Finally I Get It - Why Bernie Must Stay In The Race Until The Convention

It took The Young Turks to explain it to me... well, them and the short Bernie clip they play in this segment. Bernie cannot drop out now and accomplish his most significant goal, specifically, shifting the Democratic Party... the party platform and Clinton's expressed positions... leftward far enough to make a difference.



Bernie is not stupid, far from it. And I understand he would make a great president... if there were a way for him to get from here to there. But there's not. Any honest American (and that certainly includes Bernie) knows that the president who takes office in January will be the candidate of one of the two major political parties, Democratic or Republican, not anyone else. Bernie will not be one of those candidates... but even so he has a real opportunity from his current position to influence the behavior of one of those parties, by staying in the race all the way to the Democratic convention. If he withdraws earlier, he loses that power. If he announces a third-party presidential run, he becomes Ralph Nader writ large, almost certainly assuring a President Trump (about whom, not so incidentally, I agree with Bernie: America would collapse in chaos within a year if Trump became president).

So Bernie, smart guy that he is, does the one thing open to him that accomplishes the most significant of his goals. In support of his run... even if its success in the usual sense is certainly unrealizable... I continue to endorse him, on this site and in personal conversations, until he and his surrogates have accomplished what they can at the convention. At that point, if I'm still alive, you can anticipate a "Clinton for President" banner in the left column of this blog. Politics makes strange bedfellows, a fact that in this case I willingly accept.

Bernie Sanders For President Admirable Person Of The Year

I understand how difficult it must be for Bernie to step aside. But I hope he faces this inevitability as he has courageously faced so many others: the delegate counts simply aren't there for him, and Secretary Clinton, FBOW, will be the Democratic Party's candidate for POTUS. Considering the likely catastrophe threatening our nation if Trump should become President, Sen. Sanders would best serve our nation by ending his own run for that office.

What we progressives owe him is incalculable: the public dialog on traditionally progressive/liberal issues has moved noticeably leftward thanks to Sanders's run, and he has surely made Clinton a better candidate by engaging with her on those issues.

As ambivalent as I am about Hillary Clinton, I admit Hillary is easily the most qualified candidate between the remaining two who have a realistic chance of winning (or, in Trump's case, stealing) the presidency. I'd like to give Sen. Sanders a day or two to make his own endorsement of Secy. Clinton before I remove my own endorsement of him from this site and (as seems likely at this point) begin my advocacy for Hillary Clinton.

More as it happens...

Thomas Piketty On Bernie Sanders: The End Of The Reagan Era

‘In many respects, we are witnessing the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections,’ writes Piketty. This column is food for thought, and many of us are very hungry!

All Animals Democrats Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Trevor Timm at The Guardian reminds me... reminds us all, or informs those of you who didn't already know... that the sadly misnamed Democratic Party chooses its presidential candidate using a system that is outrageously undemocratic (small-'d'):

Even if Sanders wins the popular vote, Clinton could still get the nomination

The Democratic party decides its nominee in a massively undemocratic way – and is a ticking time bomb for the party and its voter base if Bernie keeps winning

... 

The Democratic party’s nomination will ultimately be decided by more than 4,700 delegates at its nominating convention in the summer. Most of those delegates are allocated based on votes in each state’s primary or caucus. However, the party also assigns what are known as “superdelegates” –
700 or so people who aren’t elected by anyone during the primary process and are free to vote any way they want at the convention. They are made up of members of Congress and members of the Democratic National Committee – which is made up of much of the establishment that Sanders is implicitly running against. 

According to University of Georgia lecturer Josh Putnam, superdelegates exist solely to allow DNC elites to better control who ultimately becomes their nominee. “The reason superdelegates came into being in the interim period between the 1980 and 1984 elections was to allow the party establishment an increased voice in the nomination process,” he wrote on his blog in 2009.

...

Not that anyone ever asked me, but this is exactly why I ceased giving money to the Democratic Party through the DNC, DSCC, etc., and started giving money directly to candidates' campaigns. Although I've given and will continue to give money to Bernie Sanders for President, I am nonetheless long since not officially a member of the Democratic Party. I vote straight 'D' virtually every partisan election, but I just can't handle the notion of superdelegates.

