But would that make it Trump v. Harris?

If Joe, for whatever reason, dropped out.

Bernie and his supporters would sure as heck question that, I think, if Joe was out before the convention anointed anyone.

Anybody might question that, given the GOP might well run better against a woman of color not so well known they can't paint her as a crazy radical, which they are already doing without too much trouble.

Interesting question which way AOC and the Squad would jump.

Of course, Bernie actually is a crazy radical, but he's an old and well known white guy as well as a crazy radical, and that's probably a better combination for white voters Trump needs in battleground states than a relatively little known woman of color.

Though if Bernie bumped her off the ticket that might cost him nearly all the black support he would absolutely have to have to win.

Fox News host baselessly claims that 'something's going to happen' to Joe Biden

She just went a little over the line, maybe, in course of playing her part in Fox's propaganda onslaught that Old Dodderin' and Sleepy Joe is just a Trojan horse for flaming, insane radical black woman nutjob Kamala Harris.

All of Fox's talking heads are fairly shouting it's really Trump vs Harris and Joe is at best a signature monkey for the craziest, darkest (heh, heh) elements of the "Democrat Party".

More of that by now infamous Republican projection, I'd say.

Claiming Joe will not even make it to election night is just making the prospect all the more terrifying, eh?

The Fox News opinion host Jeanine Pirro baselessly suggested on Wednesday evening that "something's going to happen" to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and that it would cause the former vice president to be removed from the ballot during the presidential election in November.

"For some reason, I just have this feeling that Joe Biden isn't going to be on the ticket," Pirro said during a Fox News segment.

"I have a sense that something's going to happen before the election and he's not even going to be on the ticket, so don't even ask me if he's going to make the four years," she added.

So far as I can tell, she actually is further to the left than Joe B, and she was that at the beginning of the campaign, at the end of the campaign, and in response to the Floyd killing, protests, and riots.

And as she so painfully and forcefully pointed out during the debates, she was and all but incontestably still is to his left of racial matters.

I am truly not sure where that puts her relative to registered Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents.

But she is definitely to the left of this guy, my very own Democratic Congressman, and apparently also to the left of my Democratic Senator.

Forcing people to do what their religion forbids

Nobody wants to be an absolutist about it, but such coercion can certainly be overdone.

Forcing medical professionals or institutions to perform procedures that violate conscience is overdoing it.

And in that regard abortion is not the only issue.

Another Catholic Hospital Sued for Refusing Transgender Hysterectomy

How much worse would things get in this regard if we had outright socialized medicine like the NHS of the Brits?

A lot worse.

Even handing over the entire health insurance market to a single federal government run insurer would significantly diminish this liberty.

And would subject provision of medical services to rationing on the basis of invidious comparisons of the worth of individual lives, and subject R&D to state-sponsored judgments of value, morality, and justice.

I am a Democrat and a progressive, but not an anti-capitalist and not at all a PC authoritarian.

Not so much for Pete as against Bernie

How the Democrats handled Iowa.

The panic of leading talkers at Democratic media at the prospect of Bernie being the nominee.

The shrill insistence that he can't win disguising the desire to keep him and his agenda (not really socialist but really progressive) out of the White House, or anyway from gaining more traction in the Democratic Party.

Some You Tube commentators flatly characterize this as class war within the Democratic Party, with neolibs of the Clintonista variety, old and new, old and young, denouncing Bernie and his supporters as an ideological cult, a cult of personality, a cult of purity, loony lefties far more committed to taking over a party they despise than actually driving out Trump.

His Democratic enemies pretend pushing Bernie aside is all about beating Trump.

But are they just using the necessity of beating Trump as a smokescreen for class war?

Well, yes, of course there's that.

But for some of them, anyway, both concerns could be real.

Did Mayor Pete lie to kill a poll that would have embarrassed him?

Did he demand a recount to deny Bernie a clear win?

MSNBC more and more open to such skepticism about Bernie.

Watching Bernie clips on You Tube

AOC in Iowa, campaigning for Bernie, is urging an agenda of the working class and working class power.

