02.21.20 Was I dead wrong, or just living in last week?

After my last post (Goodbye, Elizabeth. Hello, Amy?), I heard from several people screaming “nooooo, it’s too early to count Warren out!” This week I heard from from some who said they agreed with my analysis last week, but that – only a few days later – it’s obsolete.

I thought I was so clever last week, but the following juicy tidbits no longer seem so juicy:

• Goodbye Elizabeth. Did you watch this week’s Nevada debate? Elizabeth Warren was on fire, getting the most airtime, beating the crap out of Mike Bloomberg, delivering more of her policy chops, and even drawing distinctions between herself and Bernie Sanders. Nearly every commentator declared her the winner: she showed her smarts, her feistiness, and her compassion. This candidate is not done contributing to the race: Even if she is only auditioning for VP or a cabinet post, Elizabeth Warren matters!
• Hello, Amy. As FiveThirtyEight pointed out about a few days after Amy Klobuchar’s surprising 20% finish in New Hampshire, there were no polling bounces for anyone out of NH. This week, Klobuchar is still polling in the single digits, pretty much everywhere other than her home state (Minnesota). Also, she was clearly rattled by Pete Buttigieg in the Nevada debate. If she’s going to get all wobbly when picked on by a veritable infant, there is no way she’ll stand up to the barrage that 45 and the GOP would throw at her. She has no plausible path to winning substantial numbers of delegates and I wasted the 25 bucks I sent to her.
• It would be fun to watch Bloomberg fight 45. No, it wouldn’t be! We (I) hadn’t forgotten stop-and-frisk last week, but so many more details have come out about it, as well as about Bloomberg’s misogyny. Then, on the debate stage, we saw an arrogant prick who was unprepared and lacked any charisma whatsoever. Bloomberg, by producing one of the worst debate performances since Admiral Stockdale (Ross Perot’s 1992 VP pick), proved himself utterly unqualified to take on 45. His reference to offended women’s not being able to take a joke, also showed what a truly awful human being he is. Because of my fears about Sanders in the fall, I even went through some moments last week of thinking I could choose Bloomberg over him. No more. If it does come down to Bernie and Mike, I’m 100% for Bernie.
• Bernie is only a weak front-runner. Not true: the past week has shown him gaining strength across the country, opening up double-digit leads nationally and in upcoming primary states.

Since my last set of guesses were so valuable (not!), let me try again.

• Sanders is the overwhelming favorite to win the most delegates this primary season. But FiveThirtyEight now says a brokered convention is more likely than a first-ballot win for Sanders.
• Warren is still unlikely to win any states (other than Massachusetts, where she is currently tied with Sanders) outright. But, her contributions to the race are invaluable and her impact at a brokered convention could be significant. I agree with the candidate that she is the most likely to unite the party and even draw independent support in the fall, than is any of her competitors.
• Buttigieg and Klobuchar hurt themselves by going after each other so personally. Neither is likely to have the impact that Warren will, as primary season progresses. Both seem like midgets now.
• I seem to be alone in this, but I thought Joe Biden turned in yet another troubling debate performance. The punditocracy seems to be grading him on a very forgiving curve, giving him big credit for being able to string together two coherent sentences. The problem with Bumbling Joe is that by the time he gets to a third sentence, he starts forgetting words or even what he was talking about. Right now, Biden is still 3+ points up on Sanders in South Carolina, but the two are headed in opposite trajectories. Biden could well lose in his firewall state and that would end his relevance (though I expect he would stay in the race until after Super Tuesday, which comes only three days after SC votes). In the current field (as appeared in Nevada), I consider Biden the most likely to get eviscerated by 45.

Big questions remain (of course!):

• Does Sanders have a support ceiling under 40% among Democrats? If so, that bodes ill for him in the fall. Would his ceiling rise or fall if some of the so-called moderates drop out?
• If moderates do drop out (most likely, Klobuchar), does that support go to Sanders, Warren, Bloomberg, or Biden?
• Will Bloomberg continue to soar based on his dollars and in spite of his debate performance? Well, he’s not on the ballot until Super Tuesday and there’s another debate before that, so anything is possible.
• Will Super Tuesday winnow the field (if not in terms of dropouts, then in terms of realistic momentum)? It sure would be easier for armchair pundits (like yours truly) if this were to come down to a two- or three-person race. Apart from Sanders, who even knows who that two or three might be?

©2020 Keith Berner

02.13.20 Goodbye, Elizabeth. Hello, Amy?

It was with considerable sadness that I removed the Elizabeth Warren button from my knapsack today and unsubscribed from campaign emails. I still think Warren is the best candidate in the field to be president. But after her drubbings in Iowa and New Hampshire (she was supremely well organized in both places), not to mention her steady decline in national polls (according to Real Clear Politics, she is now in fourth place, behind Sanders, Biden, and Bloomberg), she no longer has a viable shot at the nomination.

Yes, this race is still very fluid. But, it’s hard to see Warren finishing better than third place in any upcoming primary. I believe it is time to move on, because time is short and the reality is that Democrats must select someone who can win in November and that person has to get the nomination first.

As I posted on Facebook recently, the strong possibility of 45’s (the president’s) reelection has produced not only depression in yours truly, but has me shaking with terror. In this environment, no Democratic candidate’s policies or ideology matters a whit to me now. (How ironic that Warren’s “I have a plan for that” has proven irrelevant in a year when only winning matters.)

Where to turn?

Bernie Sanders represents my policy views extremely well (second only to Warren). His impact on the Democratic Party is something all progressives should be grateful for. But his theory that he can bring waves of new voters to the polls to beat 45 without significant support from moderates is a pipe dream. Sanders underperformed (in comparison to polls and his own expectations) in both of the first two states. More significantly, voter turnout was mediocre, meaning that few new voters showed up to demonstrate their Bernie burn. Sanders is now the front-runner, but he’s a weak one and could potentially spell disaster for Democrats in the fall campaign, not only losing to 45, but also failing to provide necessary coattails to Senate and House candidates.

Current polls show Sanders’ beating 45. Polls also show a majority of voters declaring their unwillingness to vote for a socialist, while they are much more willing to support old candidates, young candidates, women, and gays, among other categories. Sigh.

Amy Klobuchar was a bigger story out of New Hampshire than Bernie Sanders: she over-performed polls and in a few days shot up from mid-single digits to win nearly 20% of the vote there. She is more moderate than I am, but (as I have said) that hardly matters. I remain concerned about Klobuchar’s record of staff abuse – this bodes ill for her ability to govern. Her debate performances, though, reveal a candidate who could stand up to 45 well. What remains to be seen is whether Klobuchar has the resources and organization to compete in upcoming primaries and caucuses.

Some have deemed Mike Bloomberg the big winner out of New Hampshire, even though he won’t be on the ballot until Super Tuesday on March 3. I am negatively inclined towards Bloomberg: not only am I principally opposed to billionaires’ purchasing political power, but Bloomberg drove the infamous, racist stop-and-frisk policy, as mayor of New York. Just the same, recent polling shows his African American support growing, most likely at the expense of Biden. In a contest between two New York billionaires over age 75, one can imagine Bloomberg’s giving it to 45 as good as he gets. It could be downright fun to watch Bloomberg eviscerate 45 in debates and in advertising. Could Bloomberg be the Democrats’ savior this fall? Maybe.

Pete Buttigieg bothers me. He is so green – both his age and his experience as mayor of a small city hardly give me confidence. Also, his record in overseeing a racist police department is worrying. There is no sign of Buttigieg’s gaining any significant support from people of color (partly based on his record in South Bend, IN). Buttigieg will get the crap beaten out of him by 45. (Klobuchar also has minimal support from people of color at this point, but that could change quickly.)

The best thing that could happen to the Democratic field right now, would be for Joe Biden to collapse and bow out, clearing the path for the other remaining moderates. Biden has a firewall of sorts in South Carolina (to vote on February 29), where he has significant support from the African-American community. But I expect upcoming polls will show leakage or even a hemorrhage of that support. Would it go to Tom Steyer (the race’s other billionaire, who has purchased double digit support in SC) or Klobuchar? (Would Warren have a shot at a decent showing in SC? Perhaps, but doubtful.) Remember that Bloomberg will not be on the ballot in SC.

Of the remaining candidates who have a shot at the nomination (which doesn’t include Steyer or Warren) and in a field where every candidate has flaws, Klobuchar stands out. While 45 and the GOP will be merciless this fall, it is hard to see what their story line against Klobuchar might be. This is why I think she might be the right candidate to win in November. Today, I am switching my support to Klobuchar and hoping against hope that her surge will provide her the resources to compete over the next two months.

