 12, 2020).
“Do They Never Learn?”: Progressives Rip Media Attempts to Downplay Bernie Sanders Win in New Hampshire Primary – Eoin Higgins (Common Dreams, February 12, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Dominates 2020 Presidential Field in Donations From Suburban Women – Nicole Goodkind (Fortune, November 8, 2019).
There Is Nothing Confusing About Medicare for All – Matt Bruenig (Jacobin, September 13, 2018).
Who's Afraid of “Socialism”? – Peter Certo (Other Words, February 12, 2020).

UPDATES: The Media Keep Falling in Love – With Anybody But Bernie Sanders – Margaret Sullivan (The Washington Post, February 13, 2020).
New Poll Shows Sanders Has Built a Double-digit National Lead – Jonathan Easley (MSN.com, February 13, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Will Be Good for American Economy, Top Economist Says After Goldman Sachs Attack – Oliver O'Connell (Yahoo! News, February 14, 2020).
For Media in New Hampshire, Losing Is Winning and Winning Is Losing – Alan MacLeod (FAIR, February 14, 2020).
Pundits Look to Bloomberg as Their Anti-Sanders Savior – Julie Hollar (FAIR, February 14, 2020).
Sanders Applauds New Medicare for All Study: Will Save Americans $450 Billion and Prevent 68,000 Unnecessary Deaths Every Year – Common Dreams (February 15, 2020).
Bernie Sanders Can Beat Trump with His Liberal Vision for America. Primary Voters Know It – Jamie Peck (Common Dreams, February 15, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Case for Bernie Sanders
• Quote of the Day – September 7, 2017
• Quote of the Day – January 21, 2017
• Quote of the Day – November 9, 2016
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump
• Carrying It On
• Hope, History, and Bernie Sanders

For more coverage at The Wild Reed of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, see:
• Thoughts on the Eve of the Iowa Caucuses
• Quote of the Day – February 9, 2020
• A Thank You Letter to Marianne Williamson
• “A Beautiful Message, So Full of Greatness”
• Progressive Perspectives on Joe Biden's Presidential Run
• Beto, Biden and Buttigieg: “Empty Suits and Poll-Tested Brands”
• Pete Buttigieg, White Privilege, and Identity Politics
• Quote of the Day – October 19, 2019
• Quote(s) of the Day – February 26, 2019

Image: Sen. Bernie Sanders and his spouse, Jane O'Meara Sanders, at a primary night event in Manchester, N.H., on February 11, 2020. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

Something to Think About . . .

– Art and words: Ravynne Phelan

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Beloved and Antlered
• This Holy Trinity
• Earth Day 2015
• Quote of the Day – September 19, 2014
• Earth Day 2013
• Afternoon
• Boorganna (Part I)
• Boorganna (Part II)
• Thomas Berry (1914-2009)
• “Something Sacred Dwells There”
• The Prayer Tree

Quote of the Day

It’s grotesque, though unsurprising given the source, to hear the language of inclusion and belonging leveraged [by presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg] in defense of America’s billionaires and their right to flood the democratic process with campaign contributions. No one who isn’t willfully deluding themselves can seriously believe the nation’s richest people – particularly those who help manage and run profitable industries – give so much money to politicians out of civic nobility. And no one should struggle to imagine a majority electoral coalition that excludes or alienates America’s billionaires, who are only a few hundred in number.

But in the midst of an important debate that often skirts around or muddies the issue of big money in politics, it was paradoxically refreshing to hear Buttigieg mount such a spirited and unapologetic defense of the indefensible.

With any luck, voters in the upcoming primaries and caucuses will treat it with the contempt it deserves.

– Luke Savage
Excerpted from “Pete Buttigieg's Defense of
His Billionaire Funding Is Orwellian”
Jacobin
February 8, 2020

Related Off-site Links:
More About Pete – Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, February 7, 2020).
Is It Fair of Sanders to Call Buttigieg a Buddy to Billionaires? – Paul Waldman (The Washington Post, February 7, 2020).
Former Heads of Lobbying Firms, Military Contractors and Fossil Fuel Interests Host Buttigieg Campaign Fundraiser – Scott Bixby (The Daily Beast via Reader Supported News, February 6, 2020).
Here Are The Billionaires Backing Pete Buttigieg’s Presidential Campaign – Michela Tindera (Forbes, December 21, 2019).
How National Security Mandarins Groomed Pete Buttigieg and Managed His Future – Max Blumenthal (The Gray Zone, December 17, 2019).
Pete for Corporate America – Sarah Jomes (New York Magazine, October 29, 2019).
Is Pete Buttigieg Just a Shill for Corporations and the Donor Class? – Miles Mogulescu (People's Action Blog via Common Dreams, November 22, 2019).
Meet the Billionaires Manipulating the U.S. Presidential Election – Marlow Stern (The Daily Beast, July 12, 2017).