Socialism is the opium of lots of people, but anybody who has the balls to campaign for working people (Bernie, AOC, etc.) rather than "the middle class" has my attention.

The agenda is what it is, a modest dose of social democracy that is of immense value to tens of millions of ordinary Americans that will cost the plutes of America much more than they ever thought they would have to pay for social peace.

They are the authoritarian, almost fascist plutes.

And they pretend to be terrified by the socialism of AOC, Bernie, and an entire wing of the Democratic Party when they are merely enraged by it.

The threat is not AOC, Bernie, or their "socialism".

The threat is the billionaires who might rather sink the republic than see such advances for the working people of America, with its consequences for everybody above them in the social scale.

He said what?

Joe Biden says he would consider a Republican for his running mate

Doddering off into senility, is he?

Almost as idiotically offensive to the true blue as Clinton's repulsive kiss of the Republican ass, "The era of Big Government is over."

What is Big Government?

The regulatory and welfare state.

The progressive state.

Everything built to tame capitalism and protect everybody who isn't a capitalist since McKinley's day.

The thug in the White House

We have known since the 2016 campaign he approves of the third degree, police brutality, torture, and war crimes like murdering the families of terrorists.

His voters like him because they share those attitudes.

Trump issued direct order to halt disciplining of Navy Seal Edward Gallagher

Hitler's Nazis had a mass following. The Italian Fascists were a mass party.

Brutality was part of their appeal, and is still essential to the appeal of modern authoritarians and so-called "populists" in America, Europe, and around the world.

Lindsey Graham and others of the fucking bastard party are now talking about the need to cut, if not to outright privatize, Social Security and to cut Medicare benefits so money gathered by the relevant dedicated taxes can be diverted to deal with the shortfall in general tax revenues created by the Republican wet dream tax cuts so long wanted by the plutes and so well fronted by that pal of the common man, the forgotten man, Bozo the Liar, the Mini-Mussolini in the White House.

Plutes gonna plute.

An entire party whose central task is to fuck over everybody who isn't really, really rich, on behalf of those who are.

And they are delighted to find a front as effective as Trump.

They are like German and Italian plutes and capitalist sympathizers between the wars happy to find so effective a bulwark against the dreaded socialists and communists.

Warren and Sanders are, on this matter of excessive individual wealth, right, just as both Roosevelts were.

And I could live with a cap on individual private wealth.

Might be a good idea, like trust busting.

Too much individual wealth is also too much market power as well as too much political power.

And that's why Obamacare for all is better than Medicare for all.

Not a good idea for just one insurer to be effectively the only customer of all medical providers in the country, and that one under the direct, immediate, and constant control of bourgeois politicians of only weak, unreliable, minority, and limited loyalty to the masses.

Still, he's wrong to urge actual socialism as better than capitalism and she's right to urge what's needed is capitalism run by progressives for the social good.

All the same, a lot more Americans need to learn that Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and libertarian ideology are just bullshit really handy for the plutes.

They need to stop thinking, in effect, that the rich have every right to screw them to the wall.

Marx was certainly right that the moral and political convictions of the many are to far too great an extent a duperie, a false consciousness, an ideological smokescreen that makes the 90% - or more like 99.99% - their own class enemies.

But this is not.

There is no reason for the 90% to accept any version of capitalism that doesn't work as well as possible for them.

Even such a capitalism will work just swell for the remaining 10%, don't you worry about that.

Not as much as they want, but then there is no limit to what they want.

It goes way, way beyond anything remotely like rational self-interest, except on the most ludicrous construals of what is or might be rational.

Homo homini lupus, not because of need, but because of human nature.

The idea that there is no human nature, that "socialist man" is a social creature so much superior to "capitalist man", is part of the bullshit the left, unwilling to face the horrid truth, have sold themselves.

That it's all nurture, the stuff that matters, and none of it nature.

OK, they're just fucking lying

Defenders of Trump who claim to believe in his innocence or the guilt of Bidens Joe and Hunter, or that he is not Putin's agent.

Donald Trump Has Single Handedly Brought ISIS Back From The Dead

Every bit as much as the fakers who claimed to believe "Hillary is just as bad".