PS. Good riddance to Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet, and Deval Patrick, all of whom dropped out this week. They had no significant impact on the Democratic race for president and were merely taking up valuable space, especially Yang. It will be interesting to see where Yang’s support ends up going.

©2020 Keith Berner

07.29.18 The Montgomery County executive race: buckle your seat belts

After a harrowing month, a partial recount requested by candidate David Blair determined this past Monday that Marc Elrich is indeed the Democratic Party nominee, by a margin of less than 80 votes. Elrich will face perennial Republican candidate and gadfly Robin Ficker in November. Normally, one would predict a landslide victory by any Democrat over the widely disliked Ficker (there are plenty of Republicans who can’t stand him).

But, there is no “normal” this year. The biggest departure from past elections is at-large incumbent Nancy Floreen’s abandonment of the Democratic Party to run against Elrich in November. For another, the Washington Post – always a strongly regressive force in local politics – is becoming more and more doctrinaire under gazillionaire Jeff Bezos’s leadership. The Post is a leading voice in the new red scare sweeping the country, as a backlash against Bernie Sanders and in the wake of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset against a machine politician in New York state (the same day as Maryland’s recent primary).

Our (supposed) newspaper of record has been calling Elrich names all spring, editorializing against him (and in favor of Blair) at least three times and declaring the End-Times near if Elrich (and, I assume, anyone with a social conscience) were to be elected to local office.

We can be 100% certain that WaPo will endorse Floreen early and often in the coming months. (One disappointment with Floreen’s candidacy is that we will miss the spectacle the Post’s agonizing over whether to endorse Ficker over Dangerous Socialist Marc Elrich.) We can also be certain that the development industry – terrified by the prospect of a county leadership that asks them to pay for the infrastructure all their concrete requires – will spend millions of dollars to keep Elrich out of office. (See the nasty mailers sent out by Empower Montgomery – a developers’ cabal – in the run-up to the primary: they rated Elrich -5 and nearly everyone else +5 or higher.)

So, does Floreen pose a real threat to Elrich’s election? The simple answer is “yes” and the Elrich campaign would be foolish not to taking her extremely seriously.

But. . .

• Nancy Floreen is an unlikable candidate who has repeatedly won her at-large seat on County Council more on the basis of name recognition and developer money than on inspiration. (As Elrich says, Floreen was never much of a Democrat, anyway. My strong belief is that if she were anywhere in Red America, she would have been a perfectly comfortable Republican all along. She pretended to be blue here, because she is unprincipled and that was the only route to getting elected.)
• Marc Elrich has a long history of out-performing his relative fundraising by large margins (Blair outspent him this race by more than 2 to 1). This means that Elrich – who might have the best name recognition of any politician in the county (would Jamie Raskin rank higher?) won’t need a large war chest to run a strong campaign.
• More people will start listening to what Elrich actually says, rather than falling prey to the red-baiting. He is a principled lefty, to be sure, but he also has been able to work with and reach compromises with people of all stripes across the county. Check out what he said on the Kojo Nnamdi show on July 20: that he doesn’t waste anyone’s time on ideological legislation and policy that he knows won’t pass. This is a mature, pragmatic person and politician, not a bomb-thrower or revolutionary.
• And here’s the amazing thing: nearly all Democrats in the county have lined up to support our nominee. Hans Riemer and Ike Leggett, two very centrist politicians, got behind Elrich before the recount was over. Primary opponent Roger Berliner did so as well. And, in the biggest (pleasant) surprise at all, David Blair announced his support for Elrich as soon as the recount determined the winner, once and for all.

(A side note to all this wonderfulness is that it took current Council member, and primary opponent George Leventhal longer than David Blair to come out for our nominee. As I previously have written on Facebook, this shameful delay was due to Leventhal’s personal antipathy towards Elrich and a ridiculous case of sour grapes for a for a fifth-place finisher.

Leventhal is mostly a solid progressive. But he has sided too often with the development industry and has an angry temperament that is nearly 180-degrees opposite from Elrich’s soothing demeanor. I’d love to see Leventhal continue to make public contributions in areas such has homelessness and immigrants rights. But his recent shenanigans play to the worst perceptions of him, including his inability to control his emotions and a basic untrustworthiness. If he keeps up the personal grandstanding, he might render himself irrelevant and that would be a shame.)

So, does Elrich have a strong chance against Floreen? You bet he does. With a great ground game, committed volunteers, and a substantial part of the Democratic establishment working for him, he should win in November. (Not all of those who have endorsed him will lift a finger on his behalf. Riemer, for example, was red-baiting Elrich only two weeks earlier and endorsed almost certainly just to preserve his viability for ego-pleasing future campaigns.)

Montgomery County voters can’t afford to rest in 2018, following a primary election that customarily is the election-of-record in our deep-blue county. Buckle your seat belts, write a check to Elrich, and if you have the stamina, sign up to door-knock or make phone calls on his behalf. Our county needs your engagement to assure that Marc Elrich soundly defeats two Republican opponents this fall.

©2018 Keith Berner

 

09.04.17 I’m 98% anti antifa

I almost giggled the first few times I heard that right-wingers were using terms like “extremist left” and “alt-left.” Of course, it wasn’t just the people every progressive could identify as right wingers doing this. Rather it was the New York Times and The Washington Post showing how not in thrall to the left they were. In pursuit of mainstream credibility, they were shy about refusing a platform to the GOPs anti-science freaks and pushed a general narrative of (false) equivalence: if the right was increasingly extreme, then surely the left was equally so.

All the while, anyone who paid attention knew that the lest vestiges of a violent left disappeared from the US in early ’70s.

I have my own extremist conspiracy theories and violent fantasies. I believed in the aughts (and still suspect) that if the corporate elite suspected elections might actually reform the system, elections would be canceled and tanks would roll in the streets. Obama’s election certainly didn’t disprove this: after all, Obama proved himself to be the ultimate Wall Streeter at the same time that he was among the worst civil liberties presidents in history (particularly in his full backing for the NSA).

I do think that armed revolution is probably the only way our political and economic systems could be pried completely from the grips of the selfish wealthy and their amen corner in hard-right churches across the country. Further, I think the “low information” nature of the United States is at least partly due to purposeful conspiracy on the right: the use of consumer baubles, cultural icons, and religion to create a dumbed down education system with TV as the opiate (now add opioids to that mix).

Yeah, 2% of me wants that armed revolution and would like to see all the corporate elite begging for food, while (by-then-former) GOP officials swing from trees.

But here’s a fundamental reason why I don’t embrace violence and revolution: what comes next?

This is the same reason why I have turned against the philosophically justified “responsibility to protect,” the international doctrine under which great powers like the United States have a duty to intervene to stop moral atrocities around the world. A quick survey of US international interventions – even those with some portion of noble intent – reveals that almost every single one has left things worse than they were before we got there. It is horrific to stand back while Assad and Putin slaughter millions. But if the US were to send in the Marines, would the bloodletting cease or would who is doing the slaughtering simply change for a time, with no reduction in carnage? And if we took the place over, how long would before our main purpose there became enriching General Dynamics and Apple?

So, you say you want a revolution (the classic Beatles song is going through my head)? It would be nice to see the bad guys dead or deposed. But do you really think the poor, women, and people of color would end up better off? At a very basic level, what if all the violence shut down those nasty coporations, which – until now – have been getting food from farms to tables all over the country and kept the water running? (Look at Venezuela! Yes, some poor are better off then under the oligarchs, but now there’s starvation on every corner and the health care system has collapsed.)

Or to get even more basic: When systems of order collapse, the power of the powerful becomes absolute.  I’m not a woman, but if I were, I might rather be out and about where there are imperfect institutions of order – even ones that abuse equal rights every day – than if the local strongman got to determine by himself whether I became his sex slave or made it home.

I hate unfettered capitalism. I hate institutionalized racism. I hate the Trump Regime. But, to replace them, there has to be a plan to replace them. There needs to be very careful thinking about the proverbial “day after” and it damn well better be better than the day before. Will there be a way to measure who has benefitted from violent overthrow and how the overall balance works out (in order to calculate whether the greatest possible good has been achieved for the greatest number of people)?

It may not be satisfying, but change within our deeply flawed system is the only means to try to help those who need it most to get at least something. Destroying the entire system at once means blood in the streets. Are you positive whose blood it will be?

