Will, Meet Way

 

Gathering in Asheville yesterday to hear Bernie Sanders
Photo Anderson Clayton

Bernie Is Burning It Up in North Carolina Today

 

Last night in Wheeling, W.Va. Bernie speaking on his "Fight Oligarchy" Tour

Bernie Sanders is holding rallies today in Greensboro and Asheville as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.  He's focusing on how the Medicaid cuts in the "Big Beautiful Bill" will impact rural hospitals and working-class families. You know who else agrees that a medical crisis is ahead? Sen. Thom Tillis, who voted against Trump’s BBFU because "it will end Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians" and “tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”

I'm obliged to remind everyone that in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primary on March 3rd, Bernie Sanders got over 69% of the vote in Watauga County, to Hillary Clinton's 29%. There are 20 voting precincts in Watauga County. Bernie Sanders carried every single one of them, from the most rural and conservative to the Boone and Blowing Rock precincts. 

Tell me he doesn't still speak for a very large segment of the voting population.

This is what resistance looks like.

FOOTNOTE

Should have included this: The Asheville rally is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday at the Harrah's Cherokee Center.

Bernie and AOC

 

Whether you supported Bernie Sanders or AOC in the past is largely irrelevant. What they are doing right now matters. They are giving voice to the frustration felt by Democrats across the country. They are providing an outlet to that frustration at rallies that bring people together.

--Thomas Mills, "The Resistance Is Rising" 

My household voted for Bernie Sanders in the North Carolina Democratic primary of 2016. Bernie won every single precinct in Watauga County in that primary, taking the whole county from Hillary Clinton by over 69% of the vote. I heard my share of "shame! You Socialist!" from certain quarters for supporting Bernie. Some Hillary supporters still bitterly blame Bernie for her defeat that fall.

Bernie's star, especially among the young and the unaffiliated, has diminished not at all, and though he's not going to run -- at 83 -- for president again, he's made himself the spearpoint of organized protest and a rallying point for all Democrats (especially those who need to get over their previous spite).

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a favorite object for mockery and satire among Republicans, but it just rolls off her. She has a joyful manner of shrugging off the slings and arrows, and she talks a plain language both familiar and electrifying. But some moderate-to-conservative Democrats, who are regularly spooked by thoughts that someone might think them "radical" or "extremely liberal" -- the perennial debilitating self-consciousness of old liberals who've lost touch with their ancient values -- those Democrats get the political "willies" at the thought of pushing AOC to the front of the stage.

Caution is not the tonic we need right now.

The Cost of Defeating Trump at All Costs

 

Guest Blogging: Drayton Aldridge

Around this time last year, the Democratic Party was in the midst of a heated debate over the direction the party needed to take to defeat Donald Trump and move the country forward. Early on, it was an exciting primary campaign defined by ideas. Bernie Sanders appealed to young and working-class voters with a bold agenda centered around economic, social, and environmental justice. Elizabeth Warren released a string of proposals that balanced progressive ideals with pragmatic solutions. Andrew Yang built a small but devoted following around his Freedom Dividend, a proposal to ease economic anxiety and spur innovation by giving every American $1,000 a month. And it wasn’t just the anti-establishment wing of the party offering big ideas. Democratic stalwarts like Jay Inslee and Julian Castro also got in on the fun with ambitious proposals on the environment and immigration.  

 

In the end, however, this campaign was never going to be about big ideas or any ideas at all. With a deranged psychopath occupying the White House and terrorizing blue America with every tweet, many Democratic voters simply were not interested in debating the intricacies of healthcare or tax policy, much less bringing about a political revolution. They wanted one thing and one thing only: to defeat Donald Trump at all costs.

 

Joe Biden decided to seek the presidency in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He promised to restore character and decency to the White House and heal the country after four years of bitter division. He offered Democrats a politically moderate, demographically low-risk (i.e., older white male) candidacy bolstered by strong poll numbers against Trump and the good will engendered by eight years as Barack Obama’s right-hand man. Other candidates had more buzz, more inspiring platforms, and stronger debate performances, but the Biden campaign bet correctly that most Democratic voters would forgive all of this if he could convince them of his electability. Biden’s nomination was not a foregone conclusion, and for a few weeks in February of 2020 it looked as if Democrats might get behind the far more revolutionary candidacy of Bernie Sanders. But by early March the party faithful had coalesced around Biden and before long his nomination was assured.

