Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Is it wrong to ask and help Biden to be better? He can't win without us so he has to listen.

By Marc Bochner
04/14/20


Biden can win a primary with only Democratic baby boomers... but do you honestly think he can ride that same limited base to a general election win? If you think so, encourage him to run the same campaign he ran in the primary. Tell donors nothing with his administration will fundamentally change any of the systems. Tell younger voters that he doesn't sympathize with their challenges that he helped create. And offer up no solutions for the massive challenges most Americans face. Challenges that didn't start 3 years ago, challenges that have been on an unaltered trajectory regardless of which party is in power. 

It would appear this will no longer be about Bernie (unless Biden does the right thing and make Bernie his running mate for the win), but it is very much about the policies that Bernie ran on. Stop pointing your fingers at Bernie supporters and pre-emptively blaming us for the latest incarnation of a losing neoliberal candidate. Start talking to Biden about what it would take to win. Make Biden a better candidate. Make a world with Biden as President worth fighting for... that's when he goes from a guy who can't win to one unlikely to lose. 

We have a unique opportunity to change the trajectory of the county and planet or we can keep circling the drain figuring out if we got to rock bottom yet. Anywhere in the ballpark of rock bottom is not a time when you settle for incrementalism or marginally better than the worst ever. Go in and start fixing the problems that led us to Trump. Make people's lives better, make sure every American has healthcare and saves money on healthcare at the same time. Make sure that the younger generations can have legitimate roles to play in the American economy (homeownership, business ownership, starting families, housing security, making a living wage, saving money and expanding the economy)

There are a lot of policies that help build that better world... Medicare for All, Free public college/ trade school, wiping the slate clean on student loan and medical debt that never should have gotten so out of control. Paid sick and family leave. A minimum wage of $15/ hour which raises all incomes above the minimum. Housing security with higher incomes paired with federal rent control and the construction of affordable housing. Unwind the free trade agreements that outsourced millions of good-paying American jobs, stagnated the wages of the jobs left behind, crushed labor unions and made it easier for the rich and corporations to hide their income and profits from taxation. Convert our energy policies to clean renewable ones to both boost the economy and make the planet inhabitable longer. What kind of a monster would choose losing an election over adopting a compassionate agenda like that? It's my sincere hope that Joe Biden is not the answer to that question. 



Let's operate in a win-win... Biden gets to be the President for the baby boomers while Bernie's policies uplift everyone including Joe's voters who never really asked him for anything on policy anyway so won't likely hate that agenda (even if their hatred for Bernie and the left drives them to say they do).

Those compassionate policies give us a more fair economy, more inclusive government. Biden kept telling us he can beat Trump and with a progressive agenda he can or he can lose with an agenda that more closely resembles his money over people record. He already has blind loyalty from boomers, but will he reach out to win the support of everyone else by being a better person?

So which Biden shows up for the general election? The one who gets all up in his ego and concedes nothing because he won a game he entered with a 10 run lead, home-field advantage and both the umpires and announcers on his payroll... or the one who is running to be different than Trump and undo the damage?  Will try to bring fairness for the majority of Americans that 40 years of corporatism has left behind?

There is really everything to gain and nothing to lose by adopting the Bernie agenda, as Biden was winning primaries, Bernie's agenda was winning all the polling on what policies the people supported. Biden crushed it with Baby Boomers and Bernie won nearly every other demographic even in the states that Biden won. Bernies supporters supported him for those policies not a cult of personality. Adopt the policies, bring in Bernie or other legit progressive as the running mate and the voter support moves with that, even with Biden's record. 

When we tell Biden to come earn our votes, we are doing him a huge favor. We are making him better whether he likes it or not. We are giving him a path to victory, a victory that will be consequential rather than 4 more years of status quo which drove the country into a ditch even before Trump. It's not much of an ask even if the media in the tank for Joe will clutch their pearls and try to pretend that making America actually great again is in fact too much of an ask.  We win together or we all lose if he is incapable of reading the room... a room filled with people living paycheck to paycheck, one illness, accident, missed paycheck or unexpected expense away from losing everything.








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