Bullshit.

Smoke behind which to hide frank and knowing support of this unutterably contemptible, criminal, racist thug they wanted to put in the White House for the sake of their fucking tax breaks and their war on progressivism.

The too far left.

Is wealth immoral?

With boring predictability . . . .

. . . . the Dem blogs this morning are crowing a big victory for their long-established favorites, the beloved leftists, over the klutzy, hated DINOs on the stage, heretofore known as "moderates", "centrists", or . . . "Democrats".

As for Chuck Todd "using Republican framing" isn't that what he's supposed to do?

Or did you think he was supposed to lob softballs right into the zone all night?

Oddly, the Times' headline - not so much, the story - is the least left-spinning of those in Dem media I have seen, today.

Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Intraparty Rift Flares

There was former Representative John Delaney of Maryland, who accused Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren of making “fairy tale” promises; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who lamented liberal “wish-list economics”; and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, imploring the left not to overreach and “FedEx the election to Donald Trump.”

Arguing in somewhat subtler terms was Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who declined multiple chances to lash her liberal rivals by name but questioned the viability of their progressive stances on health care and education.

“I have bold ideas,” Ms. Klobuchar said, “but they are grounded in reality.”

With Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren refusing to yield an inch, the debate laid bare the stark choice before Democratic primary voters: whether to embrace an agenda of transformational economic change in an effort to motivate young and nonwhite voters, or to proceed more cautiously by embracing more incremental appeals that could win over moderates.

Or, here's a radical thought, the Dem voters could support candidates whose advertised agendas comport with their (the voters') own politics rather than so obviously playing bare-naked horse-race politics, treating agendas and aspirations as of no intrinsic importance, at all.

Though of course each group insisted a candidate (and party) with their type of agenda would do better in the general against the Duce (and the GOP on the whole).

<snip>

The most protracted exchanges of the night, and by far the most substantive ones, concerned Mr. Sanders’s signature proposal to replace private health insurance with a single-payer system of the kind employed in Canada and a number of European countries. 

Mr. Delaney and the other moderates attacked the proposal from the first minutes of the debate, calling it a politically toxic idea that would void the health care plans of union members and of employees of private businesses.

“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal,” Mr. Delaney said.

Mr. Sanders defended his plan ferociously, with periodic help from Ms. Warren. 

He cast Mr. Delaney and other Democratic doubters as champions of an indefensible system, and argued that opponents of the single-payer format tended to brand it with traits — like costliness and unpredictability — that the American health care system already possesses.

“The answer,” Mr. Sanders said, “is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, move to ‘Medicare for all.’”

Spoken like "profit" is a dirty word, in the manner of a true socialist in the real sense of the word, entailing and usually motivated by anti-capitalism.

Visceral, in Sanders' case.

Both he and Ms. Warren depicted skeptics of single-payer health care as being in league with the G.O.P.: Mr. Sanders accused a CNN moderator, Jake Tapper, of using a “Republican talking point” when raising questions about his plan, and noted that “the health care industry will be advertising tonight on this program.” 

In a similar complaint, Ms. Warren urged Democrats to “stop using Republican talking points” on the issue.

. . . .

The harshest counterattack on the moderates, however, may not have come from Mr. Sanders or Ms. Warren.

“I wonder why you’re Democrats,” said Marianne Williamson, the author and spiritualist. “You think there’s something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people.”

. . . .

The same center-versus-left divide evident on health care was also on display as the candidates clashed over trade and immigration, and whether some of the proposals offered by the liberal candidates would represent a boon to Mr. Trump.

“We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now,” said Mr. Bullock. “If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”

Turning to Ms. Warren, he accused her of “playing into Donald Trump’s hands” for wanting to make illegal immigration a civil penalty and seeking to provide federal benefits to undocumented migrants.

Ms. Warren fired back that “seeking refuge, seeking asylum” is “not a crime.”

A similar crossfire unfolded on trade, as Mr. Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney accused Ms. Warren of pursuing a trade agenda closer to Mr. Trump’s than to that of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama. 

