Warren Piece

As much of a clown car as the Democratic primary season began as, the real absurdities piled up as the field winnowed. And now, thanks to a lazy, sexist media nudging a lazy, sexist voter base, the (by far) most qualified candidate has bowed out, in order that we might be afforded the privilege once again of "selecting" among a handful of elderly, cantankerous white men, some of whom may or may not be losing their faculties.

One valuable anecdotal insight the corporate media did bestow upon us leading up to Super Tuesday was the repeated observations that voters preferred Warren, but were going to vote for Biden or Sanders because of the "electability" factor. This dumb, self-reinforcing circular logic undermines the whole point of a primary, and cements the hold that the party establishment and its corporate owners hold on the public's well-being.

It is not a coincidence that all the major pharma stocks experienced a generous bump yesterday morning, or that Jim Clyburn has benefited from the largesse of that particular industry during his political career. Make of that what you will.

"Electability" is a lie. You know who was considered unelectable? Barack Obama, a black guy with a thin political résumé and a Moooslim sounding name. You know who else was considered really unelectable? Donald Fucking Trump, a ridiculous asshole and multiply-failed "businessman" who'd been making a fool out of himself for decades. All the professional pundits and common-taters said so. No one in their right mind would vote for those guys. They were gonna get their asses kicked.

So when those same brain surgeons all preach from the same "a progressive will end up like McGovern against Nixon" hymnal, I check my bullshit detector. They're constantly wrong, and still somehow employed. These are the same people that always insist that Democrats and liberals must find common ground with their opponents, but never seem to get around to even suggesting such a thing for Republicans and conservatives.

Why do you think that might be? Hmmm.... [scratches chin thoughtfully]

I wonder if -- and just hear me out here -- if we think about our perpetual electoral-entertainment-industrial complex, about who buys the ad time, who owns the broadcast entities that rent out the ad time and run the ads, what other vested interests all those entities might have, and how that impacts which politicians they might decide to support, if all those factors have anything at all to do with one another, or with why Elizabeth Warren was essentially ignored, except to occasionally hint that she might be a hectoring schoolmarm who concocted a weird lie about getting fired for getting pregnant.

I wonder.... [scratches balls thoughtfully]

The fact is that of the main candidates, only Warren and Sanders would actually do something. So Bernie becomes this insurgent commie who wrote some weird slash-fic fifty years ago, and might shoot Chris Matthews in Central Park to celebrate Che Guevara's birthday or some shit. And Warren, again, is a shrill know-it-all bitch who just reminds all the he-men out there of their first wife -- or worse yet, of her divorce lawyer.

It's tempting to blame that insane dynamic on all the media or on Trump or whatever. But the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic voting base, who collectively decided to outsmart themselves by trying to game who they thought everyone else would vote for, rather than who they actually thought would do the job best.

And so now you're gonna get Joe Biden, who has spent his entire career supporting the rackets that run the country and make American life so financially ruinous and spiritually deadening -- health care, student-loan usurers, Wall Street thieves. Hell, even Clarence Thomas.

The narrative for now is how Biden is so "smart" and "decent", and that's true enough, as far as it goes. You know who else is smart and decent? Elizabeth Warren. Even Bernie, as loud and angry and off-putting as his energy tends to be, does seem to actually give a shit about something besides himself. Joe Biden does not have the market cornered on knowing how things work, or on being a decent human being.

I understand that in a country that has desensitized itself to the daily depredations of a scummy grifter and his vile family, that qualifies as a shocker. But we got stuck with Trump for largely the same reasons -- smug complacency from the Democratic party leadership, and an inability to understand the seething anger coming up from the increasing pool of downtrodden in the glorious gig economy.

I don't know who wants to break it to Nancy Pelosi, but uh, turns out end-stage predatory capitalism isn't much fun for most people. And where Trump sussed out that anger in 2016, and got just enough people who weren't regular voters to push him across the goal line, Sanders has captured that crowd on the other side of the aisle.

Many of the Berners will indeed come over for Good Ol' Joe when the time comes, because they rightly despise Trump and the dirtbags around him. But an indeterminate -- but possibly significant -- portion of them will just stay home, because they didn't plan to vote -- they planned to vote for Bernie. Failure to recognize that and give something to them to keep them motivated is every bit as bad as their stubbornness and apparent apathy.

A.R. Moxon had a fantastic thread this morning on the illusion of "compromise" as a governmental principle. Compromise is upheld as this ideal of opposing sides coming together to find common ground and work together for the good of the country. But that stopped happening a very long time ago, and only one party seems to recognize the situation for what it is.

