Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren

Bernie, Biden and the Billionaire

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Democratic presidential candidates are dropping faster than the hairs in Donald Trump’s comb-over.  In the past 24 hours alone, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both folded their tents and departed the battlefield…and despite a recent comeback, there is speculation that money problems will soon force Elizabeth Warren to join them in retreat.  

So much for the great diversity that once distinguished our Democratic roster.

After South Carolina, middle-of-the-road Democrats are putting all of their eggs in Joe Biden’s basket, rather conspicuously empty before S.C.  Now, it’s an unveiled rush to stop Bernie.

Warren will hang-on through Super Tuesday, picking up some delegates here and there, and should have some serious clout in negotiating the platform, come convention time, regardless of whether Bernie manages to weather the anti-Bernie scrum to secure the nomination.  If the Biden Bunch freeze out both popular progressives, they do so, not just at their own peril, but at the risk of ensuring Trump’s hate agenda gets another four years.

…And, what if Biden stumbles again and they push Bloomberg into the breach?

It’s easy enough for us old-timers to see how essential it is that we hold our noses and vote for the party’s pick, regardless of whom that might be; but it is shear self-delusion to expect such sangfroid from young voters who represent our best hope of decisively defeating Donald Trump this year.

Will the successful nominee have the presence of mind to choose Kamala Harris for VP?  I wouldn’t count on it.  

Our hallowed “two party system” and the imperial presidency it has engendered, seems to be careening toward its inevitable end.                                                                                                                                  ……………………………………………………………………………….

Imagine what four more years of Trump will look like.  I have. 

Trump will adopt some kind of goofy uniform to hide his shame at being a known draft-dodger. 

Using coronavirus as a lame-brained reason to exclude non-white immigrants,  he will, by ’emergency’ decree, finally close the border with Mexico. 

He’ll print a new denomination of paper money with his picture on it. It will have to be a HUGE denomination… a billion dollar bill has a nice ring to it.   That billion dollar bill will have roughly the value of a $100. bill after he finishes manipulating the currency. That way, plenty of billion dollar bills, with his picture on them, will be in circulation.  Free advertising!

After appointing a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, he’ll finally be able to do away with Obamacare, once and for all.  Instead we will be treated to his own personal product:“Great Care,”  from the newly formed entity, “Trump Insurance.”  It will replace Medicare, eliminate Medicaid and, of course, be mandatory…for a “nominal” fee.  No prior conditions need apply.

Rape, sexual harassment and discriminatory practices will be decriminalized, because “Boys will be boys.”  Punishment for violations of what few prohibitions remain will be meted out in community service sentences, to be served by clearing trash and weeds at a ‘needy’ Trump property.

Ivanka will finally get to chair the Fed and Don Jr. can hunt freely, after hours at the National Zoo…or any other place that takes his fancy.

Liberated at last from the need to smile frozenly to ‘sell’ her husband’s humanity to the unwashed masses, Melania will ditch the White House, take a lover and move to a castle in Transylvania.

The editorial staffs of the NY Times and the Washington Post will be arrested and detained without trial, as will anyone who ever dared speak ill of the Orange Emperor. This should come as no surprise to Bill Maher!  

Finally created “Attorney General For Life”, William Barr will abandon all pretense and give his liege the “Roy Cohn” he has always pined for.

The super rich will get richer and the poor will get lots more children (after birth control and abortion are outlawed);  and minimum wage will be a thing of the past.

There will be no standards for anything.  Food safety will no longer be monitored,  infrastructure projects, housing and commercial developments will proceed without inspections or permits.  Instead, people will be encouraged to buy a whole lot of accident and injury insurance, just in case. The Trump Insurance Co. LLC. will create a product  called “Accidental Living,” for the new marketplace. 

Life will be short and brutal, but the stock market will never again have a down day.

Go Home, Hillary.

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Correction: A couple of days after the New York Times quoted Hillary as saying Gabbard was “being groomed by theRussians”, they were forced to issue a correction. What she had, in fact, said was that Gabbard was being groomed by the “Republicans” to run as a third party candidate. A “horse of a different color”, I would say, if red wasn’t favored both by Republicans and Russians.

…and take Bill with you.

Hillary Clinton has succeeded in distracting everyone from Donald Trump’s very, VERY bad week; so much so, that one could as legitimately ask if she is a Russian asset, as she suggested someone in the 2020 Democratic lineup might be.

What a waste of time.

Tulsi Gabbard assumes that she was talking about her, and perhaps she was.  Nevertheless, Hillary has only succeeded in breathing new life into Gabbard’s feeble campaign, so that she might rise from 1% to a higher single digit.