As I have written, I believe the only chance to stop our current slide into fascism and dysfunctionality will be by electing folks who believe in democracy and will replace those who don’t. And it won’t – in our two-party system – be the Greens who get elected. It will be Democrats. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are our only path to progress, however unsatisfying the pace may be.

In this complex world, we don’t get to choose exactly what we want. The unjust system might be overthrown and replaced by something even less just. I might elect Democrats and they might disgust me. But if the result they produce is less bad than that produced by the GOP, it is good.

And now it appears the violent left has sprung back to life. The Antifa’s black-hooded, club-wielding, anti-free-speech goons aren’t going to launch or “win” a revolution. What they are already doing is grabbing headlines from the Nazis, the KKK, and the racist GOP. Since Charlottesville, the word “antifa” is suddenly everywhere (are there now more mentions of it than there are of Confederate statues?). So far, the newspapers of record that are reporting breathlessly on the phenomenon are reminding us in some of this coverage that the crimes of the right are far worse. Who thinks that Fox and the Wall Street Journal are being so careful? And how long until the Times and the Post re-embrace false equivalence in all its glory, by sowing fear of the left to match fear of the right?

The Antifa is discrediting Bernie progressives and moderate liberals at the same time. Two-thousand-eighteen is around the corner. The forces of reaction are already making the TV ads that will capture the hearts of low-information voters everywhere.  You can bet those ads will be full of Berkeley fires and DC property damage. If the left draws a single drop of blood these coming months, it will be smeared across the living rooms of the nation. You will see the face of some moderate Democratic senator morph into that of a communist hoodlum and that Democrat could lose because if it, keeping Congress in GOP hands.

Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proved the value and moral rightness of nonviolence. In the current US political environment, though, violence on the left is not only morally condemnable, it is just plain STUPID.

Progressives and the “liberals” they dislike so much need to stand up together NOW to denounce the Antifa. Like me, you may at times silently cheer the injuries inflicted on those who so richly deserve it. But what we must do publicly is to develop Democratic candidates and bench strength (including some Dems we don’t much love) and win some goddam elections. It may be mildly nauseating to join hands with Nancy Pelosi to condemn the (left) mob, but it’s what we have to do.

I am scared, though, that the Antifa cannot be crushed and holds too much righteous anger to collapse on its own. If that is true, woe unto us, for now we face enemies on both sides.

©2017 Keith Berner

08.05.17 Twenty-twenty

The New York Times reports today that the GOP presidential campaign for 2020 is heating up. This is another delightful indication of Trump’s spreading toxicity among even the racists, theocrats, and corporate elites. Here’s hoping 2018 and 2020 bring all-out warfare in the GOP between the Trump and traditional wings of the party, leaving no one unbloodied.

Maryland state Delegate David Moon (D20) asked on Facebook the other day what people (i.e., progressives) think of Al Franken for president. There are a number of intriguing names being bandied about on the Democratic side, including: Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Deval Patrick, Elizabeth Warren, and more. (Apologies to anyone I’ve left out — this was off the top of my head.)

I feel no pressure to pick anyone for a long time. Here are my principles for that race: I am willing to support any Democrat who

• is not a bigot or misogynist
• is not a theocrat
• supports First Amendment rights (that counts you out, John Delaney)
• is pro-choice
• CAN WIN!

Of course, I would prefer a candidate who isn’t in bed with Wall Street or in favor of bombing other countries. But we all need to make “CAN WIN” a litmus-test issue above most others, which also means we need to avoid all-out warfare between Clintonites and Berners. It will be a gazillion times better to have a Democratic president with whom we don’t agree on everything than to have any Republican in the White House.

©2018 Keith Berner

07.02.17 Purity or victory: What’s a progressive to wish for?

So much hand wringing in the Democratic Party, ever since Trump unexpectedly beat Hillary Clinton! The intensity of the anguish only increased after Democrat Jon Ossoff failed to beat Karen Handel in Newt Gingrich’s former Georgia district in June. This put the Dems’ record at 0 for 4 in special elections this year. The sky must be falling more rapidly than ever.

After last November, many argued that Democrats failed to capture the White House because they hadn’t run on a clear economically populist message. This view continues to hold sway despite subsequent polling showing that Clinton lost not on economics*, but on her own failures and how culturally alienated (not economically alienated) Trump voters were. (You can read “culturally alienated” here as racist; though other cultural memes such as guns and religion certainly played a part.)

Some commentators have jumped on this latter bandwagon, lecturing Dems that it’s time to give up on “identity politics” (the right wing’s term for giving a shit about minorities and women) and abortion rights. That is, if only Dems would sell their souls, they’d start winning: Without the Neanderthals on your side, you’re toast!

Leftier Democrats (including most Bernie Sanders supporters) buy the economic argument lock, stock, and barrel. The solution, in their view, is to go whole hog for single payer, more regulation, and higher taxes on the rich. Your blogger fits well within this policy camp, but, as we shall see, not wholly with the proposition that this approach is a panacea for electoral woes.

The first thing required of Democrats at this point is some perspective:

• The Democrats didn’t lose the presidential election. Our candidate won the popular vote by over three million votes. She lost the electoral college by only 70,000 votes in three states. And, of course, she was a terrible candidate and a certain foreign power put a thumb on the scale against her.
• Compared to previous results in the districts the Dems have lost this year, their totals have improved dramatically. All four special elections thus far have taken place in deep-red places. We should be encouraged by the results, rather than discouraged.

So, my proposition is that Democrats do not need to renounce social and racial justice, or even economic centrism, to win at the presidential level. I don’t believe, in fact, that die-hard racists – those who would rather give up their own health care before seeing any of “those people” get any – can be won over in any case.

Nonetheless, Democrats were wiped off the map across most of the country at the local and state level during the Obama years. As admirable as the former president is in many ways, he was a terrible politician – he paid no attention to the fate of the party and the party, for its part, utterly lacked integrity and competence. This has been and remains an unmitigated disaster for at least three reasons:

• State office holders (legislatures and governors) create electoral districts. In our horribly flawed democracy, when the GOP controls those levers, it assures that Democrats can’t win at any level.
• Local and state offices are the bench from which candidates for Congress (and the presidency) emerge. If you have few Democrats holding these offices, you’ll have fewer ready to run for Congress.
• Losing begets losing: Local voters who only see Democrats as losers or as incompetent or as out of touch with their issues become accustomed to rejecting them.

A progressive neighbor of mine (almost all my neighbors are progressive) asked me to comment about abortion rights, in this context. This question gets to a struggle in most political parties: which is more important, purity or victory? The GOP has certainly struggled with this question and has answered it by booting all the moderates out of their party. This has not hurt them – yet – because our system is tilted in their favor (the built-in advantage for less-populated areas), because they already control most of the levels of power, and because of Democrat incompetence.

So, should Democrats accept anti-choice politicians (or gun nuts) as the price of winning?

Recently, Democrats who were never particularly comfortable with Bernie Sanders to start with, along with many progressive women (for obvious reasons), excoriated Sanders for assisting the mayoral campaign of an anti-choicer in Oklahoma City. This particular struggle has also played out in venues like January’s Women’s March, where anti-choice women’s groups were made personae non gratae.

Abortion rights, gay rights, immigration rights, and the importance of black lives are litmus test issues for me. But I’m here in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I will never be faced with a dilemma in choosing a Democrat over a Republican.

How about in Oklahoma City? Or the suburbs of Atlanta?

There is a moral dilemma. If we insist that our party be pure, we may be hurting a Democratic candidate who could win and do a lot of good for people who need it. Think that if a somewhat distasteful Democrat wins over an evil Republican: they may help lift more black folks out of poverty and devote more resources to the needs of single moms and their infants and the schools those kids will go to. Is it moral to, in effect, facilitate the victory of a Republican, who will help only the wealthy and, most likely, be even worse on social issues than the flawed Democrat?

I also think purity is bad strategy. Progressives cannot win the school board seats, the city halls, and the state legislatures everywhere with an identical message or set of priorities. And, we have to understand that the only thing that matters in January of a new Congress is the numbers of Ds (and Is aligned with them) vs. Rs. It’s the votes for Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader that determine everything that follows. There must be more Ds than Rs, even if I don’t love every single D.

We also have to be practical in our thinking: how much difference is the mayor of Oklahoma City going to make on reproductive freedom? He (it is a man) doesn’t have any authority on that issue and lives in a state where even a solid pro-choicer would have zero influence.

