two dimes.
i've written myself a lot of emails about the democratic primary campaigns this past year. and i don't think they've ever really crossed over into any modestly memos. and i think the reason is that i didn't want to commit. i really didn't know who i liked best for a long time. i sorta hated every last one of them. they all sorta weird the f out of me. still do. none of them is actually sincere. they're all just power hungry. and solipsistic. including bernie. if you're honest about it.
i guess it's sorta human nature to get pretty self-nuts when so many people tell you how great you are for so long. and then a whole bunch of other people tell you how awful you are. you're part self-nuts and part insecure, which makes you constantly strive to show the world. and yourself. that you really, truly are great.
humans. the best "wtf" flavor in every dish. in every beer. fucking weirdos! so beautiful!
anyway, just the other day things crystallized quite a bit. and i know who my guy is now. but that there's the rub. that anyone would have a "guy". it's silly. and shows a weakness of thought. and a deficit of critical analysis. and an incapacity for understanding human individual and group behavior. to get behind a particular man. sorta like how one should never love a musician. but only her albums.
but let's back up a bit. warren was my favorite of the all-bad candidates for a long time. for a few reasons. which i'll get to below but mostly, probably, because i'm a white, heavily degree'd incrementalist, amirite?!?!?!
so i was particularly tuned into her results and her decisions as things progressed. it was hilarious to hear everyone flip the f out about her dropping out after 4 primaries. SHE HASN'T WON ANY!!!!! of four out of 50 primaries. with 7-8 candidates running in each of them. it was just plain fucking silly and totally disingenuous and blindly hopeful.
and then, of course, super tuesday happened. and bernie voters flipped their shit. because he failed to convince enough people that he was the right person to beat trump. i mean: it's sorta funny-sad. cuz poll after poll suggests that the policies on which he campaigns are super popular. but they still voted for biden in huge numbers. most new voters, even. voted for biden. at least in texas. which tells you that bernie himself didn't convince people that he was the right person to get the job done. to beat trump. to pass many of his own policies.
and what did the giant bernie revolution say in response? two things that made their lives way easier: the DNC is conspiring against us; the elitist snake elizabeth warren should have dropped out and endorsed bernie.
both those arguments are massively dangerous. they're easy, yeah. that's why they're attractive. but this terrible tues thing wasn't even close. i mean, in TEXAS bernie would have require like 65-70% of warren supporters to vote for him to make up his deficit to biden. in other states, the number was much, much higher. maine is the only state that likely would have flipped in a near 50-50 scenario.
but again, back up back up cuz i got a numbered list on this point. for all of my bernie friends.
first, stop reading articles about how warren doomed sanders. just stop. cuz they all rest on massive unproven assumptions. likely disproven, actually. most of the dem primary voters are NOT white college grads in hipster enclaves. or on twitter at all. they're lifelong democrats in industrial tennessee.
second, to comment on that anyway. it looks increasingly like about 40-45% of warren voters' second choice was bernie sanders. who would the rest of 'em flock to? the guy who at the moment was seen as the "most likely to beat trump"? probably. yes. biden might have won by an even greater margin had warren dropped out. the data is just as suggestive of that as it is suggestive of the opposite, easier story.
third, how can you argue for weeks that warren is an elitist snake. part of the establishment. and then presume that 100% or even 75% of her followers hate the establishment and want bernie to win? that's daft. deluded. a lot of her supporters are indeed elitists!!! and would definitely prefer the status quo to bernie.
fourth, the problem is bernie. he never had the support that many bernie voters constantly pretended he had. some of us had argued for months that he doesn't speak for enough americans and hasn't done the work to convince enough people that his socialist revolution is the right framework for structural change. if real power is about the people. and he's lost the people in a big way. then what? do we just pretend that, never mind, the power is entirely in the DNC's hands? the people are sheep? how cynical. ...