UPDATES: Buttigieg Confirms Status as “Austerity Candidate” With Call for Democrats to Prioritize Reducing Deficit – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, February 9, 2020).
Mayor Pete’s Health Care Plan Is a Joke – Matt Bruenig (Jacobin, February 10, 2020).
Pete Buttigieg Is the Embodiment of White Privilege – and Black Voters Know It – Benjamin Dixon (The Guardian, February 11, 2020).
Marine Veterans Criticise Buttigieg for Overstating His Military Experience – Graig Graziosi (Yahoo! News, February 11, 2020).
Union President Accuses Pete Buttigieg of “Perpetuating This Gross Fallacy” About Union Health Care: “This Is Offensive” – Jason Lemon (Newsweek, February 12, 2020).
South Bend Politician: I Worked with Pete Buttigieg. He Did Not Respect Black Residents’ Struggles – Democracy Now! (February 12, 2020).
Buttigieg Is a Wall Street Democrat Beholden to Corporate Interests – Kenneth Peres (Common Dreams, February 17, 2020).
As a Corporate Tool, Buttigieg Is Now a Hammer to Bash Sanders – Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, February 24, 2020).
“Loyal Soldier”? Ahead of Super Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg to End Presidential Bid – Jon Queally (Common Dreams, March 1, 2020).
Buttigieg Drops Out of Presidential Race – Elena Schneider (Politico, March 1, 2020).
Pete Buttigieg Ends Historic Presidential Bid – Barbara Sprunt, Benjamin Swasey and Sam Gringlas (NPR News, March 1, 2020).
The End of Buttigieg’s Campaign Was a Warning Against Fake Progressivism – Michael Corcoran (TruthOut, March 6, 2020).
“Political Consolation Prize”? President-Elect Biden Picks Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary Despite His Lack of Relevant Experience – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, December 15, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – October 30, 2019
• Pete Buttigieg, White Privilege, and Identity Politics
• Beto, Biden and Buttigieg: “Empty Suits and Poll-Tested Brands”
• Pete Buttigieg: Quote of the Day – April 17, 2019
• Pete Buttigieg: Quote of the Day – June 27, 2019

Puerto Vallarta

As you probably concluded by my Photo of Day posts here and here, I was recently in the beautiful resort town of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast.

Left: At far left with friends (from left) Pete, Brent, and Jeffrey – Puerto Vallarta, Sunday, February 2, 2020.

My friend Brent and I flew down to Mexico early Sunday morning, February 2 and stayed for four days with our mutual friends Pete and Jeffrey, and Pete's parents Gary and Ruth, in a condominium in the Molina Del Agua complex, located in the Old Town of Puerto Vallarta. Throughout the duration of our stay the weather was unseasonable crappy – overcast, rainy and cool. But we definitely made the most of our time in this beautiful place.

Hopefully the photos I share in this post (and future posts) will attest to that!

Above: The vacation crew with our digs, the Molina Del Agua, behind us.

Above: A depiction of Kauyumari, a mythical spirit of the Huichol or Wixáritari indigenous people of what is now modern-day western Mexico.

Few details are known about the history of the fertile valley of the Ameca River, the area around modern-day Puerto Vallarta, prior to the nineteenth century. According to Wikipedia, “there is archaeological evidence to suggest continuous human habitation from 580 BC, and similar evidence (from sites near Ixtapa and in Col. Lázaro Cárdenas) that the area belonged to the Aztatlán culture which dominated the areas now known as the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Michoacán from c. 900–1200.”

Wikipedia also notes that:

Spanish missionary and conquistador documents chronicle skirmishes between the Spanish colonizers and the local peoples. In 1524, for example, a large battle between Hernán Cortés and an army of 10,000 to 20,000 Indians resulted in Cortés taking control of much of the Ameca valley. The valley was then named Banderas (flags) after the colorful standards carried by the natives.

Above and below: The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, known locally as La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.

Notes VallartaToday.com:

The tower of the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe has become the worldwide symbol of the charm of Puerto Vallarta. Not far from the sea and at the foot of the mountain that shelters the village, [the tower rises above] the church's red roof and golden cupola and the surrounding cobblestone streets and bougainvillea patches of green. The chimes of the [tower's] clock indicate the pulse of Vallarta life; while the ringing of the church's bells marks ceremonies of both celebration and solemnity, and brings crowds that in the December festivities [ensure that] the surrounding streets become true human rivers.

NEXT: Part II

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Winter Round-Up

Can you believe it’s been over six years since I did a “round-up” post? Time sure flies.

So without further ado, here’s a “round-up” of recent (and not-so-recent) online articles and commentaries that I’ve found to be of particular interest. Perhaps you will too!

______________

The first piece I highlight this evening, though four years old, sadly remains relevant today.

In it, Marlow Stern reviews the 2016 HBO documentary film, Meet the Donors: Does Money Talk?, which, writes Stern, “is a fairly non-partisan examination of the corrupting influence of money in politics, and how the American political system is no longer a democracy but rather a plutocracy.”

Elsewhere, Stern writes: “When you have an obscenely large amount of money required to run for President of the United States combined with the ruling of Citizens United, it’s given us this nightmare scenario where corporations and the uber-wealthy wield disproportionate power over elections, and by extension government as a whole.”

To read Stern’s full review of Meet the Donors, click here.

To view the trailer for this documentary, click here.


_____________________________

A more recent article on this same issue was published by The Guardian in July 2018. Written by David Callahan and entitled, “American Elections Are a Battle of Billionaires. We Are Merely Spectators,” this piece notes the following.