A Win For Trump: DNC Database Contractor Screws Inter‑Campaign Security Protection, Sanders Fires Staffers Who May Have Taken Advantage Of Breach, Wasserman Schultz Withholds Sanders's Access To His Own Data, Sanders Sues DNC, Etc. Ad Nauseam — UPDATED

Please read Sanders sues the DNC over suspended access to critical voter list by John Wagner, Abby Phillip and Rosalind S. Helderman of the WaPo. Then read BERNIE 2016, INC. v. DNC SERVICES CORPORATION, d/b/a DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE. That's not the whole story, but the WaPo article and the campaign's lawsuit against the DNC will give you the basics.

I had a friend, an amateur musician who fled Germany eventually to the US just prior to W.W.II. Her English was accented but formally perfect... I don't think I ever heard her commit a grammatical error or misuse a word, except one time as a device for emphasis: she said,
I IS REGUSTED!!
And so I is regusted. [sic] I am disgusted with the baldfaced attempt by the DNC to destroy Bernie's campaign by impugning his character, blaming him for an act he not only did not commit, but was not even informed of by DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz until 24 hours after the alleged blunder-or-plunder ("steal" was the word she used, IIRC)... at which time he found out who in his campaign may have poked around in Hillary Clinton's data (yes, may have, or may merely have assessed the depth of the vulnerability of each campaign's data to opposing campaigns' infringement) and fired them.

IANAL, but it surely looks to me like the DNC violated the terms of their contract with (at least) the Sanders campaign regarding informing them of the complaint in writing, giving them 10 days to attempt to resolve the matter, etc. In the lawsuit, the campaign alleges that, based on its prior fundraising using information from the voter data base, after access to that data was withheld by the DNC, the campaign was losing at least $600,000 per day in donations from Bernie supporters. (Full disclosure: I was one of 'em. Like most of Bernie's supporters, I didn't give much, but there were a lot of us.)

The real question here is just how much the DNC is legally permitted to do in behalf of former Secretary of State Clinton, who is clearly the "fair-haired girl" of the party leadership. IMHO, they have overreached their mandate and should be fined or jailed, or both.

I do not expect this to end well, except perhaps for Donald Trump, the putative Republican candidate. Sanders probably doesn't have the power (read: the money) to prevail in this lawsuit. And that means that his campaign will go to ground before it has had its full influence on Clinton's positions. No one expects Clinton to be rendered a socialist Democrat by Sen. Sanders's influence, but her positions have moved measurably leftward in small but visible ways since she has attempted to assure her ability to keep Sanders's voters after he (inevitably, IMHO) drops out.

I don't know exactly what I'll do when that sad event happens. I had planned to switch my support to Secy. Clinton as the lesser evil remaining in the race. The question now is just how angry I am at what she, or rather, her henchchair, has done. I've occasionally thought of bolting the Party at times in the last decade or more, and I can't even say right now that I won't do that if I feel Sanders has been unfairly treated.

This does not have to happen. In fact, it is easy to prevent... if only Clinton's supporters will fathom the consequences of what they are doing, and realize the inevitable reaction of Sanders supporters. Someone has to convince Ms. Clinton that it's not a done deal yet!

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UPDATE Saturday morning 12/19: the DNC has restored Sanders's access to his own data (without which he had essentially no fundraising capability). A lot of Clinton supporters are still ranting, shouting for Sanders's flesh and blood; I'm still uneasy about what happens next. But if those Clinton supporters get their pound of flesh AND their jot of blood from Sanders, I shall stay home on Election Day. Politics is NOT about destroying your own, and despite my passionate hopes to see a Democrat become president in 2016, I will not participate or cooperate in such destruction. C'mon, Hillary supporters: do the right thing; move on.

The Basic Nature Of Bernie Sanders: Sanders Saves Andrea Mitchell From Being Trampled

Mikesco at Kos:

Immediately after the debate, a huge stampede of reporters were charging towards the candidates. Reporter Andrea Mitchell, near the front of the crowd, fell down and the crowd didn't appear to slow down. There was a real risk that she was going to be trampled.

Bernie Sanders charged forwards, shouting for the reporters to make way, and was able to stop the onrush of reporters. Then, he helped Andrea Mitchell to her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

She said she was. "That was a dangerous situation," she added.

