It’s happening again.  Media presumptions and lazy polling are hurrying Democrats to put all of  their eggs in one basket,  Last time it was the Hillary basket.  Hillary Clinton was the easily-recognized middle-of-the- road candidate; a sure-fire fund-raiser, linked to a popular past administration.

The same can all be said of Joe Biden.

With the ugly evidence tweeting daily right before our noses, that taking a chance on a charismatic candidate with a transformative message can blow convention right out of the water, the pundits still insist that Biden is our safest bet for 2020.

Nobody seems to believe he is our “best” bet, just the “safest;” and in that i think they are dead wrong.

Authenticity is what the majority of American voters respond to.  With the entire Republican Party hog-tied and submissive to an outrageous lout, that lout remains the only authentic Republican on the national stage.  That he is authentically ignorant uncurious, apparently incapable of telling the truth and incredibly offensive to three-fourths of the population doesn’t matter, he tells his lies with an angry conviction that the Rabid Right continue to confuse with authenticity.

Democrats have many fine and qualified candidates to choose from, but only two have a history of fierce authenticity that represents a true polar opposite to Trump’s populist appeal.

Those candidates are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who have both demonstrated consistency and a career- long commitment to the ideas they are championing in this election.

As they must repeatedly remind us, the argument that Medicare-for-all is economically unfeasible is belied by the fact that in every other advanced nation, healthcare is a human right; costs are magnitudes lower than our own; and outcomes are better.  

Those who oppose universal healthcare suggest it would mean “throwing (however many tens of thousands) people off of their plans” without a safety net; but that is a complete mischaracterization.  

The template is here already.  Medicare, as a program, already exists.  There is no question but that it should be improved; but so should the Affordable Care Act, were we to continue with that template.  The only way to take control of healthcare costs is to TAKE CONTROL OF THEM.  That means negotiating costs for the entire country as a buying bloc; and ultimately eliminating the parasitic sick-care “ insurance” and hospital billing industries.  

This is a vision, not for January 2021, but for the very near future.  It will require careful planning and incremental adoption.  Democrats should start singing from the same songbook now, because they are the only party national that has any real commitment to public healthcare.  If they don’t think and articulate boldly, we are doomed to an ever less-inclusive healthcare system.  And that means we are doomed to become a poorer nation.

If Americans truly want to believe themselves better than everyone else, why do they accept a healthcare system that leaves us with cadillac costs and outcomes little better than those of a banana republic? 

We have to replace not just Mad King Donald, but the Senate Republican majority, who will surely be at their most vulnerable by November 2020, since it looks like we’re going to get that recession that’s been threatening. 

I’ll support whomever the Democrats nominate, but I have a very bad feeling about the race to anoint the least objectionable candidate.