Ordinary citizens without big bank accounts . . . certainly play a role in the outcome [of elections]. We cast the votes, after all. But more and more, US politics – along with civic life broadly – often feels like a spectator sport, as a growing array of billionaire super citizens battle it out in the public square. . . . Depending on your politics, you may either cheer or fear the influence spending of specific top donors. In truth, we should be troubled about all such spending. Thanks to several factors, economic inequality seems to be translating into civic disparities at a faster pace and in ways that touch more parts of US society.

I particularly appreciate the closing words of Callahan's article:

There’s no easy way to counter the rising power of these super rich citizens. Campaign finance reform would help, but influence spending now extends far beyond elections, as philanthropy has been weaponized for policy combat.

Ultimately, the best solution to the new civic inequality lies in stronger social movements that convert Americans from spectators to activists. And one of the most reassuring trends of recent years is we’ve seen a lot of such people power, including the Tea Party, Occupy, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.

Now we need more of the same, extending to more issues and more places – especially the core challenge of economic inequality. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how the United States can escape from a new era of plutocracy.

To read Callahan’s article in its entirety, click here.


_____________________________

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial acquittal, here are some words of insight and, yes, encouragement and hope from Andre Damon. They're excerpted from his recent article, “Trump Gloats Over Impeachment, But Popular Opposition Mounts to His Administration.”

By this point, no one should be under any illusion as to what Trump represents. American capitalism has vomited up a figurehead who expresses its most predatory and criminal features: its greed, violence, backwardness and ignorance. Trump represents the intersection of two powerful impulses within American society: the parasitic growth of social inequality and US imperialism’s perpetual war drive.

. . . Millions marched to oppose Trump in the wake of his inauguration. He remains hated, with an approval rating among the lowest of any post-World War II president. His crimes against immigrant children, his racist overtures to fascists, his advocacy of torture and his sadistic militarism have made his name a profanity, a synonym for vulgarity, criminality and brutality.

The processes that created Trump – above all, the unprecedented growth of social polarization and economic inequality – have also created the social basis for his removal. Millions of workers throughout the United States live in hardship and oppression, toiling every day for the enrichment of the oligarchy, totally excluded from political life, yet yearning for equality, peace and democracy. This broad popular opposition to Trump must find expression and will find expression.

To read Damon’s article in its entirety, click here.


_____________________________

According to recent polling, Trump’s approval rating is at its highest in the wake of his acquittal. For instance, a recent Gallup poll found that Trump’s job approval rating was at 49%, which is the highest it’s been since he took office. I appreciate historian Manisha Sinha's perspective on all of this, one which she shared recently on Democracy Now!

Well, you know, polls come and go, and it would be interesting to see who conducted the poll and how it was conducted. As a historian, I tend to take all these things with a pinch of salt, and it’s just literally a snapshot in time. All the polls predicted that Trump would be defeated, and in fact he ended up winning the Electoral College.

I disagree with Senator McConnell. I think Trump will be damaged goods, that this impeachment, the ongoing investigation, the Bolton revelations, as they come out, will eventually swing the pendulum against Trump. I don’t think this is good for Trump at all. I think the entire impeachment process revealed not just the corruption that everyone knows about, not just, you know, the kind of behavior that demeans his office that everyone knows about, but it revealed a person who was willing to sacrifice national interest and security – something that the Republicans actually used to value – for personal gain. This is not even for his private enrichment. You know . . . he and his family have been flouting the emoluments clause of the Constitution by personally enriching themselves after his election to the presidency. But this is actually even worse than that kind of crude corruption. This is literally playing a game with the country’s security, with the country’s democracy. And that, I think, is extremely troubling. I think that that will eventually penetrate.

"[T]he Republicans today remind me a lot of the Democrats in the 1850s. And remember, you have to simply flip parties’ ideological roles when you talk about the 19th century, because the Republican Party was the liberal, progressive party of anti-slavery and big government, and the Democratic Party had become the party of slavery, white supremacy and states’ rights. You know, they just voted along partisan lines. They voted egregious laws protecting slavery, because they had a foolproof majority in Congress, and many times they had the – in fact, most of the times they had the presidency. And then, of course, they went down to a deep defeat, and they were able, eventually, to reinvent themselves in the Progressive Era, the New Deal era and finally with civil rights. Will the current GOP be able to do that? I doubt it. I think they have adopted a strategy of sinking and swimming with Trump. Let us see how far that gets them.

To listen to and view Manisha Sinha’s full interview on Democracy Now!, click here.


_____________________________

I was quite moved by Kate Willett's recent piece in Elle in which she makes the political profoundly personal by relating the tragic story of her boyfriend Raghav, one of the roughly 45,000 people who die every year in the U.S. from not having health insurance. It is both this personal and societal tragedy that compels Willett to support the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and his Medicare for All platform. Following is an excerpt:

I used to think supporting Sanders would also somehow make me less of a feminist. Now I know that couldn’t be further from the truth – my feminism needs to fight for women who don’t have $500 a month to spend on health insurance premiums, for single moms working three part-time jobs and still not making ends meet, for women who can’t leave an abusive marriage because her insurance is tied to her husband’s job. In 2016, I thought Bernie was prioritizing economic issues over women’s issues – now I understand that they’re connected.

