3/30/2020
The same corporate media pundits who have been giving Joe Biden cover for his tragic record, his sexual abuse accusations, corruption scandals, his total lack of leadership in crisis and his obvious cognitive decline/ dementia are trying to put grandpa Joe back into hiding for the rest of the primaries. They want everyone to get out of the way long enough for him to back into the general election despite his many obvious flaws on which he will be pummelled by Trump and the right-wing media. They want everyone to give up and get out of the way before 40% of the voters have even had a chance to participate in the primaries. There are around 1775 delegates yet to be assigned. Bernie needs 62% of those to get to 1991 Joe Biden needs 46% of those to get to 1991 otherwise neither one of them gets there. Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin are among the delegate-rich states that have not yet voted. And let's not pretend that a bunch of things in this race haven't also changed dramatically. Biden has been accused of rape by a credible former staffer after years of ducking away from sexual harassment charges. He spent the last debate lying for 2 hours and has been now called out on his 1/2 dozen or so big lies from that debate alone.
Also, front and center in a world that has changed dramatically during the pandemic is that while Bernie Sanders has played a leading role in informing the public and laying out plans for moving forward in the COVID-19 reality. Biden went into hiding and showed a total lack of leadership, vision, plans or fight. Bernie has amended the bailout bill to include gig workers, freelance workers, and tipped wages into the unemployment expansion, he fought for the inclusion of a monthly rather than one-time UBI payment (which got compromised down to a single $1200 payment). He has explained the bill and explained what more we need to do moving forward including pressuring Trump to sign the Defence Production Act which requires manufacturers to shift their production from nonessential items to essential items like face masks, test kits, ventilators, gloves and gowns for first responders, securing additional hospital beds/ shelters and isolation rooms for those who are infected but not critically ill, etc. Its what our country has done in the past during war, this time the war is with a virus. Think of this as the Rosie the Riveter Act.
Media Suddenly Realizes Bernie was Right - Secular Talk
Coronavirus proved Bernie was right all along, even as the math gets hard - The Independent
Teen who died of COVID-19 was denied treatment because he didn't have insurance
While all of this was taking place Joe Biden went into hiding showing definitively he is not up to the task of leading. Even after a week of hiding when Biden surfaced he still offered no explanations, no ideas or plans for the crisis simply some jabs at Trump (that others have already been questioning Trump on including Bernie) and then conducted some of the most embarrassing TV interviews and live streams seen to date by a Presidential candidate we are expected to take seriously.
Biden's Cognitive Issues Can No Longer Be Denied - Sky News Australia
As mentioned above another major change in the race is that Biden's history of sexual harassment has escalated to sexual assault. This is significant. Previously he simply explained away all of the complaints against him as people mistaking his friendliness and touchy-feely personality for something sexual... well now he has been accused of pinning a former staffer against a wall, putting his hands inside her clothing and penetrating her with his fingers. Then he told her she wanted it and that she was nothing. This will not play well not only with people who actually think the MeToo movement is important in the upcoming states but also with people who voted for him already and are now having buyers remorse given the new information. Media is covering up Biden's #MeToo problem/ Sexual Assault charge - The Hill TV
The sole argument for Biden's candidacy has been the false assumption that he was the most electable. But can that argument still be made given the new information of his sexual assault, his complete lack of leadership at the moment the nation needed it most and his obviously being mentally unfit for the office given his advanced levels of mental decline/ dementia he has shown now that he can no longer hide behind other candidates and a media that has been trying to sell his candidacy rather than report on it?
I understand the media has been desperately trying to prematurely end the primary. They did this in 2016 as well, trying to end it before it was over and before everyone had a chance to vote. They know they are propping up someone who is only electable when running on name recognition and not record, agenda and worldview. Only electable when not speaking to their weaknesses as a candidate. But whether these things are brought up in the primary or not, they absolutely will be brought up by Trump, the right-wing media and GOP operatives. When Republicans bring them up, they won't be pulling their punches, they won't be nearly as gentle about any of it as Bernie is. They won't be calling Biden their friend, they won't be showing him respect. They will be beating him with these weaknesses. They won't be giving him an opportunity to answer to them, they will be bludgeoning him with them. This is precisely what happened in 2016 when Bernie ran an overly gentle primary campaign against Hillary, left all the weapons on the table for Trump who beat her with her scandals while she ran entirely on the sole argument of "I'm not Trump" (something we are already seeing from Biden).