basic point: it's bernie's fault he lost. so the revolution must shut up and put their heads down and get back to doing the hard work. ACTUALLY GET OUT AND VOTE. convince enough people. ... bernie lovers do have a better understanding of what a just, ideal, possible society looks like. so they should keep doing the hard work of convincing people of that fact. ... but also: remember that people alone don't have the power. you have to govern in a republic. which means deals. tweaks. compromises. ... having the capacity for such. in a campaign and in a government. is immensely important. ... and then: if you just keep insisting that establishment conspiracies are stymieing your revolution. well, then, it ain't a very powerful one. and maybe you should try something (or someone?) else?
which brings me to my next point.
warren.
our staff is upset w me. because i supported warren for the dem nominee for prez. and many of them are die-hard bernie fans.
now, i'd like to say i learned a long time ago not to be die-hard anything. except maybe a die-hard nature lover. cuz anything associated with a human will inevitably disappoint a die-hard supporter. i mean: i don't even love joanna newsom. the milk-eyed mender is just nowhere near good enough to inspire unqualified adoration. so i make a decision about adoration on an album-by-album basis.
i'd like to say this. but it has a sort of lou-reed-you're-still-doing-things-that-i-gave-up-years-ago vibe to it. i used to be die-hard about lots of things. i'd die all over the fucking place for them. but i was disappointed. and i learned. so some people never learn that lesson. because they're never disappointed. and i envy them. they pick the right things about which to die hard for. like, to get impaled for. but i learned it. and can accept that a lesson for me might not be a lesson for her or him.
in any case, on the bernie-warren debate: i'm a policy guy. much like i'm an album guy. i search for policies that could improve the lives of the working and middle classes, and i poke at those policies until i'm sure they're the best of what's avail. and then i support pols who aim to make laws enacting such policies. and, in that, i really very rarely get into one pol over another. in the case of warren and bernie, e.g., they seem to agree about 90% of the time on policies.
the arguments for bernie over warren (if our staff and twitter are any indication) seem to come down to: bernie polls better against trump; bernie is a working class hero; bernie has been making these arguments for 50 years and warren's a fraud; bernie will increase turnout; bernie won't compromise on M4A.
and i want to take each of these things in turn:
1) polls. they change constantly. just a couple days ago, every single dem nominee except maybe that who-is-he-really PETE guy was polling better than trump. and bernie was ahead in a shitload of states.
2) working class hero. what has he done? is he merely an aspiring working class hero? i mean that truly. please respond, if you will, with a link to the things he's done over the years for the working class. i'm ready and excited to learn about them. ... i hope he hasn't merely been arguing on their behalf for years. i hope he's done some real shit. cuz it takes a couple months to organize a trade union where one doesn't exist. and he's like 78. so arm me with that info if you have it! so i can destroy my republican relatives with it.
maybe he truly beats warren on this point.
3) on never changing your mind.
on making an argument for 50 years and then ending up being right; what happens when his policies are enacted and they're only half effective? will he pivot? what then?
on the logic of republican policies due to human nature and optimism bias. this one's less obvious: humans believe a bright day is juuuust around the corner for them. we all suffer from optimism bias. and this contributes to some thinking. namely, that low taxes are right *even for us* (we working classics). that low regulation is right *even for us* cuz prosperity!!! many humans're happy to be on a team that sells that message. that logical message. contrary to the left's take: working class republicans are voting logically. voting in their own interests. cuz they're gonna benefit one day!
so it's important for someone to speak to that tendency. not to completely ignore it.
on warren's capacity to believe something. execute on it. gather evidence of its having been wrong. and change her opinion. aka: warren's a snake.
4) on lower turnout in iowa than 2008. on bernie capturing less of the vote there than "not bernie". and on bernie getting less of the vote in iowa than he did in 2016.
all these ^ arguments were made after iowa. and you know what happened? bernie people laughed. they didn't seem to work harder. they seemed mostly to laugh. scoff at the idea that the non-bernie vote was high. "that's not how elections work!" they said. but, you know, sometimes it is. people vote for people. and fewer people were attracted to bernie this time than last time. when it was just him against hilary. and fewer young people cared enough to vote. and then it repeated in NH and NV and SC. and guess what: that's why bernie lost. new dem primary voters were mostly not disaffected or young. they were mostly moderate and scared of trump.
it was bernie's job to get the disaffected and youth to VOTE. and then TO VOTE FOR HIM. and he doesn't appear to have done it. but i'm open to convincing, data-driven arguments to the contrary.
but maybe we should have run a progressive who spent just a touch more time finding common ground w moderates? or at least figuring out how to placate them in return for their support? or speaking their language?