Contrary to the Bernie Bro narrative, the growing progressive movement in this country is multiracial, includes all genders, and is full of people who care deeply about creating a better world for everyone, including future generations. Anyone telling you otherwise is likely not on your side. I even kind of like when Sanders yells now, because he’s yelling for me. He’s yelling for Raghav.

To read Willett's commentary in its entirety, click here.


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Okay, a change of topic. . . . As a gay man who has never felt drawn to the gay male hook-up scene, I found Lester Brathwaite’s article, “Why I’ve Given Up on Hooking Up” to be both insightful and affirming. Following is an excerpt.

[The process of hooking up’s] emphasis on anonymity and masculinity . . . engenders internal homophobia in the gay male community. Nevermind what sex between two (or more) men actually entails, we’re taught from a young age to embrace that which is manly and shun that which could be perceived as its antithesis. Femininity is weakness, is undesirable, is a boner-killer if there ever was one. From the ludicrously inflated pecs of Tom of Finland to the sculpted torsos on Grindr, gay men have always prized the hyper masculine, but this exaltation of all things manly forces those of us who don’t necessarily fit within those rigid gender constructs to make one of two choices: rebel or conform. I’ve tried both and I can say from experience — it takes a real man to be a queen.

I had my first flirtation with hookup culture back in high school — pre-Grindr, pre-Manhunt, maybe even pre-Craigslist – when XY (the now-defunct magazine for twinks and their admirers) had an online personals section. Then I was just coming into my own as a gay and I bought my occasional copy of XY with more than a little shame. I’d sneak onto my friend’s computer, excited to find others like me. It was all so new, but even then I remembered being confronted with the reality of the internet’s sway on people’s attitudes and mores: “No blacks, no Asians, no fats, no fems.”

The inherent racism of gay male hookup culture masquerading as a “preference” akin to height or hair color is an issue I’ve struggled with since then – and have grown weary discussing – but it’s incidental to my argument here. Being online and having a world of men at your fingertips with a wall of anonymity between you and them makes us all awful people. It reinforces unreal body expectations, encourages the enumeration of ideal qualities/deal breakers, and contributes to the further disconnectedness of my already disconnected generation. I’ve spent countless hours, whether alone or in the company of friends I rudely ignored, staring intently at my phone, slavishly yet listlessly flipping through the same profiles, wasting my time and poking holes in my self-esteem for what? Sex? Maybe. Love? Hardly. Validation? Probably.

. . . [I]t’s up to me to attempt to make real connections in the real world. Because through this process [of giving up hooking up] I realized the most important thing – that all those apps and sites aren’t real. I always attempted to see the headless torsos as real people, but they’re just the versions of the people they want to be. That’s why the connection online and in-person is often lost in translation: you can’t carry on a relationship – strings attached or not – with someone who doesn’t exist.

To read Brathwaite’s article in its entirety, click here.


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Lester Brathwaite's piece above reminds me of another thoughtful and insightful article I read a while back and bookmarked on my computer: LeRon Barton's essay, “Men and the Need to Be Vulnerable.” Following is an excerpt:

I have been pondering a question for some time: what if we let men be themselves? Without any of the societal pressures, role assuming behaviors, or passed down expectations? What if we did not force men to succumb to any of the actions or conventional behavior of what a man is supposed to be? What if we just let men be free from all the identity destroying expectations we have placed on manhood? As I ask myself that same question over and over in my head, I have come to the conclusion that one of the ways to get to this point is to not shame men for showing vulnerability.

There is a stigma, a thought held with all of us, that if a man shows any kind of vulnerability he is not a man. This vulnerability can come from fear, pain, weakness, upset, or being in need of any kind of emotional help. This is taught to us at a very young age. Women are allowed to be emotional creatures, expressing any feeling they want. Men – we are supposed to be strong all the time. If we cry we hear, “Stop that, crying is for girls,” “Shake it off, it’s nothing”, and the ever present “Man Up.”

If there was ever a phrase that has severely hurt men’s growth, it is “Man-Up.” To say that to an adult male is one thing, but to hear that as a child is another. I cannot tell you how many times in one way or another I have heard that phrase. It’s almost as if boys are not allowed to feel any kind of discomfort, or that being hurt is one of the rites of passage of growing up to be a man. Having older people say that to a young boy, as well as shit like, “Pain is weakness leaving the body”, can and does have a negative effect. It forces men to bottle up our pain until it comes out – either through substance abuse, extreme behavior, violence against our partners, or ourselves. This teaching to young men discourages any type of real closeness between fellow boys. The friendships that result in this usually involve machismo, bravado, and alpha male chest pumping.

I didn’t start having deep friendships until my mid-twenties. For me up until that point, friendships meant talking about music, cars, video games, movies, sports, and women. It was nothing too deep because we are all frontin’ like we got it all together. This is what we thought being a friend was all about – getting drunk, fighting, picking up women, calling women bitches, helping them fix their car, and talking crap. Any attempt to go beyond that was met with being called a sissy, mama’s boy, and “talking like a bitch.” This was all we saw men doing. It wasn’t until I started seeing confident brothers of all races talking about more pensive things, not putting down women, not expressing this fake bravado, that I began to question my upbringing and manhood.

