Biden wins Illinois

NYT said  Illinois turnout is 54% of 2016.

Biden just gave a really good speech. Probably his best speech of this cycle.

Biden wins Arizona.

I think it can be said that Moren on the one hand and uran10 on the other form two logical poles here on this thread relative to which the rest of us exist. The former was so uniquely committed to a neoliberal political vision as to be the only of us willing to defend Michael Bloomberg at points. The latter "loves the internet" to the detriment of his ability to get ahold of the fact that neither Russiagate nor covid-19 are hoaxes just simply because the corporate world has, writ large, acknowledged them as facts. The rest of us exist somewhere in-between those two mentalities.

Illustrating this is the fact that I voted for Bernie Sanders because I am in favor of a socialist reorganization of the economy as a whole, including a transition to national ownership and worker control of the means of production, oriented around a system of participatory economic planning, and, needless to say, the Sanders "socialist" program of in reality pretty ordinary populist reforms would tend to move the needle the most in that direction. I have favored a socialist reorganization (an actual one, mind you) not only for personal and moral reasons of believing that no one should go hungry or otherwise find themselves in need while plenty exists, but in order to save the planet from ecological catastrophe, and perhaps even collapse. This on the one hand. And yet on the other, I currently would also argue that it's time for Sanders to concede not simply because Biden has clearly won, but because dragging this nominating contest on any further under the current conditions is just simply selfish and irresponsible. It's time for the candidate with no conceivable path to victory to end his campaign so that we don't endanger people needlessly by subjecting them to the potential of contracting covid-19!

Bernie is known for his consistency above all. It's what has given him his whole "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" aura that people love about him. (Seriously, I've heard lots of people make that comparison even though Sanders is a longtime politician. He just strikes people as a kind of idealistic outsider anyway who appeals to our better angels.) The flip side of consistency though is that it reflects a certain inflexibility; a certain inability to learn and adapt, and that's what has become increasingly apparent to voters in the course of this primary season, I believe. Sunday's debate, followed by the Biden landslide of yesterday's primaries, is highly illustrated of that. Nobody should be surprised that it turns out not even most working class people are up for a disruptive class war in the middle of a pandemic! People are scared shitless right now. That includes me, as you may just have noticed if you've paid attention to my posts elsewhere lately. The last thing people want right now is more disruption and uncertainty in their lives. Joe Biden is a living symbol of pragmatic traditionalism. In this new reality we find ourselves in, that's in high demand. People simply don't want to fight right now, they want to live. Life has become that basic. That's why the majority of voters yesterday could at once support Medicare for all and yet vote for the other guy anyway. M4A is a good idea in the minds of Democratic voters. Sanders has won that battle of ideas. But it's also an idea that could prove disruptive and which, accordingly, is a fight that might be better had after the current crisis has been averted rather than right now.

Let's dissect Sunday's debate and why it yielded Tuesday's result a little further. The debate began, appropriately, with a discussion of how the coronavirus outbreak might be most efficiently beaten back and defeated. It was a good start! But it lent itself to Biden faring well because he clearly was better prepared for that. I mean when he said that he'd mobilize the military to build more hospitals and Sanders seemed more wobbly on the idea just because, ew, military industrial complex...eeeeeh, you could feel who was winning.

Biden also surprised me, and I think everyone, by announcing his support for a number of more left wing stances than we've associated him with up to now, including tuition-free college for everyone making up to $125,000 a year, no deportations of anyone for the first six months of his tenure until after he has introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill, a reversal of course on the infamous bankruptcy bill he yes very much did once support and champion, and a pledge to nominate a female running mate (which Sanders notably failed to echo) and to form a cabinet "that looks like America", which is terminology people use for 'first 50% female cabinet in U.S. history' and 'proportional representation for people of color in the White House'.