Another example worth considering is Joe Manchin, the Democratic – but rather right-wing – senator from West Virginia. He only votes with other Democrats about 60% of the time. He is wrong on guns and coal and numerous other issues. But, the key question is: if we “primary” him and beat him with a reliable progressive, can that progressive win in November?! Remember, Manchin is standing with Dems right now in opposing Trumpcare. And he will vote for a Democrat to lead the Senate in 2019.

(I’m not declaring absolute opposition to a race against Manchin. I am saying that this is not the no-brainer purist lefties may proclaim.)

Democrats in blue states and counties have a responsibility to move the party left. There should be no room in Montgomery County for Democrats who favor powerful, wealthy development interests. There should be no room in Maryland for Democratic state legislators (or governors) who support the bail bond or gambling industries or downplay racial injustice.

But, if we are to stop the GOP agenda and the party’s racist and xenophobic acolytes across the country, we have to beat them at the ballot box! Maybe if Dems were politically dominant right now, I would be fine with kicking out every Wall Streeter and abortion opponent. But protest marches and candlelight vigils are not going to take our country back. The only thing that can do that is winning elections. Towards that end, we need to temper the virulence of our internecine battles and tolerate some politicians we’d rather not. The Democratic Party must be a big tent.

So, to answer the neighbor who asked me to address this question: I can live with a mayor in Oklahoma City whom I disagree with completely on abortion. And I can live with a Joe Manchin in one of the most racist, Trump-friendly states in America. I feel this at the same time I feel it is past time to kick the right wing Dems out of Montgomery County and Maryland.

As a college football coach famously put it in 1950: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” That needs to be progressives’ and Democrats’ mantra for at least the next few years.

*It was apparent that within days of the election that Trump voters, on average, were more wealthy than the rest of the country.

(c)2017 Keith Berner

02.04.17 I’m a Democrat

I have worked on more Democratic political campaigns than I can count (starting with George McGovern in 1972 – that’s a picture of me at age 12 in Time Magazine, 9/25/72*). I even served as a precinct captain for four years here in Takoma Park, MD. I quit that post in 2006 out of disgust with Maryland’s machine politics and the pro-corporate Dems on the national scene. Notwithstanding my anger at the party, I continued to vote almost exclusively for Democratic candidates, because what choice did I have? (The exceptions are when I have written in “Mickey Mouse” in races where the GOP had no chance.)

Since 2006, I have called myself “anti-Republican,” rather than “Democrat.”

It’s 2017, that luxury is gone. All the fantasizing by Greens about a third-party’s route to salvation are out of touch with the reality of our rigid two-party system. Lefty calls for a political revolution to overthrow Wall Street Democrats may be noble, but may also be distracting us from our one and only task at hand: winning!

For those new to this blog, let me specify: I’m from the Bernie end of the spectrum. If I could, I’d kick the private sector out of all public services (starting with health care!), ban all guns, remove religion from the public square, confiscate excess wealth, and oppose US hypocrisy in foreign policy.

But, to insist on purity is to condemn the left (all of it) to minority status, on school boards, city councils, and statehouses across the country. I will henceforth call myself a Democrat and do whatever I can to help beat the GOP everywhere.  This will mean sometimes prioritizing a big tent over trying to topple elected officials who don’t always vote the way I want.

Yes, we should have internal debates in the party. Yes, we should support primary challenges to “bad” Democrats, but only when such challenges are not going to bite us in the ass that November.

It is the job of all people even moderately left of center in this country — just as it is the job of the most embittered Bernie (and Hillary) supporters – to elevate victory as a principle over purity.

The one thing Democrats can no longer tolerate: an incompetent party that rests on laurels, comforts itself in its own moral rectitude, and cedes the entire political system to the far right (which is now the only right in this country).

The Democratic Party, love it or not, is the only vehicle to take our country back. Get on board or get out of the way!

*That issue featured All in the Family and Sanford & Sons on the cover, under the headline “Toppling Old Taboos.” The bumper sticker I was holding at the rally in the old Cleveland Arena read “Nixon Bugs Me, Too!”

©2017 Keith Berner

01.16.17 Bernie and Hillary supporters go for the jugular

I endorsed and contributed to Bernie Sanders’s campaign (twice). When it was apparent (after the New York primary) that he had no path to victory in the primaries, I endorsed and contributed to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I have Facebook friends on both sides who apparently believe that trashing the other candidate and their supporters is more important than stopping the GOP/Trump agenda.

From a Bernie supporter on Christmas day:

All right, Planned Parenthood, you gave us Hillary Clinton, and that gave us Donald Trump. And now you want our help? Why shouldn’t we put our efforts into starting a truly progressive health care organization?

He and his respective bitter losers have been screaming for weeks about how Bernie would have been a “certain” winner against Trump. There are some smart, highly logical people in this group, who are so blinded by their ideology that they can’t see the error in conflating hindsight with prediction. (And who thinks it would be a good idea for some disgruntled boys to found a service in place of PP? Is it ok to throw women under the bus while they try to grow their little fantasy into an international movement?)

Oh yeah, this same person denounced Bernie himself, when Bernie got behind Clinton at the convention.

Today, a gang of Hillary freaks used a Slate article in praise of John Lewis (who recently called Trump’s presidency illegitimate) to launch more than 80 comments attacking not Donald Trump, but (you guessed it): Bernie Sanders. (The person who posted – a friend of my friend — did so with the comment “Don’t get me started on that asshole Sanders.”) In the face of James Comey, Russian hacking, Clinton campaign mistakes, Clinton’s horrific mishandling of the email scandal, they blame (you guessed it again) Bernie Sanders for delivering Trump to the White House.

My friend commented on that post by declaring that Bernie Sanders didn’t mention Hillary’s name often enough as he campaigned hard for her in the fall. Geez, if only Bernie had said, “Hillary, Hillary, Hillary,” she’d be president, right? I wrote back to him, denouncing this destructive movement and calling for unity.

In both cases, these individual “friends” of mine took the 5-10% of the national agenda I disagreed with them on to denounce me in harsh, personal and political terms. The Bernie supporter called me a “right-winger” who was “trying to destroy [his] world” when I switched my loyalty to Hillary last spring. The Hillary supporter has accused me of “being enamored of [my] own intellect.” Both leveled these insults publicly.

It’s awful political news for all of us that these people won’t stop fighting with each other and that both consider me (and Planned Parenthood and John Lewis) the enemy. Fighting the last battle assures a loss in the next war!

It’s horrific personal news, when these fanatics are so rigid that they throw a friend overboard over a partial disagreement.

A pox on both their houses. Democrats will have to build a big tent and win without them. As for me, my life will be happier with friends who don’t insult me when I disagree with them.

©2017 Keith Berner

10.22.16 Voting for Hillary Clinton in “Safe” Maryland

I’m proud that Maryland is in the top three bluest states in the country (Hawaii is first and Vermont and Maryland are neck and neck). This means that any individual progressive (or wing-nut) can cast a protest vote in Maryland and not put our 10 electoral votes in play. In fact, when I switched my presidential endorsement from Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton in May, I wanted her to beat Donald Trump nationally, but still planned to write in Sanders as a protest vote in November.

So, what changed for me?

This election stopped being about one candidate or one party vs. another. Trump’s campaign has ended up making it a referendum on bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, and – finally – democracy itself.

In this new light, it is essential to decimate the forces of darkness – not only Trump himself, but the legions of “deplorables”* behind him and the GOP elite that sowed these bitter seeds for decades and will not denounce evil when it is in their midst.

We must each stand up – in public and in the voting booth – to declare our opposition to hate and our love for democracy.** It is not enough to achieve an electoral-vote landslide on November 8. No, we must drive up the popular total everywhere – in swing states, as well in deep-blue and deep-red ones. The moral outcome of this election must be overwhelming. To vote for Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or a write-in candidate, as our democracy is under assault, is an abdication of responsibility, a retreat from the real world of nuance and hard choices.

Which side are you on? You may not abstain (or meekly protest, which is a form of abstention) in the face of evil.

*Hillary Clinton was an idiot to have publicly called Trump supporters “deplorable” in September, even though she was mostly correct in using the term. Yes, there are many angry, suffering people who have been neglected by the elites of both parties. Yes, at the very least, Democrats must address their needs (the GOP never will). Yes, poor education and pernicious TV have fostered ignorance that cannot solely be blamed on the individual. Just the same, citizens who welcome and propagate lies and embrace hate are deplorable. It is correct to denounce them and the party that mobilized them.