A turning point for me was when I heard one man say to another man: “I love you.” It was so casual, so natural. Two male friends had been having a conversation and as one was leaving the party, they gave each other a hug and the other friend said it. This guy was so secure in himself. He was self-assured and didn’t worry about anyone thinking he was soft, weak, or gay. I admired that about him and from that moment, I wanted to emulate that. Shortly after, I dropped the phony tough guy act that I was never good at anyway. That was the moment I decided I wanted to be better, more evolved person.

As I started to become more in touch with who I am, I started to like myself more. One of the first things I did was accept who I am. I am a sensitive guy; I always have been. I care very deeply and sometimes I am moved to tears. I realized there is nothing wrong with that. Men are human and crying is a part of life. Once I started being completely honest with myself, it was easier for me to express what I felt without worrying about what people thought. It is not easy, especially being a young Black man, but at some point I said, “Screw it, this is who I am.”

To read LeRon Barton’s essay in its entirety, click here.


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The terrible bushfires in my homeland of Australia continue, and over the last couple of months (since last I wrote about them) there have been a number of well-written and insightful articles about the role that both the climate crisis and the actions of the pro-fossil fuel Australian government have played in these unprecedented fires.

Rachael Bunyan, for instance, wrote the following in her November 21, 2019 article for TIME magazine:

The conditions Australia experienced earlier this year count as the most severe in its modern history. Scientists have long warned that increasingly hot and dry climates, the result of the climate crisis, will lead to a worsening of wildfires around the world. And we are seeing the effects in Australia with unprecedented early fires. The wildfires also aggravate climate change by destroying treats that could absorb carbon in the atmosphere. “Climate change is a likely factor,” argues Peter Thorne, a climate change expert at Maynooth University in Ireland. “It’s changing the odds because it’s hotter and is drier on average in the summer in Australia.”

At first, [Australian Prime Minister] Scott Morrison acknowledged the contribution of climate change has had on the bushfires in Australia. “These are things that are very well known to the government — the contribution of these issues to global weather conditions and to conditions here in Australia are known and acknowledged,” he said. “In February [2019] I acknowledged the contribution of those factors to what was happening in Australia — amongst many other issues.” But, he then argued that the actions of Australia are not impacting the bushfires.

. . . Morrison has faced criticism this month for avoiding the issue of climate change by a group of former Australian fire chiefs. They said that the government “fundamentally doesn’t like talking about climate change” and that politics is getting in the way. “Just a 1 C temperature rise has meant the extremes are far more extreme, and it is placing lives at risk, including firefighters,” Greg Mullins, the former chief of NSW Fire and Rescue, said on Nov. 14. “Climate change has supercharged the bushfire problem.”

In his January 3, 2020 op-ed in The New York Times, Australian author Richard Flanagan provided an insightful and eloquent summation of the ongoing bushfire disaster and the underlying dysfunction of Australia's political scene, one dominated by a conservative government's climate crisis denialism, a massive propaganda machine (in the Murdoch press) and the lack of an effective opposition. Following is an excerpt.

Incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the coal industry, a big donor to both major parties – as if they were willing the country to its doom. While the fires were exploding in mid-December, the leader of the opposition Labor Party went on a tour of coal mines expressing his unequivocal support for coal exports. The prime minister, the conservative Scott Morrison, went on vacation to Hawaii.

Since 1996 successive conservative Australian governments have successfully fought to subvert international agreements on climate change in defense of the country’s fossil fuel industries. Today, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of both coal and gas. It recently was ranked 57th out of 57 countries on climate-change action.

In no small part Mr. Morrison owes his narrow election victory last year to the coal-mining oligarch Clive Palmer, who formed a puppet party to keep the Labor Party – which had been committed to limited but real climate-change action – out of government. Mr. Palmer’s advertising budget for the campaign was more than double that of the two major parties combined. Mr. Palmer subsequently announced plans to build the biggest coal mine in Australia.

. . . Mr. Morrison has tried to present the fires as catastrophe-as-usual, nothing out of the ordinary. This posture seems to be a chilling political calculation: With no effective opposition from a Labor Party reeling from its election loss and with media dominated by Rupert Murdoch – 58 percent of daily newspaper circulation – firmly behind his climate denialism, Mr. Morrison appears to hope that he will prevail as long as he doesn’t acknowledge the magnitude of the disaster engulfing Australia.

Mr. Morrison made his name as immigration minister, perfecting the cruelty of a policy that interns refugees in hellish Pacific-island camps, and seems indifferent to human suffering. Now his government has taken a disturbing authoritarian turn, cracking down on unions, civic organizations and journalists. Under legislation pending in Tasmania, and expected to be copied across Australia, environmental protesters now face up to 21 years in jail for demonstrating.

“Australia is a burning nation led by cowards,” wrote the leading broadcaster Hugh Riminton, speaking for many. To which he might have added “idiots,” after Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack blamed the fires on exploding horse manure.