 

Democrats decided on a candidate but they never decided what kind of party they wanted to be. The big ideas were shelved and the soul-searching was postponed indefinitely. Instead, they focused their efforts on the singularly important task of defeating Donald Trump. To Biden’s tremendous credit, he delivered. Though the margin was considerably closer than the blue team had hoped for, Biden rode his message of character and unity to an electoral college victory. But this message came at a cost.

 

At the core of Joe Biden’s campaign was the idea that Donald Trump is an aberration from the great bipartisan tradition of American politics. This message implicitly cast Trump as separate from other Republicans and made those Republicans out to be decent enough people. Biden reinforced this message by playing up his own unique ability to work with political adversaries such as Mitch McConnell. Again this painted an unhelpful picture of Republicans as statesmen willing to compromise for the good of the country. The narrative worked well enough for Biden’s prospects but at the cost of letting the most dangerous Republican Party in American history off the hook. With messaging like this, it’s little wonder so many Americans voted for divided government.  

 

Joe Biden’s campaign did little to lift the Democrats down ballot, but the Democratic Party didn’t do much to help itself either. In what should have been an all-hands-on-deck year of record voter registration and get out the vote efforts, the party significantly pulled back its in-person voter outreach because it didn’t want to confuse its messaging on Covid-19. Instead, the party confused its messaging on whether it has any interest in winning elections. The party failed to articulate a meaningful agenda aside from being anti-Trump, and it failed to take Republicans to task for their damning record of treachery, corruption, and failure. Instead, in this most momentous of American elections, Senate and House candidates ran on such insultingly vacuous ideas as “access” to healthcare and “following the science” on climate change. Most of them lost, and they deserved to lose.  

 

There must be a better way. Surely the Democrats have the capacity to defeat a historically disastrous Republican Party all the way down the ballot while also championing a popular humanitarian agenda. If not it’s going to be a long and agonizing slide into the abyss. I’m not sure how many more of these victories the Democratic Party can take. 

 

Maybe the Graveyard Is Whistling Past Us

I shouldn't write anything until I see results tonight from 14 states. I shouldn't. I won't. I will.

The political party to which I belong is so goddamn fearful of the threatened blossoming of its own purported values that it is getting itself ready and psyched up to snatch the presidential nomination from Bernie Sanders, if it should come to that.

I posted results from a poll that showed a fear of "socialism" ranking higher than the fear of death among a significant portion of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The very possibility of either a President Sanders or a President Warren (either!) rattles their timbers, though they are themselves prime beneficiaries of the very socialism they fear. The logic of that shivers my timbers.

Is there a psychologist in the house? I also think the Democratic leadership -- office-holders, Super Delegates et al. -- are mainly fearful of what it might mean to them personally if a popular revolt broke out in Democratic ranks for structural change to the levers of power -- scattering the money-changers and driving them from the temple. Oh my Gawd! Democratic pharisees are kind of in league with the money-changers, and get their money from them, but how to turn back a revolt from below? Oh, yeah. The pusher for change must be a "socialist." A dreaded socialist. Actually, probably a Commie.

Why, what would happen, O my brethren, if equality actually broke out? Expensive furniture thrown from high windows, torches in the street, hot tar and a big basket of feathers? Bankers and corrupt corporations, ridden out on rails?

It's a turnoff, the fear of the Democratic establishment amplified by cable TV (which is a calvacade of corporations, after all). It's not entirely that Joe is old and seems it. It's that he's backward (or "moderate," if you insist). Joe Biden's actual promise is to take us back in time to an Obama/Biden "decent" era, which was actually to me the embodiment of a hesitant, good-ish gradualism that took pains not to piss off Wall Street. That ain't the restoration to me.