I actually heard voices on the Saturday morning talk shows opining that Hillary “must know” what she’s talking about since she’s had do much personal experience with Russian interference!  Pu-lease!

This is the kind of conspiracy theory rumor mill that wound-up Crazy Donald and the Donaldettes in the first place.  She of all people should know better!

What possible value did Hillary imagine her little sideshow would bring to the already fraught but critical process of selecting a viable general election candidate?

She’s slipping into her Bill’s habit of wrong-footing it into the limelight just in time to provide new talking points for her opposition.

With “friends” like these, who needs enemies.

By the way, who’s to say she WAS referring to Tulsi Gabbard?  Knowing Hillary’s center-right hawkish leanings, she could have just as well been referring to the current second lead, after her fav Joe Biden. ‘Talk about wrong-footed!  Joe’s been hemorrhaging money and credibility, and just can’t seem to make it right.

Enter: Hillary, being “helpful.”

If she has any sense remaining after the Republicans have bounced her around like a football for the past two decades, she should apologize for musing out loud, blame cold-meds or some other reality-altering substance; then return to her novel for the duration. She has well and truly worn-out her welcome.

Ballad of Bernie and Elizabeth

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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.

I Can’t Watch.

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‘Can’t watch, I say.

Seems like Joe Biden has just barely entered the 2020 presidential race and already I can’t bear to watch him in action.   It’s too painful: like waiting for someone to finish a very old joke that they tell very badly.

I will, of course, support him if he is the ultimate nominee, as any sane person would; but the thought of having to watch his fossilized attempts to walk-back three decades of mis-step and mis-speak for the next year-and-a-half makes me instinctively reach for the remote.

The mere fact that he would be running against the most dishonest, most venal and most corrupt president in living memory will only slightly dampen my distaste at the spectacle of the Democrat’s least inspiring candidate feebly hoisting the banner for progressive reform.

If it has taught me nothing else, the continued popularity of Donald Trump has once and for all quashed any delusion I had of the fundamental common sense of the American people.  The fact that Joe Biden is ten points ahead of any other comers in the most recent polls just reinforces that point.

It’s as if we are being held at gunpoint by the pollsters who are telling us to disobey our nobler instincts and elevate the guy who would be least objectionable to the phalanx of assorted bigots, misogynists and toxic greed-o-philes who comprise Donald Trump’s miserable margin.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think Joe Biden belongs in that stew of misanthropes.  It’s just that he is “old school;” and the checkered political past that dogs his primary path is seen as a feature, not a bug, by some of those who might otherwise fall for Donald Trump’s sour “sweet talk” once again.  And, if that is all it takes to defeat Donald Trump, I’m in.

But is it?  If his performance at last night’s debate is anything to judge by, Biden may no longer have the stuffin’ to withstand a pummeling by the Meanest Man on Earth.

In fact, over the past two days, it was the women more than anyone else who impressed.  Of course that is just my husband’s and my opinion, but I have a feeling that there is an unspoken fear that any female candidate will be “HIllaried” in a match-up with Trump.  

There is ample evidence from recent public apathy in the face of attack after attack on women’s civil rights and credible rape and assault allegations against Donald Trump and others within his sphere, that women’s status in America is actually declining after more than a century of upward trajectory. You can thank those hypocrites in the male-dominated “Christian” Right for that stone in our collective shoe.

But Kamala Harris is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Elizabeth Warren is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Kirstin Gillibrand is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Amy Klobuchar is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Tulsi Gabbard is NOT Hillary Clinton.  And  Marianne Williams is NOT…well, I don’t know exactly who she is, but she is certainly NOT Hillary Clinton.

In fact, none of them is anything like Hillary Clinton: not in personal history, nor in political experience.

And Democrats have plenty more compelling women candidates waiting in the wings.  To name just a few: there are Stacey Abrams, Jennifer Granholm and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

So it’s time for Democratic handicappers to grow a pair and stop thinking out-loud: “we tried a woman and we LOST!”  

I am so glad that 94-year-old Jimmy Carter is still around to say unequivocally what no one else seems to want to say: Donald Trump didn’t legitimately win the presidency.  Even if no effort has been made so far to quantify the impact of Russian interference on the election outcome, ample evidence exists suggesting it could have been considerable.  That, on top of the fact that Hillary Clinton received three-million more votes than did Donald Trump, pretty much puts a lie to the “We tried a woman and she lost.” argument.