Such are those who would open the gates of hell and lead a nation to commit climate suicide.

Also, Tripe J’s Hack program shared the following in its January 6, 2020 piece on the fires:

Conservatives routinely blame the Greens political party, environmentalists in general, or simply green-tinged state laws for preventing government agencies and private landholders from carrying out prescribed burns [a common form of bushfire hazard reduction].

However, bushfire experts roundly reject this argument. Professor Ross Bradstock, the director of Wollongong University’s Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, described it as a “tired and old conspiracy theory,” while [former NSW fire and rescue commissioner] Greg Mullins said ex-fire chiefs were annoyed that the fires were being used for political attack.

“That the Greens are stopping burning – it’s actually not true,” he said. “This is the blame game. We’ll blame arsonists, we’ll blame greenies.”

Even Alan Jones – the conservative radio host who is no friend of the left – this week said the Greens have been “unfairly blamed.”

And finally David Chadwick wrote the following in “Bushfires and Blame”:

Another embarrassingly stupid false narrative is that The Greens are somehow responsible for these fires because they stop hazard reduction burns. There is a seductive appeal to these lies, because accepting them is going to be a lot more comfortable for many people than admitting they have been wrong about climate change. Even so, it’s a really stupid argument. Despite the fact, that the Greens do not have a position against back burning, or hold majority government in any state, this narrative (which has repeatedly debunked by fact-checking) has been pushed so hard by unscrupulous politicians, shockjocks and newspaper hacks (if you work for The Australian I’m probably talking about you) that some people are falling for it. Sadly, some people don’t just drink the conservative Kool-Aid Rupert Murdoch and his goons provide. They practically swim in it.

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I conclude The Wild Reed's Winter 2019-2020 round-up with the hopeful words of Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, the founder and chief executive of Ocean Collectiv, a consulting firm for conservation solutions grounded in social justice, and the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities. Johnson was one of five climate change experts that The Huffington Post spoke to at the end of 2019 about what gives them hope.

I have a tenuous relationship with hope these days, but I am certainly bolstered by the fact that we already have all the solutions we need. From renewable energy, to replanting ecosystems, to regenerative farming, to retrofitting buildings, to electrifying transportation, to reducing waste – we don’t need to wait for new technologies, we just need to get to work. Plus, much of that doesn’t require the federal government, and there is so much beautiful and creative work happening at local levels just waiting to be replicated and spread.

I’m also aglow about what I call the “feminist climate renaissance” that we are witnessing. There have always been women leaders on climate issues, but they are now, finally, starting to get the resources and platforms they need to flourish. The youth climate movement is led primarily by girls and young women, and there are two older generations of women standing right beside them. The notable thing about these women leaders is how collaborative and generous they are. I’ve never seen anything like it in work or in a movement.

As for 2020, I’m looking forward to having a new president, one who prioritizes climate action and puts us on a fast track to zero emissions. And my . . . wish is for every American to read the Green New Deal. The big secret is that it’s only 13 pages – double-spaced and large font! So I hope you’ll cozy up with it this [winter] season so that as a society we can all have an informed conversation about how to shape the policy changes we need to secure a livable climate.

To read the hopeful insights of the four other climate change experts interviewed by The Huffington Post, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed Round-Ups:
• Fall 2014
• Summer 2011
• Spring 2010
• (Australian) Summer 2009 II
• Summer 2009
• Spring 2009
• (Australian) Summer 2009
• Fall 2007
• Spring 2007
• End of Year (2006)

Opening image: Hugh Jackman as the Drover in Australia (2008).

Photo of the Day

Image: A dancer at La Noche Lounge and Rooftop Garden Bar, a popular gay establishment in Puerto Vallarta's Old Town. (Photo: Michael J. Bayly)

Update: For more images, click here.

Quote of the Day

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The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a Senator-juror, I swore an oath, before God, to exercise “impartial justice.” I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong.

. . . [T]he President’s insistence that [Joe Biden and his son Hunter] be investigated by the Ukrainians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit. There is no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the President would never have done what he did.

The grave question the Constitution tasked senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did.

The president asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival. The president withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.

What he did was not “perfect.” No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.

. . . [M]y promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience. . . . [W]ith my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me. I will only be one name among many, no more or less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the President did was wrong, grievously wrong.

– Mitt Romney
February 5, 2020

Related Off-site Links:
Mitt Romney: A Profile in Courage as the American Republic Dies – Michael Hamer (Michael-In-Norfolk, February 5, 2020).
Romney Cites Faith as Inspiring His Vote to Convict Trump – Jack Jenkins and Emily McFarlan Miller (Religion News Service via National Catholic Reporter, February 6, 2020).
“Not Guilty”: Trump Acquitted On Two Articles of Impeachment As Historic Trial Closes – Philip Ewing (NPR News, February 5, 2020).
The Senate Has Spoken: U.S. Presidents Can Abuse Power Without Consequence – Sasha Abramsky (TruthOut, February 5, 2020).