**Our democracy is flawed. But a flawed democracy does not equal zero democracy – the difference is profound. The need-to-be-improved good should never be set against the impossible perfect. Fight to improve our democracy, but do not allow it be stolen from us.

©2016 Keith Berner

07.27.16 Fox News right now (#foxalternaterelality)

Trump’s encouragement of Russian espionage and interference in the US presidential race is the top (or 2nd) story on: NYT, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR right now. It does not exist AT ALL on Fox News. (The top story there is about Bernie supporters defecting to Jill Stein [the Green Party candidate].) #foxalternaternatereality

While a number of GOP security hawks have abandoned Trump, the rest of the party will now suddenly forget its decades-long hostility to Russia and Putin. Apparently, nothing will interfere with their lust for power. (Trumps explicit racism certainly didn’t break their stride.) #GOPhypocrisy

07.10.16 Rage

Rage about all the black men killed by racist cops (not to mention all the injustice meted out that stops short of outright murder).

Rage at the sniper who killed innocent officers who were protecting protesters, setting back the cause of justice.

Rage at the NRA and the venal politicians who take their money and do their bidding.

Rage at the gun nuts who claim that an armed crowd at that gay bar in Orlando would have saved lives: tell that to the armed and dead cops in Dallas.

Rage at almost all Republicans for almost everything they support, oppose, and lie about.

Rage at the Clintons whose arrogance and paranoia have handed rope to our enemies over and over again for 25 years.

Rage at the right-wing freaks who think that misuse of an email server merits prison but starting a war founded on lies with hundreds of thousands of dead doesn’t.

Rage at the driver who ran over the kitten in the road today and was in too much of a hurry to stop, seconds before I arrived on my bike and held the kitten in my hands as it died.

Rage at the white people who chose on Friday to tell us how much better things are than we think, because violent crime rates are going down and GDP is going up.

Rage at the white people who will never get why Black Lives Matter.

Rage at a judge for putting a rapist in jail for only six months in order not to inconvenience him too much.

Rage at North Carolina for making me carry my birth certificate the next time I need to pee there.

Rage at the Nader and Sanders supporters who value their purity over the need to prevent evil.

Rage at Trump for everything.

Rage at Trump’s Virginia campaign manager, Corey Stewart, who blamed Hillary Clinton for the dead cops in Dallas.

Rage at Kansas for renaming public schools “government schools.”

Rage at Romney, Ryan, and Wall Street for not giving a shit about anyone who isn’t as lucky as they are.

Rage at journalists who enable climate change deniers and supply siders in the name of “balance.”

Rage at ideologues who decry science.

Rage at theocrats who declare Jesus white and bigotry right.

Rage at anyone who stays home on November 8. Rage at the right wing machine that steals voting rights while it proclaims freedom and tries to enforce it elsewhere at the barrel of a gun.

Rage at myself for looking forward to my page-view counts for this post.

Rage at the universe for not fixing any of this.

©2016 Keith Berner

07.06.16 Apology to Bernie Sanders + Don’t trust NYT

On May 29, I wrote about the hypocrisy of the Sanders campaign’s having opposed the superdelegate system in principle, while turning to superdelegates as the the last hope for overturning the will of the voters. While I stand by the my post, as a whole, it included these unfortunate words: “his supporters. . .throw things.” This was an oblique reference to an incident that was widely reported as taking place at the Nevada state convention in May. I should never have made that reference and hereby apologize for it.

As it turns out, there was no chair throwing in Nevada. According to the myth-busting website, Snopes.com, the incident was completely made up by a Nevada journalist by the name of Jon Ralston and then further propagated by such liberal bastions as Rachel Maddow and the New York Times.

Your blogger was gullible enough to take Maddow’s and NYT’s reports at face value. Dear Reader, as an one-person opinion blogger, I cannot promise you that I will engage in the kind of fact checking that I would expect of professional journalists and the institutions they work for. I find it outrageous that Maddow and NYT (not to mention hundreds of other media outlets) didn’t do their due diligence on this. I have learned a new lesson about relying on them and will try harder to verify controversial items I see in the mainstream media.

Ultimately, I don’t think this particular piece of misreporting changed in any significant way the outcome of the race: Bernie Sanders pretty much had no hope of victory by then. But it certainly contributed to greater hostility between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, which has not been good for anyone (except Trump and the GOP).

So, what of the Bernie claim that the media was horribly unfair to him from the moment he got in the race. I certainly saw clear evidence of this from the Washington Post, which is a consistent pro-corporate rag with no line between editorial and reporting. But I again failed to notice New York Times’ irresponsibility. This outstanding piece by Bill Moyers sheds good light:

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote a scathing takedown of The Times’ most egregious offense: a March article by Jennifer Steinhauer on how Sanders functioned as a legislator. Headlined “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years Via Legislative Side Doors,” as originally published, the article recounted how effective Sanders was at attaching amendments to pieces of legislation, both Republican and Democratic, and forging coalitions to achieve his ends. The piece was bandwagon stuff.

But then something happened. The original article, already published, underwent a transformation in which Sanders suddenly wasn’t so effective a legislator. Even the headline was changed to “Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories.” And this paragraph was added: “But in his presidential campaign Mr. Sanders is trying to scale up those kinds of proposals as a national agenda, and there is little to draw from his small-ball legislative approach to suggest that he could succeed.”

Responding to angry Sanders supporters, The Times’ own public editor, Margaret Sullivan, asked why the changes were made and wrote, “Matt Purdy, a deputy executive editor, said that when senior editors read the piece after it was published online, they thought it needed more perspective about whether Mr. Sanders would be able to carry out his campaign agenda if he was elected president.” Yeah, right.

Moyers also reports the numbers:

On CNN, Clinton got more than 70,000 of the Democratic-candidate mentions, while Sanders got just under 42,000. On MSNBC, Clinton got more than 93,000 mentions to Sanders’ roughly 51,000. On Fox News, she got more than 71,000 mentions to his more than 28,000. The numbers are similar on the Lexis-Nexis database of newspapers.

Moyers’s conclusion about why all this happened, though, contradicts one part of the conspiracy theory held by many Bernie supporters. According to Moyers, media bias against Sanders was not the result of a corporate, right-wing cabal to defeat the left, but rather resulted from a self-reinforcing echo chamber. That is, the media assumed from the start that Sanders couldn’t possibly win against Clinton. Therefore, they under-covered him and denigrated him to justify their firm conclusion that he was and would be a loser. Writes Moyers:

. . .this isn’t just what the MSM think of Bernie Sanders. It is what the media think of losers. They don’t like them very much, and they seem determined to make sure that you don’t like them either — unless they beat the press’s own odds and become winners.

Do I suspect anti-left bias in the media? To some extent. But in some ways it’s even more alarming to learn that the news sources we rely on are just so completely irresponsible that truth and balance simply don’t matter. If you can’t rely on the New York Times, whom can you rely on?

©2016 Keith Berner

05.29.16 Rigged

The system is rigged. It always has been.

It was rigged in favor of landowners. And men. And white people. The number of ways our so-called “democracy” is anti-democratic is mind-numbing. And our fellow citizens’ minds have been purposely numbed by a corporate media and dumbed-down education system to believe our deeply flawed system is the envy of the world.

So, we reach Political Year 2016 (which began last year, of course). We still have Tuesday voting (rigged against workers). We have a notoriously irresponsible news media, rigged in favor of its greedy corporate owners. We have small, unrepresentative states that get to choose first for everyone else. We have closed primaries that prevent free democratic choice. We have caucuses that assure only the most highly motivated couple of percent take part.

We have Republicans – empowered by the courts – working assiduously to make voting more difficult and removing all remaining obstacles to racist disenfranchisement.

We have superdelegates, put in place by Democrats to after the McGovern debacle of 1972 to thwart the popular will if that popular will could threaten party victory and party elites’ power.  And we have Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as head of the DNC, who has done everything in her power to kill off threats to Hillary Clinton in service to party elites.

So, our broken system results in two front runners who are hated by most of the country. On the “bad” side is a fascist bigot, who – alas – will be backed by the majority of his party: the angry on the ground and the power-hungry running the show. On the “good” side is a family that has created scandal out of everything they’ve touched for a generation, because of their hubris and obsession with secrecy.

And there’s Bernie Sanders, a supposed saint. His policy stands seem saintly, indeed. But he forgot about the South and African Americans in planning his campaign. And his supporters scream and yell and throw things and threaten to make everyone suffer if they don’t magically get their way.  Sanders himself seems increasingly distracted from the substance of his revolution that did not happen, as he refuses to condemn bad behavior on his side and whips up the frenzy of his mobs who think something has just been stolen from them.