Republican politicians don't even pretend to reach out to Democratic voters, or even moderate Republicans, so we don't even need to bother with that notion. Democratic politicians strive for this illusory ideal of placating the elusive "swing voter" -- as if someone who is still on the fence at this late date can possibly be considered a rational actor or an honest broker -- while "shoring up" their own base. In other words, their preference is to compromise with people who will probably vote, but may or may not vote for them. But they flat-out refuse to compromise with the people who will definitely vote for them, if only you give them something to vote for, besides more of the same.

Here's a pro marketing tip for all you would-be politicians and influencers out there -- it is very difficult to generate enthusiastic support from people if your only sales pitch is to threaten them if they don't buy your product.

Best case scenario is they buy your product -- which again, offers them nothing except the dwindling possibility of preventing things from getting even worse -- and loathe you and themselves afterward. More likely is they just make a poker face, nod in mock assent until you fuck right off already, and then stay home.

Please note:  this is not at all to say that you shouldn't vote. No matter who the nominee is, no matter how much they suck, you should vote for them, and vote in all the down-ticket races as well. Biden is at least lucid enough to know what he doesn't know, and to fill those gaps with smart people, rather than dumb, greedy bootlickers. A second Trump term will be catastrophic for this country and the world, period. Both Biden and Sanders have profound flaws, and I have deep reservations about each of them. But either of them is infinitely superior to the alternative, just for the Supreme Court alone, but for so many other reasons.

That said, I also think that the Democratic Party and its principals are at best engaging in an ongoing pattern of dereliction of duty, one that can only be rectified by giving it a complete overhaul, the very second after the Republican Party is eradicated completely from the American political system.

Consider the vaunted "blue wave", and how and why they were voted in for the midterms. People wanted shit to get done. They wanted Trump's corruption and criminality investigated and prosecuted. A majority of Americans polled indicated that they wanted Trump impeached and removed.

What did the House leadership do? They balked and slow-walked it the entire way, only finally investigating and impeaching when the crimes became impossible to ignore. They cherry-picked two narrowly-drawn articles of impeachment, though there were certainly more to choose from, to keep in the chamber for backup.

And when McConnell did exactly as predicted, and moved through a sham trial, the House Dems folded and gave up. No contingency plan, no further pursuit of criminality, no impeachment of Bill Barr, even though Barr lied in his confirmation interview and has operated quite openly as Trump's lawyer, instead of the country's lawyer. Again, either the law means something or it doesn't, and inaction speaks as loudly as action.

They claimed they wanted to focus on health care instead. Okay then. So now we have a global pandemic brewing, the administration lying and covering things up, as they do. People are dying and getting sick. The labor situation is such that poor people cannot afford to take time off to go see a doctor, much less pay for treatment, which will only exacerbate the situation. We will be very lucky if this doesn't cost a large number of lives in this country; it's already claimed some.

So. What is the opposition party doing to oppose this murderous negligence? What are they doing to shine a spotlight on the open malfeasance? Say the corona virus peters out tomorrow and there are no more casualties -- the administration's handling of it has made it clear that when the "real" zombie-apocalypse death-virus does come down, the country and the world are royally screwed. They'll just ignore it until enough people have died and the economy has stopped, and then toss people into camps in a half-assed attempt to quarantine them. They are unprepared because they clearly just don't give a shit.

Where is the Democratic leadership on all that, or are they still crowing about all the bills they passed that just die on the Senate floor, thanks to Traitor McConnell's hate for this country? It really doesn't matter if you pass four hundred or four million bills, if everyone knows they're just going to sit there in a stack, while you bleat about how that sucks. Yes, it sucks. Are you going to figure out what to do about it, or are you just going to shake working people down for more money and canvassing time, so you can keep your job and continue not to fix the problem?

It says a lot about the current state of the Democratic Party that, up until a few days ago, their candidacy for the presidency had essentially been hijacked to the point that two of the top three contenders, Bernie and Bloomberg, were not even Democrats. That's a sign of a party that has lost its moorings, and is not convincing its base anymore, because it doesn't stand for anything effectively and forcefully. It makes all the expected noises, but doesn't actually accomplish anything to move the proverbial ball forward. They've always got a shitload of excuses ready, though.

These are just some of the things that Liz Warren would have actually improved and changed, without meaningless bleats about "reaching across the aisle" to open traitors, hoping to appeal to the better nature of thieves and scumbags. Maybe Biden comes around on this. I hope so. Honestly, I'm long past tired of being right about all these people. Every goddamned time.

I'll tell you something that you will rarely see any Extremely Online Person ever ever write:  I would very much like, just once, to be wrong about all of this. And I don't just defy the people that I write about to prove me wrong, I would gladly thank them for doing so.

But it starts with us, in the collective sense, to stop falling for these ludicrous people and their transparent lies and bullshit narratives, to grow the fuck up and start voting with our brains and our wallets, instead of our feelings and our fever dreams. More than anything else, that was the promise that Liz Warren brought to the table, along with the willingness to actually stand up and fucking fight for something valuable.