Bernie Sanders, a man who wants to be president, gave what may be the greatest political speech in his years on the Senate. Perhaps in his life.
It’s wasn’t a Four Score or Ask Not speech. It was more a Screw You speech. It was a blistering condemnation, linked here, of his Republican counterparts, who hesitated on the $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid package because some feared that, by increasing unemployment for four months, some Americans would be tempted to stay home instead.
I highly recommend watching it. It’s less than three minutes long, but is as powerful an argument for the working class as Mr. Chips ever made in Washington. It’s a prima facie argument for why Sanders should be president.
And why he cannot.
If Donald Trump has proven anything to Americans (besides how much bronzer a human being can slather on), it’s that the real power in American politics resides in the Senate. Consider: Donny Dimwit would have been impeached and jailed had two GOP senators found a spine and/or conscious.
Bernie has both. He simply is too good to lose from the team.
Think of it in football terms. Bernie makes a great quarterback, more so than Chuck Schumer. He captures the frustration of Democratic Americans in a way that most in southpaw politics can only envy. He’s the blue state Trump, just with a working front lobe.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, has been out of the game for four years. He won’t alter the precarious ledge on which the ruling party in the Senate teeters.
And, let’s face it: A president has no real position on either political team other than mascot, an animated booster who agrees with decisions made on the field. Worse still: The position of president has become that of a high-paid free agent. Again, let’s use the Trumpster: Do you believe he represents the values of the Republican Party? He’s taken the GOP and made it his own cult. Republicans will regret hitching their wagon to a retarded mule, braying at a tree for getting in his way.
Besides, Sanders is so far behind in the delegate count for the nomination, the race may already be over. He’s already conceded his candidacy is in review. And watching him carve up the Senate — which ultimately sided with him — it’s clear congressional debate floors are his wheelhouse.
The seven-year-old daughter of the wisest soul I know had one question when Mom asked child who she would vote for in the Democratic primary if she had a vote.
“Which one has a cat?” the girl queried.
From the mouth of babes. (Perhaps) unwittingly, her question underscores the embarrassment of riches — and choices — facing Democrats this election year.
Consider the GOP slate of top contenders when they were vying for the top office. A brain-dead brain surgeon. A Senator who fries his bacon on AR-15 muzzles. A Senator who suffered the greatest flop sweat since Broadcast News.
And of course, Agent Orange This isn’t just low-hanging fruit. These are coconuts, rolling off the truck and down the street, ripe for the scooping.
Now consider the Democratic slate: two successful (and legitimate) billionaires, the former vice-president to America’s first African American Chief Executive; an eloquent, gay mayor with Mideast war experience, and a Senator whose looniest notion is Medicare for all.
And we haven’t even gotten to the best candidate: Elizabeth Warren.
This endorsement is wholehearted, but the girl was right. Their pets could as well be the deciding factor in who to choose. Even if one owned a rabid baboon, they’d still get my vote should they win the nomination. You know, since we’re currently presided over by one anyway.
But look closely at the Democratic candidates, and you’ll see Warren’s story arcs eerily similar to our last Democratic president. And both are, at their core, un-corporate American success stories.
Warren grew up in a working class home and neighborhood. She began her career in education. She is criticized for being too ponderous, too deliberate, and too detailed in her answers.
Warren’s victory would be as equally historic as Obama’s, though you’d never know that from the 24/7s. It’s wonderful that the news has paid no attention to the popularity of Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, two Jewish contenders who would be the first from their faith to become president (remember when being Catholic was a deal breaker?)
But let’s not underplay Warren’s story so much that we forget its history. America tried to elect the first female president four years ago (and her 3 million+ margin of victory should have been the end of the electoral college). An arguably stronger candidate has taken her place, only without the scandals. There are no Burismas, NDA’s, stop-and-frisk scandals in Warren’s closet, so far as we know. Her undressing of Bloomberg in the debates demonstrated she can scrap with a billionaire.
She’s also laid out her plan as president to the smallest details (perhaps too small for a U.S. electorate). But just her first two oaths of her prospective administration — that it will not hire any current lobbyists and that it will not hire employees of for-profit federal contractors — are enough to counteract the nepotism and cronyism that has left the country on life support (literally if coronavirus isn’t brought under control).
Warren, too, is about as progressive as America is ready to go. While Sanders has been refreshingly blunt about his political status — he considers himself a “democratic socialist” — it won’t be long until the GOP labels all his supporters socialists. We do the same thing with Republicans, calling them Trumptards. Well, this outlet does. It’s just so damn on the money!
Warren is just to the right of Sanders, to the left of Biden. Both her and the Biden administrations are more likely to close some of political divisions that riddle the political landscape and draw lawmakers from across the aisle, if not make red states competitive in the Senate. It’s hard to picture Sanders suturing wounds with those in MAGA hat country.
Oh, and in answer to that child’s brilliant question: Most of the candidates have dogs. And Warren’s is a Golden Retriever named Bailey, who accompanies her and her husband on countless campaign stops. ‘Nuff said.