Ms. Warren’s agenda, Mr. Delaney said, “would isolate America’s economy around the world.”

. . . .

The evening seemed to expose the rifts in the party that might ultimately define the Democratic race once the party’s primary field narrows, and Mr. Biden comes face to face in future debates with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.

. . . .

Ms. Warren ignored a question about her boasts that she’s a proud capitalist — a barely-veiled contrast with Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist — and used the prompt instead to talk of her battles with Wall Street. 

Mr. Sanders even praised his colleague at one point, echoing her tough talk on corporate America.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “is absolutely right.”

Of wolves in sheep's clothing, one thinks, thinking about her protestations of non-socialism, of commitment to capitalism.

What we are looking at is a small group of fierce anti-capitalists who really are socialists in their hearts masquerading as capitalism-preferring and -loyal progressives, vs a coterie of actual progressives whom they are trying to portray as Republican bare-knuckle reactionaries.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Marooned Together on Fantasy Island

Of course, Bernie and Pocahontas are perfectly right that those candidates who belabored their agendas as fantasies oppose them, and would react with horror if they turned out not to be so fantastic, after all.

And the same is generally true, I suppose, in the commentariat.

But I am not at all sure about Frank Bruni.

Why, they'll oppose legal prostitution, next. And legal porn.

Oh, wait.

They already do.

Surrogate Pregnancy Battle Pits Progressives Against Feminists

Barack Obama in Berlin

Speaking to conference of youth about immigration and nationalism.

Obama made the comments during a two-hour town hall meeting in Berlin, which hundreds of young leaders from across Europe attended. 

"Immigration issues are driving a lot of the political turmoil here in Europe and in my own country," Obama said in a shared video of the talk. 

Urging those in the crowd to view those who expressed opposition to immigration with empathy, Obama said: "We can't label everyone who is disturbed by migration as racist. 

. . . .

During the talk, Obama also called for "a humane, intelligent, thoughtful, orderly immigration policy that is grounded in our better selves and our better values. 

"And we're going to have to figure out how do we make the people who are already in a country feel comfortable with newcomers," Obama said.

"That requires education and exposure and reducing fear on the part of people who are already there," he said, adding, "It also requires some levels of adaptation from the people who are coming in."

Obama also touched on the rise of nationalism across Europe and North America, asserting that "nationalism, particularly on the far right, is re-emerging." 

"We know where that leads," he said. 

"Europe knows better than anyone where that leads.

"It leads to conflict, bloodshed and catastrophe," he said. 

O warns against the circular firing squad

While speaking at a town hall in Berlin, Germany, on Saturday, former President Barack Obama addressed divisions within the Democratic party and outlined his concerns about the fiercely partisan political climate.

“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States—maybe it’s true here as well—is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,” Obama said at the town hall, organized by The Obama Foundation. 

“And then we start sometimes creating what’s called a 'circular firing squad' where you start shooting at your allies because one of them is straying from purity on the issues.

He continued: "When that happens, typically the overall effort and movement weakens, so I think...you have to recognize that the way we’ve structured democracy requires you to take into account people who don’t agree with you.”

. . . .

Organized by The Obama Foundation, the town hall brought together more than 300 young leaders from private, public and nonprofit institutions and organizations, according to a statement. 

Not every Dem pundit is all in for the AOC/Bernie agenda

Or for Bernie.

Or for Bernie-supporting women, at least one with a role in the 2016 campaign, running to the media to breathlessly complain Joe Biden touched their hair, shoulders, or arms.

Dana Milbank: Bernie Sanders has emerged as the Donald Trump of the left

I suppose that should be "reemerged", since he was that in 2016, as well.

How to blow the next presidential election and hand it over to Trump — 3 surefire techniques for Democrats who want to lose

1. Keep on calling it Socialism.

2. Kill the candidacy of any male Democrat who gets accused of anything by a woman.

3. Play stupid manipulative games with your own voters.

As for me, I really don't want it to be Bernie, though I prefer him to Trump or indeed any Republican.

This is why.

Bernie hates capitalism. He really is a socialist. He really is not a liberal or a progressive.