UPDATES: Mitt Romney Just Showed Trump How a President Should Act – Brian Rosenwald (The Week, February 6, 2020).
Historian: With Impeachment Acquittal, the GOP Has Given Trump a Blank Check to Do Anything He Wants – Democracy Now! (February 6, 2020).
“A Pretence of Justice”: The Global Press on Trump's Acquittal – Jon Henley (The Guardian, February 6, 2020).
Donald Trump and His Democratic Opponents Are Grappling With Life After Impeachment – David Lipson (ABC News, February 6, 2020).
Trump Gloats Over Impeachment, But Popular Opposition Mounts to His Administration – Andre Damon (World Socialist Web Site, February 7, 2020).
American Democracy Is Dying – Ryan Cooper (Common Dreams, February 8, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quotes of Note Regarding the Senate’s Impeachment Trial of President Trump
• Quotes of Note Regarding the Impeachment of President Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on Corruption in U.S. Politics

Something to Think About . . .

Related Off-site Links and Updates:
Nancy Pelosi Rips Up Trump’s Speech After Divisive State of the Union Address – Joan E. Greve and Ed Pilkington (The Guardian, February 4, 2020).
Fact Checking Trump’s Claims in His State of the Union Address – Josh Boak and Hope Yen (Associated Press via PBS Newshour, February 4, 2020).
State of the Union 2020: Trump Just Gave Americans a Lesson in White History – Jessica Machado (Vox, February 5, 2020).
Trump’s State of the Union Was a Terrifying Game Show Stunt – Elie Mystal (The Nation, February 5, 2020).
Amnesty International USA Responds to Trump’s State of the Union Address – AmnestyUSA.org (February 4, 2020).
Forget Trump’s Lies, Here’s the Real Economic State of the Union – Robert Reich (Common Dreams, February 6, 2020).
Trump’s State of the Union Speech Was a White Supremacist Vision of America – Jonathan Capehart (The Washington Post, February 7, 2020).
Nancy Pelosi Rips Republicans for “Normalizing Lawlessness” in Scathing Op-Ed – Lee Moran (The Huffington Post, February 8, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Opposing the Trump Administration’s Inhumane Treatment of Immigrant Families
• Marianne Williamson: “Today Is a Day of Shame”
• Demanding Justice and Embodying Compassion for Separated Families
• On International Human Rights Day, Saying “No” to Donald Trump and His Fascist Agenda
• Trump’s America: Normalized White Supremacy and a Rising Tide of Racist Violence

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly (Puerto Vallarta's Old Town).

Thoughts on the Eve of the Iowa Caucuses

Ahead of tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses, economist Paul Krugman recently had an op-ed in The New York Times in which he makes the case that in terms of policy, it really doesn't matter who the Democrats choose as their presidential nominee.

Writes Krugman:

It’s still far from clear who will come out on top in the primary, but it’s enough to think about what would happen if either of the two current front-runners, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, were to become president – and also have strong enough coattails to produce a Democratic Senate, because otherwise nothing will happen. . . . It matters hugely whether a Democrat wins, it matters much less which Democrat wins.

[M]y main point is that Democrats should unify, enthusiastically, behind whoever gets the nomination. Any moderate tempted to become a Never Bernie type should realize that even if you find Sanders too radical, his actual policies would be far more tempered. Any Sanders enthusiast tempted to become a Bernie or Bust type should realize that these days even centrist Dems are pretty progressive, and that there’s a huge gap between them and Trump’s G.O.P.

By and large I appreciate Krugman’s perspective. Yet I think the key difference between a Biden and a Sanders presidency escapes Krugman’s attention. It’s to do with who each would choose for their cabinet secretaries and other professional advisors. It’s key because their choices would reflect how they see the fundamental problem facing the U.S. today and to what degree they intend to actually address this problem.

From everything I've seen and read of Biden (and other “moderate” Democrats such as Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg), the problem is understood as Trump; for progressives, on the other hand, Trump is the most repugnant symptom of the problem.

And what is this “fundamental problem” for progressives? It’s that for the last 40 years or so the U.S. has devolved from the rule of the people (democracy) into the rule of money (plutocracy). I’ve long concluded that the various individual/personality traits of the candidates are secondary to how a candidate understands and names this fundamental problem before us.

I’ve also come to observe that what distinguishes moderates from progressives at this crucial time is that progressives very clearly understand that the fundamental problem facing the U.S. is indeed the movement away from democratic and humanitarian values to such things as the primacy of stock holders, the power and influence of moneyed interests and lobbies, and various other destructive characteristics of the neoliberal economic doctrine which first emerged in the late 1970s. Moderates, on the other hand, still very much embrace neoliberalism and believe that tweaking the system here and there is all that’s needed. By doing so they may be softening the negative impacts of the system on some but the overall result is that they are simply managing the country’s economic and moral decline. And it is this decline that makes the electorate susceptible to authoritarian populism, as the rise and presidency of Donald Trump has shown. We need a much more radical (i.e., deeper and fundamental) pattern disruption to the political and economic status quo. I also think that the average American understands this, despite what the corporate media and the mainstream political establishment would have us believe. (Examples of this "pattern disruption" would be the overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and the establishment of publicly-funded federal election campaigns.)