A revolution would change the rules. There would be Saturday elections, with plenty of early voting opportunities, in multi-member districts, with ranked voting. Districts would be determined by natural and jurisdictional borders. The system would encourage and enable participation. The media would cover facts, expose fallacies, and discuss various points of view (even those I disagree with). Schools would make social studies and government studies about more than how great America is. No one would give a shit about Iowa and New Hampshire.

Sanders and his supporters knew what the rules were before they embarked on their noble cause. At best, they would launch the revolution to change them, but those rules were still in place and hardly secret. It is not like Lucy yanked away the football when Charlie Brown was already running towards it. No, that football was clearly not in place to be kicked this year, last year, four years ago. The rules were not suddenly changed to hurt Bernie Sanders.

A substantially greater number of participants in the Democratic primaries and caucuses this year have chosen Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. That includes an overwhelming majority of minority voters. Sanders is right that closed primaries hurt him. But his supporters seem to have no problem at all with the even less democratic caucuses where he did well.

And, it’s fine with me to hate the superdelegate system. But to pin your hopes on it at the last minute when that is your only possible route to the nomination? This is what Sanders & Supporters are doing now.

It doesn’t matter that Clinton is imploding or polling worse than Sanders against Trump. What matters is that Clinton won the most votes this year. Sanders didn’t. Even if Sanders wins in California, that result will not change.  So the supposedly pure-democracy-loving Sanders campaign is now willing to disenfranchise everyone who chose Clinton, because they know better. How is this different than the behavior of party elites?

It isn’t and this is hypocrisy 101: claim to be be for the people. Except when you don’t like their decisions.

I’m not saying I like their decision. I voted for Sanders in Maryland. I have come to the point where I guess he’d do better in November than Clinton. But I am not willing to just toss aside others’ votes for what amounts to a guess.  I’m also not against trying for a political revolution. I believe it would be our only long-term hope. But when you turn on your own principles to bring it about, you’ve gone too far for me.

I want Bernie Sanders to continue campaigning in California. I want his supporters to be at the table pushing hard in the convention rule-writing. And I want Sanders to give a prime-time speech at the convention at which he reminds us again how rigged this whole country is for the ultra-wealthy. I want him to keep demanding progressive change. I want his dignity to be intact for the many fights to come.

But the time has already come to stop clawing for one or two delegates here and there or seeking to have superdelegates overrule the voters’ will. And on June 8 (the day after the California primary), it will be time finally, completely, and with unity to do whatever is necessary to stop a fascist from becoming president of the United States.

©2016 Keith Berner

05.01.16 Hillary Clinton for President

Oh how it pains me to write this. My opinion of both Clintons has been consistent for a very long time. I hardly need to recount their political and policy sins again.

Also, I have not given up on the political movement Bernie Sanders represents. Yes, the system is rigged for the wealthy. Yes, income and wealth inequality are killing what remains of our grossly imperfect democracy. Yes, we need a political revolution to truly address our problems.

But that political revolution is not going to happen in 2016. Bernie Sanders has no remaining path to the Democratic nomination (other than the vanishingly unlikely and extremely distasteful possibility of convincing delegates that a majority of Democratic primary voters – and an overwhelming majority of African American voters – who voted for Clinton this year don’t matter; is that the kind of democracy we seek?).

Sanders should stay in the race until the Philly convention and continue speaking out for the progressive agenda and revolution we need. He should use all the leverage he can to influence Clinton and the party platform (though, the latter hardly matters).

But, as I have written previously, this year, our nation stands at the edge of an abyss the likes of which it has not seen in the lifetime of anyone reading this. Hard-right theocrats, racists, and Ayn Randers control the Congress, governorships, state legislatures, and school boards coast to coast. The only thing that stands in the way their agenda’s being fully enacted is the presidency.

If you need to hold your nose to support Hillary Clinton (as I do) than start holding it. It is not sufficient simply to stop attacking her (though that is absolutely necessary, since every attack from the left will be in a Donald Trump ad this fall). No, we also need to write checks, make phone calls, and knock on doors. We must do whatever it takes to keep GOP hands off the White House.

©2016 Keith Berner

04.17.16 Bernie Sanders for President (with caveats)

Bernie Sanders represents my values. It’s about time we had a national leader who is not only willing but eager to speak truth to power. Sanders is right to describe our economic and political systems as rigged for the wealthy and powerful (who, of course, are usually the same). He is right to condemn corporate corruption. He is right to speak out against a Democratic Party establishment (currently embodied by the odious DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz) that has tried repeatedly to rig the current presidential campaign in favor of the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton.

From a progressive-values standpoint, Sanders has very few flaws. He didn’t suddenly discover the moral catastrophe of economic inequality because of pressure during this campaign. He has been speaking up for the left-out, the “little people,” ever since he ran for mayor of Burlington, decades ago. Before that, he was an active participant in the civil rights movement. (Hints from Clinton supporters like [for shame!] Congressman John Lewis [D-GA] that he might have been insufficiently so, have been proven a lie.) His own integrity and incorruptibility are beyond question.

The only less-than-bright spot in Bernie Sanders is his relative lack of enthusiasm for gun control, which is hardly surprising for a politician from a rural state. Attempts by Clinton to portray Sanders as a gun nut, though, are wildly off the mark.

So, why have I lacked passion in my support for Sanders for president? Partly, it’s because I assumed he never had a chance. Party, it has been my assumption that his nomination would doom the Democrats in November. (I have softened on this as his poll numbers against Trump and Cruz have remained higher than Clinton’s; though I still believe that his numbers would drop significantly under a full-throttled GOP onslaught.)

I have also been thrown by the almost obsessive opposition to Sanders by progressive figures like Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Krugman and others have been hammering away at how Sanders’s economic numbers don’t add up and how he lacks any reasonable plan for getting getting his program through a Congress that has stopped even the decidedly centrist Obama in his tracks.

I find these arguments compelling, but also have to remind myself (and you, dear reader) that almost no political candidate’s numbers add up or plans for success have any chance in the real world. Bernie Sanders’s campaign is aspirational. It is not a legislative program. And, Sanders is right that the only hope for progress in this country is a political revolution. That revolution isn’t going to start in Congress. But it has to start somewhere. If not Bernie Sanders, then who?!

Finally, I have been disturbed by Sanders’s almost complete failure to reach out to and captivate African Americans. I cannot imagine a political revolution in this country that does not include the very people who were the targets of America’s Original Sin and the country’s ongoing indifference to their daily lives and struggle. In creating his campaign, Sanders forgot African Americans and wrote off the South. To some extent, this was a reflection of his own skepticism about his chances. If he wasn’t really trying to win then it hardly mattered if he lost too many states with early primaries.

To some extent, Sanders’s blindness to building a real “rainbow coalition” (to use a phrase that ended up sounding empty in Jesse Jackson’s mouth), like his stance on guns, is a result of decades serving a lily-white rural state. Sanders has tried to repair the damage recently and had some success. He is certainly not a bigot himself. But his early failures figure into my relative lack of passion for his candidacy.

The New York State primary campaign has provided an opportunity for me to rekindle some passion. Sanders has shown his typical, unusual courage in speaking out against Israeli policy and Prince of Darkness Benyamin Netanyahu ­– in Brooklyn of all places! Sure, college students have been pushing for boycotts and some progressive Jewish leaders have been denouncing AIPAC and Likud. But an actual elected official speaking the truth about Israel? And a Jewish one, at that? Unheard of! (Your blogger is also Jewish, but foremost a humanist.) This alone reinforces my commitment to support Sanders over a Clinton, whose whole family swears allegiance not only to AIPAC and Likud, but also to the butchers in Cairo (Mubarak and Sisi) and Riyadh.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile is a poster child for most of what is wrong in our political system and country. I’m glad she has moved decidedly left in the course of this campaign, under pressure from Bernie Sanders and his supporters. She says she now opposes free-trade-at-all-costs and Wall St. dominance. Her utterances on this and other topics are encouraging, if not wholly persuasive. (Remember, Barack Obama appointed Wall St. and the NSA to run his administration after sounding very different during his campaign.)

As I have written, I have particular loathing for the Clintons because their hubris leads them over and over again to waste political capital on scandals of their own making. Open the books on Whitewater in 1992 and there is no impeachment. Admit to flawed judgment and release all the emails in 2015 and “Emailgate” disappears. Release transcripts of the Goldman Sachs speeches and you start to climb out of the hole your politically incompetent decision to feed at that trough dug in the first place.