Though, being penniless, I am not personally a capitalist, I am a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist progressive.

Bernie hates the Democratic Party.

I am a Democrat, and I do not hate the party.

Bernie thinks any politician who takes money from corporations or rich contributors has been bought by the plutocracy and Wall Street.

I do not, and I am only too glad not every such well-heeled contributor is of a kind with the Kochs.

That is because Bernie hates Wall Street, Corporations, and billionaires.

I do not.

Bernie shares Trump's protectionist delusions, at heart.

I do not.

Bernie shares Trump's neo-isolationism, at heart.

I do not.

Bernie shares Trump's opposition to globalism.

I do not.

Bernie shares Trump's angry hatred for "the rigged system".

I hate that hatred.

Bernie thinks the major parties need to make their nomination processes more democratic because he thinks that will give demagogues like himself a better shot at taking over a party most of whose voters and nearly all of whose elected officials do not share his radicalism.

I oppose making the process more democratic because I think he is right.

(And then there is Trump, he whom no smoke filled room would ever have nominated.)

(On the other hand, Bernie won mostly in caucus states where his young socialist activists could gain control of the process. He lost big to Hillary in primary states where Democratic voters, overwhelmingly not socialists, got to make the choice. So maybe we're both wrong.)

Bernie wants Medicare for All in part to force down salaries for Medical professionals and remuneration for other providers, and partly to enable political control of medical, technical, and pharmaceutical research.

I oppose Medicare for All for those reasons, preferring expansion of Ocare and its subsidies to achieve universal coverage among those not otherwise covered.

Bernie wants to spend lots of federal money to make publicly owned secondary schools tuition free. This for him is a step toward a public monopoly on higher education and research.

I oppose his plan in part for that very reason, and prefer a system of tuition vouchers usable at any secondary school, private or public, secular or religious-affiliated. Heck, even training to be a cleric.

On the other hand, I do support court packing and abolition of the filibuster and the Electoral College.

I support representation of states in the senate proportionate to population.

And some other progressive reforms.

Capitalism with a human face.

Bernie has indeed been a transformative figure.

He has made the Democratic Party more insistent on furthering progressive reforms that are mostly of the sort that have lived in the hearts of progressives since TR's run of 1912, and in the hearts of liberals since the New Deal.

The broad masses of the Democratic Party are in love with his and AOC's agenda, though the bulk of the party's office holders have not yet entirely embraced it.

But he did not, will not, and has not even tried to transform the Democratic Party into a rerun of the old Socialist Party USA.

About that Douthat is wrong.

Bernie Sanders, Socialism’s Reagan?

Bernie Sanders' hero is Gene Debs, the SP candidate of 1912, and not TR and not Wilson.

And despite his dishonest reticence his socialism is the real thing, public or collective ownership of the means of production, and his hatred of capitalism is real, too.

Probably, AOC is the same way, though her heroes are likely more Latin American that his.

All the same, the AOC/Bernie agenda is not about abolishing capitalism in America, and though it is very widely popular among Democrats those same Democrats are no more interested in the abolition of capitalism than Howard Schultz or Michael Bloomberg.

But despite the dishonesty of Bernie and of many of his supporters, most Americans already know what socialism really is, and the further we get into the campaign the more the Republicans will gladly inform those who don't yet actually get it.

And the more Americans who get it, the more unpopular with actual voters the word "socialism" will be.

So what we Democrats need is a Democratic nominee who embraces the AOC/Bernie agenda without embracing either socialism or "socialism".

Because what Democrats and a whole lot of other people actually want is not socialism but capitalism with a human face.

Of course, if Bernie is the nominee I will absolutely vote for him.

But I would rather someone else carried our water.

Someone who knows better than to honestly campaign for that agenda while campaigning to dishonestly rehabilitate socialism by lying about both it and "socialism".

That is a mug's game and does no good while playing into the hands of lying Republicans who always tell the same lies Trump and the White House and even Douthat are already telling.

The last thing we need is a f-ing political revolution

Too old, too white, and rhetorically and ideologically way too far left.