...

(Mikesco adds a link to the video. Didn't work for me, but hey, I'm running this weirdo operating system...)

This one act says, better than mere words, who Bernie Sanders is and why his motivation to become president is fundamentally unselfish. Think about the act: how many people would rush in, probably at some personal risk, to prevent a trampling? It's the decent, humane thing to do, regardless of whether it was the political thing to do.

A Kossack Explains How To Choose Between Bernie And Hillary

... and they get it just right. Please read.

I Wish Bernie Could Become President: We Need Him

Unconvinced? Watch him as he summons his poise and diplomacy to wrap the RWNJs at Liberty University around his little finger. Part of being POTUS is having all the skills necessary to engage one's own... and the nation's... adversaries face on, and walk away with more than anyone expected from the encounter. Bernie's got those skills, packed full and running over.

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Oops. That was the livestream, which was over a couple hours ago. Here is a YouTube of (I think) the same encounter.

Oops. Not the same encounter, but rather a speech on the same day in the same place with many of the same people; it makes my point.

Wednesday WanderingSCOTUS On Abortion And Gay Marriage — Breyer's Glossip Death Penalty Dissent — Piketty et al Write To Merkel — Nichols At The Nation Interviews Bernie Sanders

Here's what I have been reading on the Web (what I've been reading in a book is another matter altogether)...

• Why Abortion Is Losing While Gay Marriage Is Winning

Lauren Rankin at TPM:

It’s been a wild couple of weeks at the Supreme Court, as a notoriously conservative court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, upheld the Fair Housing Act, and preserved Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans. Progressives were stunned and delighted at the Supreme Court’s seemingly leftward tilt, cheering Justice Anthony Kennedy for his decisive vote for marriage equality and commending Chief Justice John Roberts for strengthening Obamacare’s judicial footing.

On Monday, progressives had something else to cheer about, as Justice Kennedy once again joined Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor—the liberal wing of the court—to allow 10 endangered Texas abortion clinics to remain open while the court decides whether to hear the full appeal. It was met with jubilation from abortion rights supporters who knew that, if this law had been allowed to go into effect, only nine abortion clinics would be left to service the more than five million Texas women of reproductive age. Allowing these clinics to stay open wasn’t just a progressive win; it was a life-saving order.

This move, coupled with their refusal to grant Mississippi’s request to allow them to close their clinic, all but ensures that the Supreme Court will take up abortion rights in their next term. They will likely grapple with whether TRAP laws—laws that single out abortion providers with onerous and unnecessary regulations in order to force them to close—are constitutional or if they do indeed pose an “undue burden” on women’s access to safe abortion care. Basically, the Supreme Court will likely rule on whether hostile states can close safe clinics or not. These implications are enormous.

...

• What Justice Breyer’s Dissent on Lethal Injection Showed About the Death Penalty’s Defenders

Liliana Segura at The // Intercept:

...

In its 5-4 decision Monday, the Court concluded that this drug, midazolam, despite being linked to a number of botched executions, did not violate prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights, because there was insufficient proof its use would necessarily put them at risk of an agonizing death. (The drug, a benzodiazepine, was chosen to replace barbiturates previously used as an anesthetic during lethal injection — for more, see my earlier coverage of Glossip here.)

But in an unusual and impassioned dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer read Glenn Ford’s name from the bench to illustrate why, putting particular execution protocols aside, the time has come to reconsider the death penalty altogether. “Last year, in 2014, six death row inmates were exonerated based on actual innocence,” Breyer wrote. “All had been imprisoned for more than 30 years.” In Ford’s case, he said, citing a remarkable mea culpa published by the Shreveport Times, “the prosecutor admitted that even ‘[a]t the time this case was tried there was evidence that would have cleared Glenn Ford.” This same prosecutor, Breyer noted, admitted that “at the time of Ford’s conviction, he was ‘not as interested in justice as [he] was in winning.’”

...

• Austerity Has Failed: An Open Letter From Thomas Piketty to Angela Merkel

"Five leading economists warn the German chancellor, 'History will remember you for your actions this week.' ”

• Bernie Sanders Speaks

"In his most revealing interview, the socialist presidential candidate sets out his vision for America." - John Nichols [An exceptional interview! Please go see for yourself why I feel America needs this man as President. - SB]

Bernie For Prez — DOGGEREL!