5) on compromising: the danger of refusing to compromise is not getting anything. so, you know, not compromising on M4A is wildly silly and selfish.
but maybe more interesting yet: the danger of refusing to compromise and actually getting what you want means you own the failures and setbacks. if americans aren't ready for it, funding dries up and the progressive policy agenda gets set back big time.
and that's all. that's all why i believe warren was a better rep for the progressive left.
--
but here we are...
i'm throwing my full throat and whole non-work life into supporting bernie for the democratic presidential nominee. and for president.
this country was totally fucked up by *the chicago school* and neoliberalism and goldwater-reagan and milton friedman and all the rest. we must repudiate the last 40 years of socio-economic policy. totally destroy. the paradigm must shift. both dimes, entirely. free markets and free trade are not ethical objectives per se. but only to the extent that their fair.
and whether or not bernie sanders gets any of his agenda passed at the federal level, his republican-democracy-and-socialism-spectrum *revolution* is the best remaining hope we have for making that paradigmatic shift. the shift that's necessary RIGHT NOW. if he loses, the republicans become the party of the working class for a generation. and they quite frankly will take it out at the knees. as they've been doing all along.
i want to be clear about one last, important point: we americans are not capitalists. and we are not communists. we would never want to be either. both are god-awful. and both would be terrible for all the humans you've ever met. the purest examples of the practice of both prove it to be true.
this country is socialist. and has been for decades upon decades. currently, we redistribute trillions of dollars of wealth that results from qualifiedly-free production to the masses. and we redistribute some mass-taxpayer dollars to giant corporations. ... bernie sanders is just trying to distribute a little bit more of the wealth to the working class. and he's trying to take control of the production of a few things that have gone totally haywire. and that we've proven we can't supply/produce fairly. like healthcare. ... and he wants to regulate a few areas of the economy that threaten to harm us immensely in the future. like, you know, industries whose businesses emit greenhouse gases.
portrait of an artist as a true devil-man, amirite?
oh no!!! no no no!! i have med school bills! and what will a carbon tax do to the economy? it'll destroy us! it'll......... cause deficits? be ineffective? i mean, have you been sleeping during every republican administration for the last 40 years? have you been dead? or pre-alive? get fucking real and honest. you know you're lying. and it's really about the word socialism. and it's about your team winning.
stop playing team sports with coronavirus testing. stop playing team sports with someone's terrible, debilitating toothache. stop playing team sports with germán's life. stop playing team sports with ugly waste and inefficiency and your gas bill. grow the fuck up. acknowledge the failures of reagan and the third way democrats. and put some effort into increasing the effectiveness of policies that even the vast majority of texans support.
admit you were wrong, dad. (actually, my dad admitted he was wrong like a decade ago and his political-philosophical growth has been a true source of joy in my life and, i think, his.) so.... admit you were wrong, ma. (jk she beat my dad.)
admit you were wrong, uncle paul! but thanks for letting me use your account at sherwin williams to buy a couple N95 masks before we were told that they should be saved for healthcare workers. i'm gonna donate them to the first hospital with an outbreak. but will keep two for polly and i.
we're attending the bernie rally this saturday. if even for a second. and we're hosting a bernie GOTV event next saturday. at bungalow.
we're all in. bernie represents the right direction for the country. always has, really. and i'm way grateful for him. that he never shut up about it.
we'll see you on the streets. hopefully with a bunch of other bernie supporters who got over it and admitted bernie's failures and picked up the pieces and organized some fucking voters.
which is the work of the future.
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