Finally, Warren represents where we are as a nation. The time has never been more right for women to take the reigns. They took the streets with #MeToo. They took Hollywood predators (and others in boardrooms and high-rise offices) off those streets. What would be more fitting — more American — than to pound an authoritarian rapist into the gravel?
Oh, and a side note from my mom, a secret progressive in South Carolina. She reports that, on the cusp of the S.C. primary, Trump was in her state, pleading for them to vote Bernie in what he’s termed “Operation Chaos.”
He’s right. However you vote, vote. Be heard. Cause some chaos. Just not where he expects it.
The Chicago Tribune is usually a fine paper. Founded in 1847, it was once referred to as “The World’s Greatest Newspaper” (until the New York Times took that mantle in the mid 1900’s, and it remains a vigorous daily. It has a weekday circulation of 439,731 — up 6 percent over last year, a loaves-and-fishes miracle in today’s climate. It’s won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, including in 2008 for Investigative Reporting, “for its exposure of faulty governmental regulation of toys, car seats and cribs, resulting in the extensive recall of hazardous products and congressional action to tighten supervision,” according to the Pulitzer committee.
Which made today’s op-ed piece baffling. Columnist John Kass called for Elizabeth Warren to drop out of the presidential race, arguing that Bernie Sanders has a better chance to stop former vice president Joe Biden. “Sanders has the necessary authenticity,” Kass declared. Warren “turns off working-class families.”
I’m not sure what Kass is citing as evidence, but it clearly isn’t logic. After obtaining a college degree in speech pathology and audiology, but before enrolling in law school, Warren taught children with disabilities in a public school. She is Massachusetts’ first female senator. She shot to national attention at her first Banking Committee hearing in February 2013, when she pressed banking regulators to say when they had last taken a Wall Street bank to trial. “I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial’,” she famously noted. She’s married to a teacher, is the mother of two and the grandmother of two. What, my dear Mr. Kass screams working-class turnoff to you?
This is not to besmirch Bernie. He and Warren are neck and neck in Democratic polls, each without about 15%, roughly half of Biden’s poll rating. And this is before our first political primary, which often mandates the political currents in an election year. And you want her to fold? Please, John, invite me to your next poker game.
No, the answer is more nuanced and, admittedly, risky. But Donald Trump has incumbency on his side, which could very well clear his path for a second term. Nineteen presidents have sought reelection since 1900: Of those, only five have lost. So brace yourselves for more weaponized ignorance. Dems will have to throw a haymaker punch, and Trump may have shown them how.
If Orange Julius has taught us anything about elected office, it’s this: Voters are as warm to traditional American politics as they are to the metric system. He may be a pederast and ignoramus, but Trump has demonstrated that excising decades-old political norms work. No job experience? No problem. Moral and financial bankruptcy? Where do Republicans sign up? Trump is the living incarnation of H.L. Mencken’s idiom: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
So why not give Americans what they clearly want: something new. Instead of having Biden, Bernie and Warren duke it out in a traditional primary skirmish that will invariably leave all battered, why not tag team this bitch? If we’re entertaining ludicrous notions of folding up camp 20 months out, why not entertain the opposite? I’ll exclude Biden from this notion, as he is looking as gray and mumbly as Donnie Dimwit. But imagine if Warren and Sanders announced tomorrow that if one wins the presidential nomination, the other will be his/her vice-presidential pick? It would be a gambit, no doubt. But consider for a moment the potential reward:
It would make picking a vice president less anti-climactic. Quick, name Hillary Clinton’s choice for VP (it’s Tim Kaine). The choice is always a dull letdown, typically made in the hopes of securing a swing state that ultimately has little effect on the overall election.
It would keep the base energized. Remember how angry Bernie supporters were when Clinton muscled him out of the race? Those people did not vote, opening the door for Trump and his minions. Obama rode an energized base into office; it’s time for a recharge.
It would demonstrate unity. This one is tougher to picture, but try: A politician makes a campaign promise — then keeps it! Dems have been deft at rallying against Trump, but not so gifted at working with one another, which is why we have no clear path from the left on gun control, a medical insurance overhaul, or even lobbying reform. It’s one thing to make a pledge, but who thus far has a reputation for keeping one?
It would make for a moving target. One thing the GOP does well is come up with monikers, insults and excuses to discriminate. Warren could shake Trump’s “Pocahontas” slur with an older white male counterpart, and Bernie could loosen his rep as a “get off my lawn!” geezer.
It would make the primary a newsworthy event. Combining their poll numbers would immediately put Warren and Sanders into a virtual dead heat with Biden. Biden may still win out, but news coverage of a race that isn’t already decided (as the GOP now has with Trump) would keep viewers tuned in. And given our Celebrity Apprentice commander-in-chief, America has demonstrated how much it likes to tune in — particularly if it tunes them out of reality. Give them something real (and really entertaining) to watch.
This is all blue sky pipe dreaming, I know. In all likelihood, Dems will follow established protocol, and pretend to be the voice of change in a November 2020 election that will favor Trump. But if you’re really going to try to ride into office with a pledge to shake things up, why not prove you’re capable of it before you even get there?