Fear of socialism among the age group most set to receive its benefits through Social Security and Medicare -- the blessings of help for the sometime helpless, delivered via social contract which required -- or should require -- the cooperation of the rich -- Failure to recognize the irony amounts to political malfeasance. I'm embarrassed for my immature juniors, the Boomers, and for the Democratic establishment.

It Gets Worse

As a part of the Democratic Party establishment, I certainly see -- how could I miss it? -- that the party establishment and many of its leaders are having a nervous breakdown over Bernie Sanders. Like, they're on the threshold of a psychogenic fugue state, "characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality" (thank you, Wikipedia!).

Chris Matthews on MSNBC (than which there is no more corporatist-infused talking head available on your home receiver) warned on Saturday that the Bernie movement's taking of Nevada is like the Nazis army taking France. Democratic congresspeople, especially the ones elected in 2018 in former Trump districts, are singing various versions of "When I have fears that I may cease to be," little cries for help to save them from the potential "socialist" at the top of the ballot.

“In 30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with so much doom and gloom,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way after Sanders' win in Nevada (Politico).

I have good and old friends in the Democratic Party far and wide, and many of them agree that Bernie Sanders is an existential threat (God how I hate that term) and that a Sanders nomination will equal a Trump second term. Many Republican Party activists and operatives also believe it, that they're headed to a GOP landslide if Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee. "Why, we could take back the House!" Can't you imagine the advertising: "Socialist! Socialist! Socialist! All the way to the bottom of the ballot."

Democrats since the Age of Reagan are terrified of being tarred by words. Lib. Libtard. Hippy extremist. Latte elite. Democrats were never as good as the Republicans at labeling the enemy. I get it. I've always understood the vulnerability of candidates, especially the ones who really don't have mature political philosophies and are already afraid of their shadows, but damn it! I also understand the folk wisdom of "sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never kill me." You either take a stand or you don't.

So some of those good old friends of mine maybe think I've slipped into early onset pudding-brain, as I acknowledge openly that a political meteor is about to smash our ground. It's too late to turn it back. A meteor doesn't brake. People are fed up. They already were in 2010 too and got what they most desired in 2016. Trump's triumph was not just Russian bots. It was also people fed up with some of the same shit I'm fed up with, only their fed-upness is layered in with God and guns and abortion, and that's not my bag. Plus they worship dictators. But can't you recognize the resistance and instinct for revolution among the MAGA crowd as at least a cousin to the new voter resistance and rebellion now fueling the Bernie Sanders movement?

Meanwhile, with some Democratic presidential candidates trying to make nice with corporate power, courting the big bucks by being "moderate," or while even being billionaires themselves, billionaires with plenty of buying power, the panic in the establishment is that the old pitches don't sell, the moderate, "Third Way," "radical pragmatism," DLC-backed brand that Bill Clinton embodied. The Democratic pragmatism that made Clinton a Wall Street co-dependant and told Obama he couldn't have single-payer healthcare. That brand of "progressivism" doesn't play any more because it was -- or became -- a fraud. 

People are fed up. Many of them haven't even bothered to vote in the past. Many aren't registered to vote, but they're getting registered -- youth, minorities, single women, and Millennial professionals who've seen their prospects trend downward. They could rise in numbers that might swamp the authoritarians now in power. Can it happen? Will it happen? I don't know. Neither do you. But that's what I'm rolling the dice for.

People are fed up. Since at least 2010, they've intended to force a reshaping and realignment of the American power structure. For Trumpsters, that means putting in a strong man authoritarian. For the new voters of 2020, it means maybe putting in a democratic socialist. Those fed-up people, maybe already an overwhelming majority, either gets a major political overhaul of the power structure, or we really do face the butt end of the Republic with a butt as dictator.

Choose what you fear. I cannot fear an emerging democratic majority.

Something's Happening Here

There's something happening here

What it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

--Stephen A. Stills, Buffalo Springfield

True confession: I'm a radical at heart. It's a biblical radicalism. I learned from Jesus that upending the money-changers was a damn good idea (takes a righteous dude to pull that off, but Lord! the negative publicity!). Radicalism comes from the Latin word for root, radix, getting to the root cause of what ails you. The main premise of my radicalism (just like Jesus!): the love of money is the root of all evil.