I will never understand how African Americans managed to forgive the Clintons for the explicitly racist campaign Bill ran on Hillary’s behalf in 2008, and the implicit racism of Hillary’s dog whistles for the folks who now support Trump in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Now we have the spectacle of Bill’s shouting down Black Lives Matter protesters last week. (The thought of that man running loose in the White House gives me the [slick] willies.)

(I accept Hillary’s denunciation of the 1994 crime bill. Everyone has learned a lot since then, including her. This is a case where she should be applauded for growth, rather than condemned for flip-flopping.)

To the extent that Clinton’s consistent progressive rhetoric this campaign season can be believed, there remains one area of profound difference between her and Sanders: foreign policy. Clinton voted for the Iraq War and has tried to distance herself from that decision only out of political expediency. Her embrace of military intervention in Libya more recently shows a continued arrogance (your blogger was torn on the issue at the time for humanitarian reasons, but was not secretary of state). It’s not not only that Clinton puts too much stock in military solutions; it is also that she believes in an American mission to remake the world. Hillary Clinton is a neocon. The fact that the GOP neocon establishment has recently hinted at supporting her in November should give more circumspect foreign policy analysts pause.

(Your blogger is not an isolationist and has some fear that Sanders could be too much of one. As destructive as US involvement in the world has usually been, the chaos that would result from complete US disengagement would not be pretty.)

A Democrat better win in November. The stakes for anyone to the left of Attila the Hun are higher this year than perhaps ever in American history. Unlike in the disaster years of 1980 and 2000, Democrats now have precious few holds on power across the country. Even as the national GOP is providing an amusing political spectacle this year, right-wing freaks own outright a substantial majority of governorships, state legislatures, and school boards from coast to coast. A slightly unbalanced Supreme Court has broadly expanded the powers of the corporate elite in the past 20 years and game will be up if the GOP gets one more appointment there. The only thing standing in the way of a right-wing extremist abyss is the presidency.

In this context, it is frightening to hear Sanders supporters tout a “Bernie or Bust” line. It’s bad enough that Nader and his supporters deemed Gore the larger evil in 2000, leading to hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq, not to mention W’s myriad other policy disasters, which – at best – will take decades to recover from.

It seems unlikely now that the Democratic nominee will be anyone other than Hillary Clinton. Trump and Cruz may be flawed enough to lose even in the face of an uninspired Democratic electorate or a new Clinton scandal. But if Bernie supporters stay home, or – worse – continue to attack Clinton after the nomination is secured – they create unacceptable risk.

So, why am I still going to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Maryland Democratic primary on April 26? Because his voice still needs to be heard. Also, because if he can manage to win convincingly in the remaining primaries (which I doubt), he could just eke out a victory in July. (If Sanders does not win in New York this Tuesday, I will call publicly for him to tone down the anti-Clinton rhetoric.)

Bernie Sanders is an American hero for raising issues that Democrats have ignored for decades. He is worthy of your vote. But let not your love of Bernie now blind you to the greater imperative of Democratic victory in November.

03.16.16 Chris Matthews’s unethical fundraising for Kathleen Matthews (and Clinton ties, too)

It’s astounding how low the two moneybags candidates in the MD-8 congressional race will go. Today, we take a look at Kathleen Matthews, whose famous husband is a news anchor at MSNBC.

This story (“Chris Matthews at center of NBC’s latest news scandal”) focuses on the pattern of guests on Chris’s “Hardball” having contributed to Kathleen shortly before or after their appearances [using first name to distinguish the two spouses].

“And while most of you know that our show doesn’t typically cover congressional races, I will continue to fully disclose my relationship with her as part of MSNBC’s commitment to being transparent and fair in our coverage,” added Matthews.

But Matthews, who has made glowing references to Kathleen on his show without mentioning her campaign, hasn’t uttered a word about the contributions his 62-year-old wife has received from his TV guests.

The article provides a number of specific examples of apparent appearance-contribution correlations, including from Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY).

“Clinton Donors, Associates Boost Campaign of Chris Matthews’ Wife: MSNBC host surrounded by conflict of interest concerns” has a slightly different take: rather than highlighting “Hardball” appearances, it focuses on Clinton connections:

The Daily Caller first reported in February that some of Clinton’s biggest backers are funding Matthews, the former chief communications officer at Marriott International. This has led to accusations that Chris Matthews has a “clear” conflict of interest in covering the Democratic side of the 2016 presidential race. [Added by blogger: the latter linked article from, Huffington Post, is about how Chris’s Clinton ties have made him biased against Bernie Sanders, resulting in an outcry from Sanders supporters – see below.]

Among bigwig Clinton donors who are pouring money into our little congressional race (which will end up being the most expensive in the country, due completely to David Trone and Kathleen):

• Elaine Schuster, a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly who previously served on the board of the Clinton Foundation
• Mark Penn,the infamous campaign consultant who has switched from moderate left to hard right, as has suited his own pursuit of power over the years
• Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the Blackstone Group

A more extensive list can be found in the article.

There is nothing ipso facto wrong with political celebrities contributing to a local race, but the ties between the Clintons, NBC, and Chris/Kathleen certainly don’t pass the smell test. In your blogger’s not-so-humble opinion, voters should always find it disturbing when large contributions from outside the local area are fueling a local campaign.

Here’s more about Chris’s bias towards Hillary Clinton:

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been accused by Bernie Sanders supporters of being blatantly one-sided in favor of Hillary and against Bernie Sanders, to the point that thousands of progressives have signed a petition calling for MSNBC to suspend the host of “Hardball” “because of his constant shilling for Hillary Clinton.” The magazine Esquire sharply criticized Matthews’ recent interview with Clinton as “ahistorical and out of bounds” for his attacks on Sanders. Now, research by The Daily Caller reveals that Hillary’s biggest donors are backing Matthews’ wife — Kathleen Matthews — in her congressional race in Maryland.

How ironic that one of the most progressive congressional districts in the country is being dominated by large money, questionable ethics, and nasty ideological accusations.

©2016 Keith Berner

03.13.16 The Democratic Race

I have written about my values agreement with Bernie Sanders. I certainly haven’t been shy about calling out the Clintons, based on policy (Wall St. and neocon hawkishness) and character (hubris leading to politically damaging behavior that hands hanging-rope to political enemies).

Though the GOP seeks at every turn to deny it, we live in a reality-based world. We don’t get to simply have Bernie be our president, just because we agree with him. We don’t get to mold Hillary by slicing off what we disagree with and reforming her character to our liking. Therefore, I have considered the most compelling argument for a Democratic candidate to be who beats Donald Trump in November.

If only we could know.

Here, the arrogance of both Hillary’s and Bernie’s supporters is stunning. If there is one thing Michigan demonstrated, it is that polling is unreliable. Polls eight months before November cannot possibly inform us about electoral outcomes then (made more complex by the 50 separate sets of polls to be analyzed).

Supporters on both sides can only rely on common sense and gut instinct to make such predictions.

• Would Bernie lose centrist or right-leaning independents that Hillary would hold?
• Would Trump-leaning independents who have been damaged by the economic catastrophe of the past 40 years be drawn to Bernie’s populist economics or would their empty nationalism turn them off to him?
• Would Hillary capture enough GOP neocons (many of whom are being quite open about supporting her over Trump) to compensate for the number of bitter Bernie supporters who decide to stay home?
• Would Democratic neocons flee to the GOP rather than vote for Bernie?
• Would African Americans and other people of color who have thus far been indifferent to Bernie’s message stay home if he were the nominee?
• Are Hillary’s negatives as high as they possibly could go already, because she is so well known and has been under constant attack for decades?
• Would Bernie’s negatives climb sky-high once the full throttle of the right-wing attack campaign is turned on him?*
• Is there another Clinton scandal in the offing?

We don’t know. Anyone who says they do is selling snake oil.

Given that the potentially most compelling criterion for candidate selection is unknowable, my most passionate concern is that all non-Republicans (I refuse to call myself a Democrat) exercise some restraint in coming weeks, both in tarnishing the other candidate and the other candidate’s supporters. And, I also land back on my values and the only choice they lead to.

Before Michigan, I was very close to believing the race was over and dedicating myself to a Hillary victory in the fall. For one thing, I don’t want to be part of a supposed revolution that does not have people of color at the forefront. But African Americans supported Bernie in greater numbers in Michigan than they had in previous contests. They may well continue the trend in the other Midwest industrial states.

