Looking at the Michigan primary map in which Biden won every county across the state, one has to wonder to what degree sexism figured in Hillary’s loss four years ago. The same question could be asked about Elizabeth Warren’s unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.. It’s interesting to note that across a wide swath of the electorate, the significance of electing a woman to the presidency for the first time seemed to barely register; it wasn’t a consideration that merited any serious discussion. And that includes the left where this democratic demand, this striving for equality and representation paled in importance to the urgency of “class re-alignment,” offered by the Sanders campaign. I would say that more discussion of this phenomenon is warranted.
With regard to the coronavirus, what we see coming from Trump and his administration is a lethal marriage of massive incompetence and willful disinformation and lies. There are no grownups in the White House, only supine hacks and the Liar-in-Chief.
As a result, the impact of the virus is worsening by a order of magnitude each day. Exactly by how much we will find out in the coming weeks and months. People will surely and unnecessarily die and the trauma the country goes through will be far more severe because of this lethal marriage.
Bernie Sanders and his supporters are frustrated by last night’s result. And that is understandable. But they should, actually all of us should, keep a few things in mind. First, the overarching imperative to beat Trump, and do it soundly, remains; one could easily argue that it has grown in recent weeks and months.
Second, Biden isn’t the candidate many of us had hoped would lead the Democratic Party ticket. I supported Elizabeth Warren. But there is little doubt that he now will. And there is no reason to think that he can’t win, even if you think he isn’t best equipped to do it. Public opinion polls, many of them in fact, tell us he can.
But even more germane to his electability, an expansive, energized and diverse coalition has meteorically formed in the space of two weeks. And there is reason to think it will continue to grow in breadth and depth. And if Joe Biden — and this is critical — can reach out and extend a genuine hand of mutuality to Bernie Sanders and his many supporters, especially young people and Latinos, then this growing coalition will become a powerful juggernaut this fall that could elect Joe Biden and his Vice President (and who this is is critical to uniting the party) by a good margin and a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress.
Finally, were this to happen, a newly elected President Biden would land on a political landscape that would tilt in a progressive direction, one that he couldn’t and wouldn’t want to ignore. In other words, a Biden presidency would be more than a “return to normalcy,” as important as that is. It would also have to account for the new political dynamics that have taken shape over the past decade, the issues that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren raised in the primary, and the mandate issuing from the elections. All of this and more will surely figure in important ways on how the new president and Congress govern and legislate.
The way some of the left are reacting to the probability (not a done deal yet) that Biden will be the nominee going up against Trump this fall reveals a sectarian spirit that has bedeviled too much of the left for a long time. Too bad.
From NYT.: “Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said he was skeptical of Mr. Sanders’s ability to repeat his 2016 Michigan win, or his chances elsewhere in the Midwest, because Democrats this year, who singularly want to beat Mr. Trump, are less open to revisiting arguments over trade or Social Security.
“Voters, astonishingly, have taken over the nominating process,” he said. “Biden did well among blacks, suburban whites and white working-class voters because they want him to take on Trump. That was so powerful on Super Tuesday.”
By the end of the day, we will find out if Greenberg is right.