But a long time ago, I became a regular Democrat, and not just any regular Democrat, loyal to my party through good times and gawdawful scandals, but an establishment Democrat with a party position to prove it. That status and responsibility diluted my stronger juices into a more pragmatic but weaker tea of incrementalism -- can't always have what we want and don't always get what we need. Just be patient. There's another election coming up in two years. 

Anand Giridharadas

So I actually heard myself one day advise a candidate not to go too far out, nor too far in (if you get my drift), because American conservatism has been dominant now since Reagan, and who wants to get beat to a pulp as a "liberal" Democrat, when that doesn't have to be an issue? Especially in my rural Southern district. (As a Democratic executive officer, I'm going to have to support whoever ends up as our presidential nominee, and that truth has given me the heebie-jeebies and the occasional panic-attack.)

What happened is that swerve into moderation made us sometimes unwilling participants in a system of cash, influence, and power, which was understood as the only way to thrive politically. We watched fellow Democrats go corrupt for money, and we winked. Because in a plutocracy -- which is what we've managed to allow -- money became the only way to play, so when the Clintons sold the Lincoln bedroom, they were just doing what everyone else had been doing, and when Obama hired the very economists whose plutocratic policies had taken us over the clift in 2008, why, he needed those Wall Street guys because he didn't know how the economy worked. Buying into the billionaires' headspace about finance and taxes and power, and how power is wielded and for whose benefit, has been a muddy rut for way too many contemporary Democrats for way too long. And Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar all continue to court that crowd. Didn't I hear that even Elizabeth Warren has decided to accept Super-PAC money. Buttigieg appears to be the billionaires' "top choice." 

None of that political expediency cuts it any more. Why would I decide to vote for the first time for more of the same?

"There are candidates who would leave undisturbed the opportunity to create wealth on that scale [the scale of Mike Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, etc.] and who encourage the private solution of public problems." (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

Incrementalism. Smacks of being sold out.

But something is happening here that explains both the election of Twitterman almost 4 years ago and the movement behind Bernie Sanders right now, even bigger than 2 years ago. Resentment of wealthy elites among the MAGA crowd got twisted up with an undeniable racism unleashed by the rich demagogue who once got laughed at in public by a black man who should never have gotten into the White House. With Bernie Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren too), the rage is against the whole corporate structure of American life, against government and corporate policies that are written to keep the powerful in power.

"Your health insurance hasn’t somehow, mysteriously been made too expensive; your brick-and-mortar store hasn’t somehow, mysteriously been undercut. Someone did those things to you, probably by rigging the system to secure an undeserved advantage." (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

The turnout of first-time voters in the Nevada caucuses is worth looking into -- fully half of the record turnout had not voted before. New voters also drove the record turn-out numbers in the recent New Hampshire primary. Rachel Bitecofer has been predicting this for months, the surging of new voters who want to throw over the establishment, scattering the money-changers from the temple, and don't we see it happening? A blossoming of anger (an emotion stronger than mere enthusiasm) at the very system of our inequality, and an unwillingness to fall in line with Democratic incrementalism.

Today a vocal chunk of the Democratic electorate is gravitating to a strikingly different conclusion: that America would actually be better off reducing its billionaire population through taxes and profit-trimming regulations.

Ballooning anti-billionaire sentiment is galvanizing billionaires [too]. Some have been motivated to go on television to cast their critics as naïve and un-American. Others donate to centrist candidates like Mr. Biden, Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who serve a cocktail of down-home incrementalism shaken with wealth defense. But it took a special billionaire — Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York — to find a more direct way to thwart ascendant progressives. He is seeking to buy the election.  (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

Mr. Giridharadas was a guest on "AM Joy" this morning, saying stuff like what he wrote in the editorial linked above. The host of the show, the other guests -- all of whom were rationalizing the basic fungibile virtues of a Bloomberg candidacy -- became a little panicked at his warning that "Something's happening here," and little wonder since the major news media are actually (and sometimes unwittingly) guardians of that economic status quo, whether they admit it or not. Giridharadas wrote, "Do you trust a news media that sells advertisements to corporations owned by billionaires, and sometimes to billionaire candidates directly, to inform you properly about the level of power billionaires have and what to do about it?"