But his actual agenda isn't anywhere near that far left.

A politician who publicly embraced capitalism and explained the agenda is about making it work better for everyone rather than only for capitalists would scare the plutes less, and less easily fall prey to scare tactics and what is basically red baiting.

In Chicago, Sanders signals his intent to reach black voters

Not everybody plays the identity card to dismiss Bernie

How Bernie Sanders Already Won

She gives him all the credit he so deserves.

And does it from the position of a progressive, someone who says we need a version of capitalism that works for all of us, not the version that just works for the capitalists.

Embracing the baloney

For a reality appetizer video, go here.

After which, read on.

'This primary is going to be a choice between socialism and a more just form of capitalism'

Chris Cillizza surrenders to the rhetorical strategy that emerged during the campaign of 2016, draining "socialism" of its actual meaning and using it as a label not only for the more progressive candidates for the Democratic nomination - actual and self-professed democratic socialists - but also for their more progressive agenda.

Some talking heads on MSNBC back then decided that owning the word and insisting it refer to any public ownership of any organization providing any good or service, at all, rather than public ownership of all the means of production, was the best way to deal not only with resurgent and false right wing denunciations of Democrats, their current agenda, and all the achievements of more than a century of progressive politics, as socialists and socialism but with Bernie's open profession of socialism.

They repeatedly cited public ownership of schools, hospitals, fire departments, police forces, bridges, and roads, calling each of these instances of socialism.

In this way they explained politics could be thought of as in part a matter of quarreling over what means of production ought to be in public hands rather than private, "all" and "none" being at the communist and libertarian opposite ends of a spectrum representing differing ratios or mixtures of the two - differing dosages of socialism and capitalism.

This move was dishonest then and is so now in that both Bernie and AOC have a well-known history with the DSA and routinely claim to be democratic socialists, meaning by that the real thing, and definitely not meaning the watered down Marxism and even post-Marxism of European Social Democracy, nowadays just a more advanced progressivism than our own, that both have urged America needs a greater dosage of.

And most actual socialists historically have referred to any economy featuring anything much less than public ownership of all the means of production as capitalist and sometimes to those in which some of the means were publicly owned as "mixed economies".

Democrats in general, whether or not they embrace all or part of the Bernie/AOC agenda and however appalled they might be at Republican projects of privatization of schools, roads, and prisons, overwhelming are not socialists and reject both socialism and "socialism".

The increasing acceptance of "socialism" among the young, including young Democrats, is doubtless due in some part, perhaps entirely, to the increasingly widespread use of "socialism" as those MSNBC talking heads used it.

And while those talking heads consistently endorsed the spreading tendency they had themselves helped to create to understand "socialism" in that way, they also agreed with Bernie's and AOC's assertions that America needs a significant dose of European Social Democracy.

Though apparently accepting their usage of "socialism", Chris Cillizza does not seem quite on board for Social Democracy or the Bernie/AOC agenda.

Actually, the environmentalist parts aside, the Bernie/AOC agenda itself is not much different from what TR ran on in 1912.

TR was not the Socialist Party candidate, nor was his the socialist agenda, of that year.

That distinction belonged to Bernie's professed political mentor and personal idol, Gene Debs, who advocated actual socialism, public ownership of all the means of production, or at the very least what was then called "the commanding heights" of the economy, including but not at all limited to the entire financial, transportation and steel industries.

But neither Bernie nor AOC is running on that agenda, nor have they said a word about it, though last time out Bernie did often give angry vent to his evident and sincere loathing of capitalism, in that way at least revealing his continued adherence to the real socialism of his mentor, usually at the same time denouncing the Democratic Party and the American political "system" with equal fervor.

TR flat out rejected socialism, and did so by its name, and was probably the most progressive of the other three candidates that year, and Taft the least.

In any case, since nobody is actually running on an agenda of flat out socialism, the primaries will not be a choice for Democrats between socialism and "a more just form of capitalism".

It will be, so far as the agendas go, a choice among different visions of the latter, with differing doses of concession to feasibility in a divided country and a divided congress.