Biden proves over and over again that he is not up to the task of running for or being President. - The Michael Brooks Show
They keep telling you Bernie can't win even as there are around 1775 delegates yet to be assigned. We touched on these numbers before and while the math is tougher for Bernie, the scandals and weaknesses are far worse for Biden. It's not a slam dunk that either reaches 1991 delegates. We can already see them hedging their bets with Cuomo as the emergency backup that Bloomberg failed to become.
The people who have been propping up Biden and hiding him behind the others (remember Biden was not the first choice for a lot of his voters... they sampled O'Rourke, Harris, Buttigieg, Warren, Bloomberg and Klobuchar before settling for him as the stop Bernie candidate (not the stop Trump candidate). Most of his voters have avoided looking too closely at his candidacy, record, or fitness for the job let alone whether he can win over the voters he needs to beat Trump one on one. They simply know him as a guy who has been around government forever and was Obama's VP. Many of them have a fondness for Obama that they have mistakenly transferred over to Biden even though they are nearly as different as Biden and Bernie.
So the arguments now are if Bernie doesn't get out of a race that is not a guaranteed win for either of them, that it will be his fault if Trump destroys Biden in a general election. They had that excuse all cued up for Hillary last time. But Hillary didn't lose because she had to campaign to all the states in the primary. If anything that made her stronger letting her make a pitch to all states before Trump got a crack at her. It gave her a chance to start making a pitch to independent voters and labor voters before Trump and his allies hit her with a lifetime of lies, corruption, and policies that did real-world harm to large parts of the electorate who had been left behind by the kind of politics Hillary helped champion that created incredible income and wealth disparity between the haves and the have nots. Biden has all those same weaknesses as Hillary except throw in that he has dementia and failed his only leadership test of his career with his response to the pandemic.
That brings us to the independent voter problem of both Hillary and Biden. The establishment of the Democratic party along with the media that props up them and their narratives (not the voters we are talking about party leaders, operatives, lobbyists and major donors), want you to think that the person who can get the most "blue no matter who" voters is the one poised to win in November. But they were shown 4 years ago that is not true. You need to stack the young and independent voters along with the labor vote who arent locked into a party on top of that "blue no matter who" base. The base will vote for whoever gets the nomination, the young and independent voters have told you from day one that they don't follow either team blindly. You need to earn their votes first to get them to the polls and then to get them to support you. They have overwhelmingly shown in 2016 and again this year that Bernie Sanders is their first choice. Then in 2016 they showed that Trump was their distant 2nd choice with millions instead choosing to stay home. Hillary was never their 2nd choice and Biden might not be either which is problamatic.
Bernie Admits its a hard road but his policies, record and coalition are suddenly winning all arguments
For many of these young, independent and uncommitted labor voters neither party has earned their loyalty or even pretended to care about them. Both parties have ignored and dismissed their needs and voices, then demanded their votes. Both parties have given them an economy that has been rigged against them where about half of this country lives in poverty, one missed paycheck away from financial ruin, An economy where they need to work multiple low wage jobs just to barely make it with little quality of life or security. They have been taken to wars they didn't want, given a broken criminal justice system that locked up way too many of them, free trade agreements that have sent their jobs overseas and stagnated the wages and benefits of the jobs they left behind. Now with the pandemic, they are also becoming increasingly aware that we have a badly broken healthcare system that has not only left tens of millions of people without coverage or enough coverage, but that could be taken away by their boss in a labor dispute, job loss or national emergency when they need it the most. Their arguments against Medicare for All have been exposed for the fraud that they are and the need Medicare for All has been clearly demonstrated by this pandemic.
Finally lost in all this misdirected indignation of the elites is that whoever wins the nomination needs to ask for the votes of all the voters in the primary, not simply 60% of them. The two remaining candidates have an opportunity to make their case to the states that haven't voted yet and include them in the process of picking the nominee. And don't forget when Bernie was looking like he could well be the leading vote-getter going into the convention Biden was among the candidates arguing that they all agreed to the rules of the primary and one of those rules was that super delegates would come into play if nobody reaches 1991 delegates... well now there are two candidates, Biden is anxious to get rid some of the rules that dont help hom but he agreed to... He agreed to 12 debates, not 11. He also agreed that the winner is the first one to 1991 delegates not the first one to 1168 delegates. So does he believe in the rules of the primary or only the ones that help him? Trying to shut out 40% of the voters and dismiss the rules he doesn't like will not help him unite the party, will not help him win independent voters and certainly will not help him generate the kind of voter turnout that will be needed to beat Trump.
It's not over yet, stop letting the people who have been rigging the primary convince you otherwise. And stop pretending that ending it here will make Biden stronger, even if it allows him to back door his way to a nomination nobody has won yet and the perception that he cut off all debate while silencing the voices of 40% of the voters will hurt not help him.