No. No, I do not.

Rachel Bitecofer Makes Me Nervous

Rachel Bitecofer is a 42-year-old political scientist who teaches -- and writes extensively, disruptively -- at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. She is rather unique among her prognosticating brethren for coming within one US House seat of nailing the Blue Wave of 2018. She predicted a Democratic gain of 42 seats. The Democrats took 41. She got it right, according to David Freedlander (Politico.com), "even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall." While all the other analysts were saying, "Oh the Democrats are going to screw this up. They are overreaching. They are going to get 23 seats if they're lucky" -- Bitecofer was the too optimistic one who was right.

Reading her analysis both jazzes me and scares the God-blessed living shit out of me. Because what Bitecofer predicts for 2020 in red Trump counties -- and I'm surrounded by blood-red western North Carolina Trump counties -- is that the Trump vote will likely increase over 2016. There aren't enough "soft Republicans" to make a difference for Democratic candidates, and right-leaning independent (Unaffiliated) voters will be leaning harder right, as their hatred of Democrats congeals like lard. The Republican coalition -- mostly non-college whites, with a smattering of religious-minded voters, financiers, and people in business, largely in rural and exurban counties -- is now -- following impeachment -- not only mad as hell but they're scared, too, of what could come next after a rejection of Trump. 

With a red wall building for this November, if there's not enough left-leaning and otherwise previously disinterested voting-age population who will commit to vote in sufficient numbers to overtop that red wall, there's little hope for Democratic campaigns in districts rated "Safe Republican" (and that label applies to most of western North Carolina). What is a political "wave," anyway, but the working of "negative partisanship," an instinctive human reaction to extreme departures from the norm. Bitecofer relies on "negative partisanship" to explain the Democratic wave of 2018. She sees "negative partisanship" as an almost genetic American inheritance -- a pushing back against whoever's in power. In 2018, it became a wave of revulsion to a plain awful human being -- his cruelties, his double-dealing, his willful and destructive ignorance.

Negative partisanship is not exclusive to Democrats. In 2010, it was the Tea Party wave of revulsion against the government spending of a black man. The Tea Party wave became the Trump surprise of 2016. "...Modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place." 

Turnout explains everything. Turnout of new people entering and exiting the electorate rather than people switching sides. What drives that kind of turnout in major "change" elections? "Negative partisanship." Shorter definition: Mass expression of instinctive human emotion rejecting an ideology or a personage.

The Chuck Todd Theory of American Politics

"About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of 'swing voters' who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side."

Bitercofer laughs at that. The swing voter -- at least in appreciable numbers -- is largely a myth. “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment -- it's just not true.”

As she sees it, it isn’t quite right to refer to a Democratic or Republican “base.” Rather, there are Democratic and Republican coalitions. “In the polarized era, the outcome isn’t really about the candidates. What matters is what percentage of the electorate is Republican and Republican leaners, and what percentage is Democratic and Democratic leaners, and how they get activated,” she said.

Isn't really about the candidates. Bitecofer has said that any one of the Tier 1 or Tier 2 Democratic candidates can -- and will -- win against Trump, but more recently on Twitter she's hedged a bit on both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, calling them the riskiest options for Democrats. Alarmingly, Sanders failed to turn out his promise of record numbers of new voters in the Iowa caucuses this week, and Biden represents too much the status quo. “If you want to win the election, you have to be able to frame your candidacy in a way that reminds voters that Trump is an abnormality that must be excised,” Bitecofer said.

I realize that Bitecofer has critics.

Bitecofer hasn’t exactly been clairvoyant: Her original Senate prediction was off in 2018. She didn’t anticipate the surge in GOP turnout that would match the surge in Democratic turnout in places where the demographics still favored Republicans. She thought Democrats would win Florida, and maybe even Texas, and that the Georgia governor’s race was winnable. What she didn’t count on at the time was that negative partisanship can work both ways, even when there is one party in power, and that no one knows how to fire up the fear factor in his coalition quite like Donald Trump. He did just that, and Blue Dog Democrats in Missouri and Indiana and South Dakota were done for.