But so far as candidates go, yes, it will be a choice between supporters, at least in their hearts, of out and out socialism on the one side and supporters of capitalism - "a more just form of capitalism" - on the other.

No, it's not President Donald Trump. 

(You probably figured that out from the "more just form of capitalism" part of it.)

It's actually from former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, who has been running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since, approximately, 1991. 

And while Delaney is a long shot to be a long shot in this race, he's not the only one who is thinking about the two lanes of the Democratic primary fight that way.

"I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist," California Sen. Kamala Harris said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday. 

And in a CNN town hall on Monday night, another Democrat, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, was careful to make her skepticism of things like "Medicare for All" and the "Green New Deal" very clear.

What you see in all of that is a clear line being drawn between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who announced his presidential bid formally on Tuesday, and the looming figure of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on one side, and the likes of Klobuchar and, assuming he runs, former Vice President Joe Biden on the other.

All the other candidates in the race fall somewhere along that spectrum -- roughly like this:

Sanders   Warren   Gabbard   Castro   Gillibrand   Booker   Harris   Klobuchar   Biden

Actually, with her wealth tax and her idea of putting workers on corporate boards, Warren's agenda is as aggressive as theirs and maybe in some ways more so.

And given she has shown as much as or more rhetorical heat denouncing "the system", it's possible she deserves the label "socialist" as much as Bernie does.

I don't know enough about the others from Booker leftward on the list to say.

What about Sherrod Brown?

From Booker leftward, the candidates are, broadly speaking, in favor of the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare for All." 

 . . . .

From Harris rightward, there is a healthy skepticism of the practicality (and political savvy) of backing those massive government programs.

Still, the Republicans and the conservative movement did invite this, what with their endless denunciations of all things progressive as socialism, Marxism, cultural Marxism, and even communism since the days of the New Deal.

The young and the ignorant for whom the actually existing Communism is ancient history were perfectly set up by the revival of that sort of rhetoric during the campaign of 2016.

Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, and the others had an easy time of it selling their redefinition.

MSNBC just now talked about how thousands of Bernie supporters in key states Hillary lost went for Trump instead of her.

Not really a surprise, considering how both of them yelled about the rigged economic system, the evils of free trade, the rigged political system, and the stagnation of the working class.

And how much both of them claimed the two major parties were corrupt and in cahoots with a free trade loving plutocracy that cared only for itself.

Too, it was during his visits to Pennsylvania that Trump promised to strengthen both Medicare and Social Security, and denounced the Democrats for wanting to subvert them.

PS.

Of course, even the two most popular items on the original Bernie agenda, tuition free education at public colleges and universities and Medicare for All, are impossible without undoing pretty much all of the Republican tax cut, removing the cap on the Social Security tax (or is it the Medicare tax?), and boosting way up the marginal income tax rate for the higher and highest brackets.

And all of it is impossible without getting rid of the filibuster.

Politicians and the voters at large have to learn that elections have consequences, for real.

As for the wealth tax, all of the good it might do and less of the harm can be accomplished by putting the government back into breaking up too large corporate entities into smaller entities less willing or able to extravagantly reward their executives or their owners.

And just say no to worker-control.

A hat in the ring

Elizabeth Warren launches exploratory committee ahead of likely 2020 presidential run

If nominated I will of course vote for her, since the Republican opposition will inevitably be a Trumpist at worse - and likely Bozo in person - and, though perhaps without the label, a Randian radical bare-knuckle capitalist committed to the destruction of every jot of progressivism in government at best.

And, in the latter case, very likely also opposed, though much more quietly, to all or nearly all of the achievements of liberal courts since Warren in kicking Christian social and sexual morality out of the law.

We are very far from the days when Nixon ran as a big government liberal while pointing to McGovern as too far left and radical.

And was telling the truth, though his history of anti-communism in the Congress enabled his opponents and enemies to deny him that label, despite the hostility toward him and his domestic politics of movement conservatives of the time.

But I hope she is not nominated.

More anti-capitalist, anti-white, and anti-American than Bernie and at least as misandrist as Hillary, she amply deserves the adjectives "shrill" and "left-wing", and perhaps also "socialist".