In commenting on Krugman’s article on The New York Times website, Joseph Dibello puts it is way:

Dr. Krugman seems determined to draw a false equivalence between Sanders and Biden regarding their views on Social Security and by extension, the social safety net. . . . The fact is that throughout his career Sanders has been one of the most vociferous opponents of cuts to the social safety net. He has also consistently woven this critique into his opposition to our regime-change military interventions. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has been a consistent player in the co-opting of the Democratic Party by financial and corporate interests, to the detriment of all but the top quintile.

Another thought: I identify as a progressive, but as Erin McCarley points out in her recent open letter to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the meaning and use of this term has been purposeful maligned by the mainstream corporate media to mean “fringe” and “extreme.” Moreover, by McCarley's reckoning, I'm actually a centrist/moderate.

Writes McCarley:

Proposals like maintaining social security, increasing the minimum wage, providing universal healthcare coverage, protecting the environment for future generations, and making college accessible to young people are not radical positions! These are centrist positions because a majority of Americans support them. These positions would have formed a basic policy platform for an FDR administration. What the corporate media calls left-wing is actually moderate, by any recent polling on these basic social issues. Americans have really not moved so far to the left in their support for Bernie Sanders. But the Democratic Party has moved consistently and unrelentingly to the corporate right. In its alliance with the corporate, neoliberal ruling-class, the Democratic Party is now hardly distinguishable from the Republican Party in its level of corporate corruption. It’s no wonder voter turnout rates in this country have been so pathetically low.

Finally, Barbara Smith, one of the preeminent black feminist activists in American history, recently endorsed Bernie Sanders as president. In doing so, she said the following.

Of all of the people who are running, Bernie Sanders is the person whose political commitment most closely reflects and align with political commitments that I’ve had throughout my life. He has a much deeper understanding of what the situation is, why we have injustice and inequality and oppression and discrimination or whatever words you use to describe a society that isn’t functioning the way that it should be functioning. He [has] the most incisive, sharpest understanding of where all that comes from.

Related Off-site Links:
On the Big Issues, Bernie Sanders Is the Only One Who Can Save America – Juan Cole (Informed Comment, February 3, 2020).
The Candidate Who Best Represents Me Is the Only One Saying It's About Us – Cari Hernandez (Common Dreams, February 3, 2020).
Tom Perez Stacks the DNC Deck Against Progressives – Daniel Boguslaw (The New Republic, January 28, 2020).

UPDATES: Technical Difficulties in Iowa Caucuses Lead to Widespread Confusion and Delayed Results – Sara Morrison (Vox, February 4, 2020).
Dude, Where’s My Vote? – Alice Herman (Common Dreams, February 4, 2020).
Why the Iowa Mess Is So Incredibly Damaging to Democracy – Chris Cillizza (CNN, February 4, 2020).
Iowa’s Lesson: Political Parties Are Not as Good as Government Officials at Counting Votes – Jessica Huseman, Jack Gillum and Derek Willis (Pro Publica, February 4, 2020).
Iowa Should Be a Warning – It’s Time to Switch to Paper Ballots – Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman (TruthOut, February 4, 2020).
The Catastrophic 2020 Iowa Caucuses Could Be the Final Nail in the Coffin of the Storied Political Tradition – Grace Panetta (Business Insider, February 4, 2020).
Pete Buttigieg Declares Victory in the Iowa Caucuses With Zero Percent of the Vote In – Sonam Sheth (Business Insider, February 4, 2020).
Sanders Campaign's Internal Caucus Numbers Show Them Leading Iowa, With Biden a Distant Fourth – Ryan Grim, Aída Chávez, Lee Fang, and Akela Lacy (The Intercept, February 4, 2020).
2020 Iowa Caucus: President Trump Recaptures Overwhelming Iowa Republican Support – William Petroski (Des Moines Register via USA Today, February 4, 2020).
Iowa Caucus: “I'm the Winner” says Trump Amid Democrat Chaos – BBC World News (February 4, 2020).
Iowa Caucuses: Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders Take Lead – BBC World News (February 5, 2020).
Majority of Democratic Voters “More Likely” to Vote for Bernie Sanders After Iowa Caucuses: New Poll – Jason Lemon (Newsweek, February 6, 2020).
Popular Vote Proponent Pete Buttigieg Claims Victory in State Where Another Guy Got More Votes – Tim Dickinson (Rolling Stone, February 7, 2020).
Bernie Got the Most Votes in Iowa, Which Means He Won Iowa – Ben Burgis (Jacobin, February 7, 2020).
Democrats Seek to Suppress Sanders Victory in Iowa – Patrick Martin (World Socialist Web Site, February 7, 2020).
Iowa Autopsy Report: DNC Meddling Led to Caucus Debacle – Tyler Pager (Politico, December 12, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Case for Bernie Sanders
• A Thank You Letter to Marianne Williamson
• Progressive Perspectives on Joe Biden's Presidential Run
• Beto, Biden and Buttigieg: “Empty Suits and Poll-Tested Brands”
• Pete Buttigieg, White Privilege, and Identity Politics
• Quote of the Day – October 19, 2019
• Quote(s) of the Day – February 26, 2019
• Hope, History, and Bernie Sanders (2016)

Photo of the Day

Image: Michael J. Bayly (Puerto Vallarta's Centro neighborhood or colonia).