But still, the results bore out her theory: For Democrats to win, they need to fire up Democratic-minded voters. The Blue Dogs who tried to narrow the difference between themselves and Trump did worse, overall, than the Stacey Abramses and Beto O’Rourkes, whose progressive ideas and inspirational campaigns drove turnout in their own parties and brought them to the cusp of victory.

The Democratic coalition -- people of color, college-educated whites, and people in metropolitan areas -- has got to grow in 2020, and appreciable growth in rural jurisdictions is sometimes just plain impossible.

Finding a new voting cohort -- including college students, for example -- the "step-up" voters, the previously disengaged, the young, especially the educated -- is far easier in urban areas. I don't like feeling apprehensive about that, never mind my little blue dot of Watauga County.

On Being a Partisan Democrat in the Age of Bernie

The Times of Israel

I was just reading about the plight of Maine Senator Susan Collins, running for her 5th term in the US Senate while dragging the heavy steamer-trunk baggage of her vote putting party-boy Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. I actually found myself feeling sympathy for her. I feel sympathy because she's a good person saddled with loyalty to her party (loyalty to the point of saying she'd still again vote for Mitch McConnell as her Majority Leader). 

I take some heat for loyalty to my party. I've been called "just another partisan Democrat" by conservatives, and that's the absolute truth. But I'm not a partisan hack. I break with the leaders when breaking's called for, like over principle -- I still have some -- or over political realities. Obama pissed me off more times that I can now remember, and there was plenty of evidence of that on this site. Obama was wrong -- or weak -- as Obamacare got hammered out. He was right and strong about many other things. 

I'm loyal to my party but not to the extreme of a Susan Collins, not to the point of putting a tookus lingus like McConnell in charge of the Senate or an arrogant prick like Kavanaugh on the Supremes.  

But because I purportedly act on principle at least some of the time, my failure to do it all the time -- that's where I take the most heat, especially from activists who declare "It's Bernie or Bust!" Because I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primaries and generally approve of his ideas, some of my closest friends assume that I should be supporting him for president in 2020 -- I'm not, nor am I yet supporting anyone. 2016 was then. This is now. New actors, new scenery, new plot.

I'm accosted daily that Biden -- not to mention every other Democratic presidential candidate whose name isn't Bernard Sanders -- is, and has always been, a conservative dupe about radical change, like every "moderate" who's fooled about what "moderation" really amounts to -- shoring up a corrupt status quo. Biden's a resister of real change because he's as indebted to the corporate masters as any Republican hack -- just like Hillary was -- which makes Joe Biden just another part of the problem not the solution. I'm warned daily that if the nominee is Biden, none of the Bernie supporters will follow that parade, nor will "the young people," and Trump will surely be reelected. 

About me, truth is if Biden is the nominee, I'll be working for him as hard as I ever worked for Hillary, or for Obama before her, because I'm a loyal Democrat (who incidentally believes that a broken clock would be better in the White House that what we have now, who isn't even right twice a day).

Loyalty means taking the not-pure on faith as something incrementally better than what we have. I have sympathy for those demanding purity of purpose as well as purity of personal history -- I've been there. I was young. I wouldn't compromise. I was an absolutist with fire in my eye. If any politician ever said anything wrong ever in his life, it meant I could hold it against him for the rest of his life.

I ain't quite like that any longer.

I'm not big on conspiracy theories, and I'm not big on purity. Clearly, some of the people running for president right now under the Democratic label are unacceptable to me, but they're not threats to anyone, really (unless national polling and big assumptions turn out to be totally and palm-facedly wrong). Any of the top current five or six, I could support and work for, though I'll be a lot more rattled and nervous if it's Biden.

He's too old, and now his fumbles with language seem like the fumbles of old age and advancing superannuation. He looks obsolete, especially when he starts defending Obamacare. Who wants to hear that? Not in an age of other, more interesting health-care proposals.