Of course, after the previous post, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat must deliver a verse advocating Sen. Bernie Sanders for President:

Bernie for Prez

Leave out all the neolib's,
Every Bush, their kids, their sib's,
Every GOPer. I've got dibs
On the man named Bernie.

Skip all guys with names like "Lincoln"
(Too Republican, I'm thinkin').
At O'Malley we're not winkin',
To that favorite son not blinkin'.
Better stick with Bernie.

For the moment, even Hil
Doesn't give my heart a thrill,
Posture: cautious, sometimes chill;
Politics: resembles Bill?
Trade: she's silent... why not spill?
Think I'll vote for Bernie.

Need a prez with knowledge vast?
One not living in the past?
One at whom you're not aghast?
One whose mind is quick, not fast?
Cool, unruffled, unharassed?
Each of you: I hope you'll cast
Your one vote for Bernie!

— Steve Bates

WSJ Article On Bernie Is Not As Unflattering As One Might Expect

"Bernie Sanders Draws Crowds With Matter-of-Fact Message," says the headline in the online edition of the Newspaper of the 1%, and I have to admit, that is what draws me to Sen. Sanders, at least as much as his policy positions: Sanders is as no-nonsense a candidate for high office as I have ever encountered.

Let me make one thing clear. I understand that Sanders will not become the Democratic Party's candidate for president. (I admit, though, I am astonished that, per WSJ, he is only "[t]railing Hillary Clinton by nearly 50 points," pretty good for a guy with scant official party backing and no history of residence in the White House.)

And I want to see a woman POTUS within my lifetime. When Sen. Sanders is, inevitably, defeated in the primaries, I shall vote for Secy. Clinton with no serious regrets.

But meanwhile, I urge you to help me help Sen. Sanders to represent the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party" (as the late great Wellstone put it, and believe me, that wing includes me) in the face of the now almost fully dominant neoliberal wing of the Party. That wing needs to hear from the rest of us, the FDR/JFK wing, loud and clear. Join me in shouting... we can be strident and undignified in a way that Bernie would never allow himself to be!

Bernie Quote

Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists. 

- Bernie Sanders, via DCCC email

Clearing The Desktop

In fact, in Ubuntu Linux 12.04 with the Gnome 3 shell, the default desktop is completely clear, and many of us keep it that way in the interest of sanity. So I'm speaking only metaphorically...

• Tesla Announces New Product To ‘Fundamentally Change The Way The World Uses Energy’ (H/T ellroon. The new product is a battery.)
  
  
• Judge Halts Work On Maryland Pipeline Due To Environmental Concerns (Don't get your hopes up; the ruling is by a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge, and I don't doubt the pipeline company has an appeals court judge securely in its pocket somewhere up the line.)
  
  
• Hawaii Will Soon Get All Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources (Give me a few minutes to pack my bags, and a few more to earn another $1m or so to live on in Hawaii for a couple of years...)
  
  
• NSA Phone Data Collection Program Revealed By Edward Snowden Ruled Illegal (What a surprise! [/irony])
  
  
• French Lawmakers Approve Sweeping Expansion Of Spying Programs (Following in America's footsteps, despite all typical wisdom of the French...)
  
  
• Can Bernie Sanders Break Through the Status Quo?
  He may have already done it, with his unapologetic defense of social democracy and assaults on the “billionaire class.”
  
  

A Presidential Candidate I Could Vote For — With A Clear Conscience

(Click for larger image)

Who else but Sen. Bernie Sanders! Apparently Sanders is contemplating a Democratic primary run against Hillary Clinton. It's not clear in how many states he would appear on the primary ballot; many states have erected unbelievably high financial obstacles to prevent independents from doing just what Sanders apparently intends to do.

Sanders is not a Democrat but an independent who has for years decades caucused with Democrats in Congress. It is very unlikely he could beat Hillary in a Democratic primary. But if he could force her to take positions even one millimeter to the left of her Wall-Street-driven propensity, that would be a very good thing indeed.

Run, Bernie, run!