Also, a compelling New York Times editorial this past week highlighted the ugliest aspects of classic Clinton behavior, as Hillary purposely distorts Bernie’s record in a scorched-earth effort to destroy him. (What short-term thinking! Hillary cannot win in November without support from “Berners” [purposeful play on my surname]).

I will proudly vote for Bernie Sanders on April 26 in Maryland. Regardless of whatever else happens, I want him and his message to be in the race through the last primary.

And, again, I hope with all my heart that all non-Republicans will remember that that we must be in the trenches together when we face the corporate-dominated, demagogic, bigoted GOP next fall.

*So far, the Washington Post is the only media outlet running a concerted campaign against Bernie, through daily lead-editorial attacks on his policies and character. Meanwhile, the GOP is purposely laying off him, because they are convinced they’ll have an easier time beating him than Hillary.

©2016 keKeith Berner

02.09.16 The big dawg escapes the pound and loses his muzzle

I wrote yesterday about the New York Times lead story, where supposed feminists told young women they were going to hell or accused them of chasing young penises, for/by supporting Bernie Sanders.

Today, the lead story  in the NYT was about Bill Clinton’s accusing Bernie Sanders of being dishonest.

There is a fair case to be made that Bernie is not prepared to be president or won’t be able to get his ideas implemented or would hand the fall election to the GOP. But accusing Mr. Squeaky Clean of dishonesty? Tell me how many votes the Dawg is going to drive towards Hillary and away from Sanders with this disgusting attack. It’s back to 2008 South Carolina where Bill tossed away decades of empathy with Black America by going full-bore racist in his desire to anything, everything, whatever to beat Barack Obama.

And, this again, is why I loathe the Clintons. They are so fucking out-of-control tone deaf that they hand foot after foot of rope to their own enemies, and ours.

Your blogger has reluctantly concluded that Hillary better win the nomination and the November election. But with every piece of news about the $3/4-million from Goldman Sachs and the refusal to release transcripts, with every attack on young women who are thinking for themselves, with every assault on Bernie Sanders’ character, I look at the abyss on one side and Hillary Clinton on the other, and the abyss looks more and more attractive.

Apart from the Bushes, there is not a family in America that deserves to lose every election, every single day, than the abhorrent Clintons.

©2016 Keith Berner

02.07.16 “Feminist icons” attack young women because they think for themselves

The lead story in today’s electronic edition of the New York Times, is headlined “Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright Scold Young Women Backing Bernie Sanders.”

Believe me, I get it. I was raised a feminist and have proudly called myself one since the late 1960s (though, I suspect Steinem and Albright wouldn’t allow this straight man to own the title). The US has an embarrassingly low percentage of female elected officials and corporate chiefs. And I do believe, absolutely, that more women in government would not only be fair, but would also result in better policy outcomes.

The problem here is how far these “feminist icons” (as the Times calls them) go. Albright more or less condemns young female Bernie supporters to eternal damnation: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women.” When it comes to career mentoring, protection from spousal abuse, and fighting against discrimination, she’s got a point. But she is saying that a female body ought to be the sole criterion for political decision-making.

Steinem’s attack is even worse. In an interview with Bill Maher, the inventor of modern feminism said that young women are only backing Sanders because his rallies are where to find young men. Since you are unlikely to even believe this happened, I’ll repeat it: Gloria Steinem basically said that young women are incapable of intelligent thought and analysis, but rather are driven only by their hormones in pursuit of men, which is why they’re backing an old man over an old woman.

This shit is ugly and insulting, and not only to young women. The insult is to all of us who actually care about policy and the kind of world we want to live in. Your blogger loves Bernie Sanders, not because he has a penis, but because he represents my values.

There’s a similar phenomenon here in the MD-8 congressional race, where Kathleen Matthews – absent any legislative background or service to the community – is running on her gender against several candidates with actual philosophies and records of service.

©2016 Keith Berner

01.31.16 Heart and head do battle in the Democratic primaries

Hillary Clinton is by far the most experienced and qualified candidate for president this year, with background in the White House, the Senate, and as Secretary of State.

Bernie Sanders represents my ideals and aspirations.

Hillary (and Bill) create scandal without crime, when they meet criticism with silence. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement led to Ken Starr and Monica Lewinski as it has to the continued prominence of the “email scandal” this year. If the Clintons had opened the books on Whitewater or said “I blew it and I’m sorry” as soon as the email issue arose, there would have been no festering wound that wasted their political capital and damaged our interests. This same arrogance led Hillary to sell her soul to Wall St. in million dollar speeches even though (1) she didn’t need the money, (2) knew she was going to run for president, and (3) knew (or ought to have) that her actions would hurt her politically.

Bernie is squeaky clean.

Hillary is nearly 100% artifice and focus-group-tested sound bites. (It was distressingly hilarious when her campaign announced a few months ago that she would henceforth be more spontaneous.)

Bernie is authentic. He says what he means and doesn’t pretend to be anyone else.

The Clintons turn nasty when they sense they’re in political trouble. Who can forget their racist campaign in 2008, once they realized that they had underestimated Barack Obama (another sign of their famous arrogance)? The same tic is on display in 2016, with Chelsea Clinton’s lie that Bernie would take away everyone’s health care. (Clinton supporters do the same kind of thing: in yesterday’s Huffington Post, Peter D. Rosenstein twice calls Bernie a liar, just because they happen to disagree.)

Bernie fights fair, exemplified by his refusal in the first Democratic debate this year to carry on about Hillary’s emails or to distort her record and positions.

Hillary couldn’t excite a roomful of kindergarteners hopped on Frosted Flakes. Bernie draws huge, passionate crowds wherever he goes.

I loathe the Clintons. It’s only somewhat about policy. Yeah, I’m very disturbed by Hillary’s hawkishness and history of Wall St. fealty. But what I truly hate is their character: the entitlement, the nastiness, the perpetual handing of rope to their (and our!) enemies. It’s shocking how politically tone deaf these veterans of national politics are. But arrogance and stupidity go hand in hand.

As one after another progressive pundit has made the case against Bernie in recent days, they keep coming back to how unrealistic his plans are. (On Facebook, I recently agreed with Paul Krugman’s argument in the New York Times against “relitigating” health care reform.) Or they point out that Bernie could lose by McGovernite proportions against whatever evil fucker the GOP puts up against him.

Of course, the critique of Bernie’s pie-in-the-sky idealism is on the mark. Faced with a hostile Congress (there’s doubt that even the Democrats would support his plans), there isn’t a chance in hell for single payer or free college tuition. But the flip side of that argument is that all campaigns tout plans that won’t stand a chance in the meat grinder of politics and legislation. What is wrong with painting a picture of where you would like to lead?

As for electability, Bernie’s supporters are right that many recent polls show him running as well or better than Hillary against named GOP opponents. But the flaw in this argument is that the national media has only just begun to beat up on him (thanks, Washington Post for your great leadership on this) and the GOP has mostly ignored him. How will his polling numbers fare when he is in the spotlight as the Democratic nominee? Not well, I assure you.

On the other hand, everyone knows everything about Hillary. There will be no new lines of attack on her. Those of us who loathe her will still loathe her. Those who love her know their lover well and won’t suddenly go fickle. That is, the polling on Hillary is what it is and is not going to change more than marginally in months ahead.

Oh how I want a Bernie Sanders in character and ideals to be our president. Oh how terrified I am that – even if he could pull off the nomination (which remains extremely unlikely) – he could lead us off the cliff in November.

And don’t forget, the left and the Democrats are at the edge of the abyss. Unlike when Ronald Reagan won in 1980 and W pulled off his wins in the aughts, the GOP now has a lock on Congress and a huge majority of states and this year’s party is far to the right of the GOP of even 10 years ago.

The only thing in the way of hard-right government by mandate in this country is a Democratic president in 2017.

I will vote for Bernie in Maryland’s April primary. And I won’t vote for Hillary in November, because I know that Maryland will go blue even without my vote. But if I were in Ohio or Virginia, I’d do what I must to prevent a catastrophe.

I want Bernie to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, because the progressive idealism he represents needs an ever-increasing voice in the national debate.

But after going back and forth on this for year, I’m back where I started: crossing my fingers that Clinton does nothing (more) to self destruct, wins the nomination, and vanquishes the forces of darkness in November.

PS. I contributed to Bernie’s campaign this year and would never give a dime to the Clintons or their wholly owned DNC.

©2016 Keith Berner