Biden's a good man (just like Susan Collins is a good woman). I've always liked him, his working-class pimples and warts, his straight-arm counter-punches, even when some of them go wide. He's got a good heart, and I care about heart.

But Generations Y and Z don’t really know him that way. They were teenagers, or younger, when he was vice president -- which just makes him some vague appendage to the big man Obama, about whom they remember much more (and virtually none of it negatively, like I do).

Southern Cities Trending More Progressive

William Bell, Mayor of Birmingham since 2010 and heavy favorite to win reelection, was defeated last Tuesday by progressive insurgent challenger Randall Woodfin, a 36-year-old former board of education president endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

In the August 22 primary, Woodfin had led the 12-candidate field with 40.84 percent of the vote. Incumbent Mayor Bell ran second with 36.55 percent. Pundits thought the people would once again rally around Mayor Bell. They didn't.

Bell, a lawyer, had served on both the Birmingham city council and the Jefferson County Commission before being elected mayor in 2009 in a special election to replace former Mayor Larry Langford who was convicted of corruption. Bell was re-elected twice more in 2011 and 2013. Bell touted his economic development policies, but challenger Woodfin brought youth and his own reputation for fighting corruption.

Woodfin defeated Bell with 58 percent of the vote on Tuesday.

The Bernie Sanders org, Our Revolution, was on the ground in Birmingham for Woodfin. “We sent nearly 8,000 get-out-the-vote text messages to supporters and sent over 70 volunteers to his campaign” ahead of the August primary, said Diane May, communications director for Our

Randall Woodfin

Revolution Then for the runoff last Tuesday and according to The Intercept, Our Revolution made over 1,000 calls and sent 11,000 text messages to voters. Sanders himself phoned in robocalls for Woodfin. The Woodfin’s director of field operations was an alum of Sanders’s 2016 campaign.

I'm a little vague on what propelled Woodfin to the win, but here's the smoke: “Randall Woodfin ran on the idea that the people of Birmingham have a right to demand a government that truly works for all its people, and that a city can provide opportunity and lift up those who’ve been left behind,” Joe Dinkin, national spokesperson for the [Working Families Party] said in a statement. “Woodfin is part of a wave of local candidates around the nation who are running on bold, transformative, progressive visions and winning.”

"He seeks to make community college free for students who graduate from Birmingham’s high schools. He wants to expand pre-K, and invest in public transit and job training .... He is also looking to boost the city’s police force; Birmingham has the seventh-highest homicide rate of cities of over 100,000 people. He had his own personal connection to the city’s sky-high crime: His nephew was shot and killed during the course of the campaign. The boy’s father, Woodfin’s older brother, was killed in a shooting five years before that."

Primary Results

Some takeaways from yesterday's primary:

1. Ted Cruz outpolled Donald Trump in Watauga.

2. The total Democratic ballots cast yesterday in Watauga = 1,181 more individual ballots than the total Republican ballots case for all 13 presidential candidates (including "No Preference").

3. Bernie Sanders buried Hillary Clinton in Watauga. The interest in that race obviously explains # 2 above.

4. Incumbent NC House Rep. Jonathan Jordan easily beat challenger Lew Hendricks, which is too bad.

5. Second-time Democratic candidate Sue Counts easily beat challenger Ronnie Marsh.

6. Franklin Graham's tool Deanna Ballard edged the vastly more qualified Ken Boham in the Dist. 45 NC Senate Republican primary, 52.96% to 47.04%. Boham should have won it.

7. Former Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker won his Secretary of Labor primary and is well set up to take on and beat incumbent disgrace Cherie Berry, "the elevator lady."

8. Ron Elmer, the more qualified candidate in the Democratic primary for Treasurer, took Watauga County but lost the state to Dan Blue III, who can still win the general election on the strength of his name alone.

9. Linda Coleman won the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor. Watauga County went for  her opponent Holly Jones, a Buncombe County Commissioner.

Why I'm Voting for Bernie

I've tried to stay out of this, at least publicly, but with Donald Trump now pretty much assured the Republican nomination, what would be the point of remaining politic (adjective: "seeming sensible and judicious under the circumstances") when the world is turning upside-down?