I’m a big ol’ fan of Bernie Sanders and a number of the other men look like exciting prospects, too; but my money is on the women, whom the Democrats overlook at their…and our…own peril.

Joe Biden is not the answer

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Democrats need to think outside of the box.

Joe Biden is not the answer.

He’s a nice man but he is too old, too encumbered by establishment political history, and slow to admit his own mistakes.  I wish he would take himself out of the running, because we have played this scene before.

We can do better.

If there is any overarching lesson to take away from the perilous state of our union, it is that old assumptions and conventional wisdom can no longer be relied upon.  The same must be said about polls, focus groups, handicapping and other tools of the political trade.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing in topsy turvy Trumpland, where he is still fully capable of criminal election meddling in full sight.

Don’t pick a candidate based on what Pennsylvania might do. If the people of Pennsylvania can’t figure out that ANY candidate is better than Donald Trump, even after two years of his venomous lies and letdowns, the disease has progressed too far and the patient will die.

Democrats are just too polite and rational.  They think that the problem in 2016 was that Hillary wasn’t “relatable.”  The idea is that Biden will dish-out some of his blue collar B.S. and Trump’s base of noble working men will come a-running.

Bullshit. 

Trump’s faithful base is a white supremacist soup of religious haters, woman haters, brown haters  and repressed homophobes.  Democrats should not be offering anything that would  win their votes.  

I grew up in the 1950’s, in a lower middle-class household, in a blue-collar neighborhood.  Both of my parents had to work, because they thought they had to send us to Catholic school and otherwise couldn’t afford to do so.  They scraped and they struggled throughout their lives and never took a nickel in public assistance until the blessed relief of Social Security and Medicare kicked in;  but they NEVER looked down their noses at those who did, and they taught us tolerance and progressive values despite being given every opportunity to be bitter and resentful.

If my parents could be kind of heart and generous of mind, there is no excuse for the poisonous attitude that seems to have possessed the Trump base.

I’m tired of hearing that Democrats have to somehow “win over” those misanthropes, just as I am tired of seeing the outstanding women in the race treated as if they shouldn’t aspire beyond Vice-President, and the one proud Democratic Socialist, relegated to a sidebar, despite the fact that he stubbornly refuses to slip away from the top polling positions and his central ideas spring from the few really good public policies that we all depend upon.

If we don’t strive to be better than this, we deserve what we get.  

Put Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris on the debate platform opposite Donald Trump and be done with it.  Was there ever a more important moment to take a courageous stand?

After the dust clears, if we still have a “United States of America” maybe we’ll finally have the guts to mandate public funding for elections, eliminate special interest funding, put some guardrails on the presidency, and really do something about the environment.

If we can’t do that, what is the bloody point?

Leave Elizabeth Warren’s family myth alone.

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I truly wish that Democrats were a little less inclined to eat their young.

I don’t just identify with Elizabeth Warren because of her politics.  We are both midwest girls, born about six months apart, and raised in that economic grey zone that could only aspire to middle class.

Being something of a romantic in my adolescence, I longed to have a more compelling origin story.  I expect that is why I readily accepted the family myth that, through my great- grandmother whose surname was “James,” we could claim the legendary Jesse James as a distant cousin.  Even though, as years went by, I came to understand that the connection was purely apocryphal, the story remained so much a part of my personal fabric that when my son came along, I named him “Jesse” in fond tribute to the myth, if not the man.

I was finally told by my aunt that  it was nothing more than a tall family tale, constructed by an unreliable cousin; before then, if I had been required to complete some boring form and came across a question where I might write in answer that I was a distant cousin to Jesse James, I surely would have done so without hesitation.

We all want a little romance in our lives.  When we were very young and had no story of our own, we pestered our parents to tell us about our family history.  “Irish, English, Pennsylvania Dutch and Scottish,” we proudly repeated to our far more interesting friends.  “Pennsylvania Dutch” isn’t even a nationality, but that’s what we were told and that’s what we believed.  Jesse James was just the icing on the cake of our constructed identity.

I imagine Elizabeth Warren feels a little foolish about the whole thing; but now that the cat is out of the bag she will spend the rest of her public career apologizing and trying to change the subject.  

The only people who might have a right to an opinion on the matter are members of the Cherokee nation, and even they should recognize that what she did wasn’t exploitation.  It was tribute; the ultimate compliment.

If fancying herself Native American is the worst charge against her, she’s an authentic angel by Capitol Hill standards.

So I say to the braying mob, “Snap out of it!” We’ve got far bigger fish to fry!