And while Bernie's agenda was quite popular I still have reservations about single payor giving too much - and too exclusive - market power to a government funded and controlled institutional consumer of medical services by making it effectively the only consumer of medical services.

I do not want the direction of medical or pharmacy research dictated by the state according to somebody's political or moral agenda, any more than R&D in any other part of the economy.

Nor do I agree with her mucking around with experiments in worker control and the like.

Progress

18th Century intellectuals thought progress in the sciences meant a better life, a more democratic life, for all.

Who believes that now, in the age of the Terminator movies?

When the "smartest man in the world" has told us to hide from aliens and desperately fear AI?

Monkey Business

Days later, left media are still whining about DeSantis's warnings against "monkeying around".

GOPsters are responding by shifting to repeated shouts of "socialist agenda!", "high taxes!", "Bernie Sanders!", and now even "Venezuela!" to attack Gillum.

DeSantis: Gillum wants to turn Florida 'into Venezuela'

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan told America that passing the bill to create Medicare would end American freedom and impose communism.

So, yes, DeSantis is indeed in that tradition.

The crazy on the right has been around for a long, long time.

And it has included movement conservatism for all of that long, long time.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. 

"He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. 

"He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

And why are the major media playing along, joining into the GOP lie that the Gillum/Sanders agenda is "far left" and even "extreme left"?

Seen this?

This is the new mainstream, people.

The new center.

70% of Americans now support Medicare-for-all

The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. 

That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. 

Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.

Free college tuition is equally popular, though abolishing ICE is still an idea - and not really a good one - whose time has not come.

But even the Guardian is still calling such agenda items "left wing".

Democratic nominee defends leftwing policies and calls for Trump-endorsed opponent to ‘rise above’ racist attacks.

. . . .

Gillum, the 39-year-old mayor of Tallahassee, was the surprise winner of the Democratic nominating contest. 

He is endorsed by Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a young leftwinger from New York, won a primary in June and will run for election in November.

Trump greeted Gillum’s win with a tweet, saying “a failed socialist mayor … who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city … is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Speaking to Catsimatidis, DeSantis duly highlighted Gillum’s support for leftwing priorities such as “Medicare for all” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). 

The mayor has also promised to suspend the death penalty and has a low rating from the National Rifle Association.

. . . .

Gillum also defended his record on crime in Tallahassee and said he wanted to reform Ice, rather than abolish it, as part of opposition to Trump policies he said were “wholly unAmerican”.

I did not know those things, and they are important

Sanders' Medicare for All plan would involve no cost sharing, no copays, no premiums for covered individuals.

All medical services would be covered at 100%.

And adopting the plan, which socializes the health insurance business and not medicine, would actually save the government trillions it would otherwise pay on health care.

Koch-backed study finds ‘Medicare for All’ would save U.S. government trillions

An estimated cost of $32.6 trillion over 10 years is less than the US government would spend over the next 10 years under the current system.

. . . .

Sanders’ proposed single-payer plan would be free at the point of service, and would not include any cost-sharing — that is, no co-pays or premiums. 

Under his plan, taxes would replace those often high costs, which currently are shouldered by patients.

Research from March of this year found that the present system has left 15.5 percent of adults between 19 and 64 without health insurance, while more than a quarter of lower-income families are uninsured. 

Monday’s study concluded that not only would Medicare for All provide insurance for the millions of Americans currently without coverage, but it would also save the government $2.054 trillion over the next decade.

. . . .

Ultimately, Sanders’ Medicare for All plan would provide comprehensive coverage for all residents of the United States, including primary and preventative care, emergency and hospital services, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, substance abuse and mental health services, as well as pediatrics, laboratory, and diagnostic services. 

The plan also guarantees dental, vision, audiology, and abortion coverage.

. . . .

The point is this: The resistance to single-payer, especially among establishment Democrats, is really just resistance to changing the status quo. 

The Democratic party is supposed to be the one that believes government can and should help people. 

Single-payer, as Monday’s study confirmed, is the best way to do that — while also saving the government trillions of dollars!