The last head-to-head fantasy match-up poll I saw had Bernie Sanders beating Donald Trump. It had Hillary Clinton losing to Trump. That's upside-down. How could such an over-qualified and historic candidate lose to such an unqualified and dangerous "reality star"? And how could an old, grumpy socialist beat the billionaire braggart?

Not that I'm swayed by polls or even pay them much attention at this point in the political cycle. But that poll is a bell wether. It signals this year's zeitgeist (noun: "the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time"). The voters are hating on "establishment types" (noun: "losers") and will no longer countenance them.

Hence, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump is a bully with a bully's instincts. Sanders has the contrasting instincts that I want infusing my nation, let alone my nation's government.

Hillary Clinton is "establishment," and in my judgment, she cannot win against Trump. Hillary Clinton is bespoke. She's been Wall Street's creature for years, and she was tailored by the establishment for the establishment. That's a fashion I cannot follow in this year of the anti-establishment hostile takeover of politics.

Can These Bones Live? (Ezekiel 37:3)

Joseph Palermo, a history prof, offers an indictment of sorts of the contemporary national Democratic Party (which I certainly endorse) and a prophecy going forward if things don't change (hat tip: GC):

Right now we are facing one of the worst configurations of unchecked corporate power, militarism, market fundamentalism, and environmental crisis than at any time in our history, and the messaging coming from congressional Democrats right now appears to be that becoming Republican-Lite is the smart path forward.

Palermo's forecast of what the new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, combined with the old Republican majority in the U.S. House, will attempt come January seems pretty likely:

The Republican-controlled 114th Congress will attempt to privatize everything from the U.S. Postal Service to Social Security. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his associates will try to gut every social program that benefits working people from Food Stamps to Medicaid. They’ll snuff out sustainable energy investments and plow ahead with expanding fossil fuels. They’ll figure out new ways to sell old wars. They’ll push austerity for anyone who can’t afford to attend a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser. They’ll push “free trade” deals that outsource jobs while leaving American workers holding the bag. They’ll slash unemployment insurance and other “entitlements.” And they’ll ensure that our economy continues to work for the benefit of the richest 1 percent.

Meanwhile, what does (and did) the Democratic power players in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac do, the Claire McCaskills, the Mary Landrieus, the Kay Hagans?

Unlike the Republicans, Democratic politicians seem to always neglect the care and feeding of their own base. They’re quick to turn against any organized movement from the Left – be it Occupy Wall Street, the World Climate Movement, teachers’ unions, students’ organizations, environmentalists, or the protesters acting in solidarity with the African-American community in Ferguson, Missouri – yet all the while they expect to win their votes.

Which brings Palermo and us to 2016 and the prospects of Hillary at the top of the ticket:

Unless Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders jumps into the Democratic primaries and caucuses and give the party’s base something to vote for, the Democratic constituencies will limp into 2016 just as uninspired as they were 2014. The Republicans’ cynical structural advantages they’ve institutionalized in recent years — infinite access to dark money, gerrymandered districts, voter suppression of minorities and young people – will stand rewarded and putting the brakes on the incessant move toward corporate oligarchy in this country will be even harder to fight back against.

It may be slightly different in North Carolina, with a profoundly disappointing first-term Republican governor running against a power-house Democrat who does not yet appear afraid of his own shadow, unlike those national party types.

A Genuine Folk Hero

...Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who talked for nearly nine hours on the floor of the Senate Friday against the Obama administration's decision to continue the Bush era tax cuts to millionaires -- and make them worse.

By Friday night, Sen. Sanders was at the top of Twitter's "trending topics," the true mark of post-modern buzz.

What did Sen. Sanders say?

"You can call what I am doing today anything you want. You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long speech. I am not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides....

"Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income -- more than the entire bottom 50 percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent.... [Figures subsequently verified by PolitiFact, just incidentally]

[The top 1 percent say...] " 'How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We've got the money, we've got the power, we've got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That's the world, get used to it.' Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks....

"It has been a very long day. I do believe that if the American people stand up … I think we can defeat this proposal. I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class."