Now Hillary Clinton made a couple of analogous concessions in negotiation with Bernie Sanders in the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention back in 2016 in a bid to unite the party and win over the support of younger and working class voters. Well Biden already has the support of the working class in this election, but he still struggles with younger and Latino voters. But if 2016 is any indication, Biden needs to do more than just offer these new items as platform positions. He needs to actually campaign on them to persuade skeptical progressives that he is sincere in his newfound embrace of these leftish goals. But this brings me back to running mate question because, contextually, we may have even been given a clue as to which woman Biden might select to be his running mate. People have long speculated that, were Biden to go with a woman, he might pick Amy Klobuchar as his running mate...but he has said that he wants a running mate who fundamentally agrees with him on basically everything except for maybe the details of how to enact said agreed-upon program...and look at these new positions he's taking up. Which female candidate who has participated in this election does this new program remind you of more: Amy Klobuchar...or Elizabeth Warren? Ya see what I'm saying?! There's a signal being broadcast here and I think many people are picking up on it. Were Biden to choose Warren as his running mate, that would go a long way toward showing his sincerity and I think constitute the winning olive branch to the younger and more ideologically progressive voters.

These are the types of dynamics that explain the Biden appeal of late. In contrast to this, Sanders offered a combative closing argument that now is the time to "take on" a range of business industries and replace our existing system of medicine while it tries to weather the exceeding of hospital capacity. At the end of the day, even I'm feeling more up for some national unity than I am for that alternative in this brave new world of social isolation wherein loneliness and paralyzing fear of others are rapidly become the single biggest problems facing our society aside from the virus itself and the economic devastation being left in its wake.

(Conversely though, as an aside, much of Sunday's debate felt divorced from the current reality and out of touch to me. Take for example the exchanges on climate change. I mean let's be frank, thanks to this pandemic, greenhouse gas emissions WILL go down for the next two years at minimum...as the result of tremendous economic pain and lots and lots of death. Mobilizing an increasingly quarantined public to combat global warming that won't be happening in the near future just...it's just not people's voting priority right now. Life has now become more basic than that.)

I am not sure if I fully agree on that. I am happy to see Biden moving left on a lot of his plans, and there were many instances were I wished Warren had been the nominee. You can even look up one of my old tiers where I had her second place. I have also expressed support for a wealth tax. I think she also moved me left in a few issues.

I definitely said Bloomberg would be better than Trump, and I stand by that. I do strongly regret defending him otherwise, and after Warren exposed what a truly despicable man he was, I was done. If the primary had been Sanders-Bloomberg, I probably would not have voted.

I'll say this - I hate populism with every fiber of my body. That is ultimately why I found Warren so palatable and Bernie so unbearable. It never helped that Bernie had such wonderful staff.

Edit: I will also add - even when Biden was at the bottom and Bernie looked like the nominee, I expressed that I would support Bernie in the general over Trump, no strings attached.

While I am fascinated by the surprising level of openness many otherwise more centrist-minded people, including yourself, have shown both toward Elizabeth Warren and the program that she ran on, and while furthermore I understand not being in the mood for populism of any variety right now (I'm not really feeling it either anymore myself, as explained in my last post), honestly I don't understand the bolded item. It's not as if Warren wasn't running a populist campaign herself.

Anyway, what I meant to highlight before was simply that you were the only person here who actually at some point felt that Bloomberg represented a sufficient difference from Trump and what he represents to be worth voting for. Nothing wrong with having a unique, even audacious, opinion! (I've got enough of them that I have to defend the principle. ) But there is a way of seeing that particular item as representing more ideological compromise than what anyone else has been willing to go along with, you have to admit.

Hmh. I think that you can make a distinction between "progressive", "optimist", and "populist". I think Warren can easily fit into the first two categories, while not being a populist. Maybe I can call her a progressive technocrat?

Think of Katie Porter versus Rashida Tlaib. That's the general vibe I got from Warren versus Sanders.

Jaicee, kindly understand something here. I want you to go back and try to find me saying that the pandemic is a hoax. And no, unlike you all who accept Russiagate I do not because I do not see any real evidence for it. Did Russia interfere with our elections? Most likely.. But to the degree by which the media claims? LOL NO. I mean its not like every major player in the world tries to influence elections, I mean look here in America however acting like Russia swung things for Trump like people didn't hate Hillary is funny. Russia gate as the media describes it has been debunked at large so no, don't dare mischaracterize me.

I agree, Moren is a horrible person.