Spinning down Sanders success

It is interesting to watch the media’s attempts to spin Sanders’ third consecutive win in the first three contests (something that has never happened before for either the Democratic or Republican primaries), and especially his runaway win in Nevada, as somehow not being significant.

(Tom Tomorrow)

The satirical publication The Onion has been mocking the mainstream media’s attempts at downplaying the success of the Sanders campaign, with ‘headlines’ such as:

“MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up”

and

“Bernie Sanders Holds Secret Campaign Meeting With 15,000 Working-Class Democratic Donors”

But this is my favorite.

“DNC Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop Sanders”

The reason why Nevada union workers defied their leadership

Despite all the buzz over the Culinary Workers Union being critical of the implications of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare For All proposal on their hard-won own health care plans (which Pete Buttigieg absurdly but typically described as Sanders waging on the union) it looks like he won a plurality of the union vote and some of them gave their reasons for bucking the leadership.
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What to expect in the Democratic debate tonight

The next Democratic debate will take place tonight in Charleston, South Carolina which holds its primary on Saturday. This will also be the last debate before the Super Tuesday primaries next Tuesday, March 3 and so will be the final chance for candidates to make their case to a national audience before those votes are cast. There will be seven people on the stage tonight: Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, and Elizabeth Warren.

Steyer is the new addition from the last debate which means that we will have two billionaires on the stage touting their glorious billionairosity that makes them supremely qualified to take on Trump and become president. After all, phony billionaire and failed businessman Donald Trump became president, so wouldn’t either of them be better positioned to take on Trump than people who are not insanely wealthy? The sad thing is that some people actually buy that argument.
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Don’t mess with the ‘misfit black girls’

Someone named Jason Johnson, a commentator on MSNBC (that is one of the most anti-Sanders mainstream media outlets) and elsewhere, has been promoting the idea that the Bernie Sanders campaign is largely supported by ‘racist white liberals’. This is of course a variation on the Bernie bros narrative that originated in 2015 despite the lack of a strong evidentiary basis and was heavily promoted by Hillary Clinton’s supporters during the 2016 campaign. The originator of the term Robinson Meyer expressed some regret in 2016 for coining a term that had exploded well beyond the very limited usage he had originally intended, especially since the Sanders coalition has grown to be so wide and diverse.
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Harvey Weinstein found guilty on two of five charges

This guy who is truly a monster was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody after the guilty verdict. He faces a range of 5 to 25 years in prison to be announced by the judge later after a sentencing hearing. Ed Pilkington lists the charges he was accused of and those on which he was found guilty.

Count 1: Predatory sexual assault which involves sex crimes against at least two victims, in this count relating to former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley and former Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra. The charge carries a maximum sentence life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.

Count 2: Criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley which carries a maximum sentence 25 years and a minimum sentence 5 years.

Count 3: In this count relating to a woman whom the Guardian has decided not to name and Annabella Sciorra. This charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum sentence of 10 years.

Count 4: First-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years and a minimum sentence of five years.

Count 5: Third-degree rape of the victim the Guardian has decided not to name which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and no minimum, though a conviction would require Weinstein to register as a sex offender.

Counts 1 and 3 were more serious and could have led to a life in prison, though given Weinstein’s age (67), a maximum sentence of 25 years would be effectively the same.

Of course his lawyers will appeal both the verdict and whatever sentence he gets, unless it is the minimum one that the judge can give.

The need to focus on the big picture

Having all the candidates debate the merits of their various policy platforms is the essence of the primary process, what they are meant to do, so that voters can decide which candidate is most aligned with their own values. So I have no problem with having spirited debates among the candidates. The question is what should be done when it is realized that one candidate is going to be the nominee. At that point, the strategy should change and people should get behind the prospective nominee even if that person hasn’t formally won. The debates on the various policies can then shift to the party platform committee to vote on at the convention. Nathan J. Robinson thinks that that tipping point has already arrived and that Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee. He lays out a strategy for what needs to be done with that realization.
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The phony anti-Sanders narrative starts to crumble

The decisive win by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses where, with currently 60% of the votes counted, he has more than the next three people combined, is finally starting to make the establishment narrative about him crumble. So far he has 46% of the vote, 27 points higher than Joe Biden, handily beating the 13-point margin the polls had predicted before the vote.

Sanders achieved this win with a diverse coalition of volunteers and supporters from across the entire spectrum of voters, spanning age, gender, and ethnicity, and also winning the union vote.
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Buttigieg gets the comeuppance he deserves

One of the things that is often overlooked about Sanders is that, along with Elizabeth Warren, he is a sharp debater. This is because they both have key facts at their fingertips and use them effectively, and also because they do not pull their punches. This, along with his policies, is another reason why I think Sanders is the best person to challenge Donald Trump. His relentless focus on the important issues means he will not be distracted by Trump’s clownish antics and name-calling. But most importantly, he quickly recognizes bullshit and calls it out in no uncertain terms, which will be very effective in countering Trump who as we have seen is full of it.

Here is Bernie Sanders during the last debate rebutting Pete Buttigieg’s repeated assertions that he is a ‘polarizing’ figure.
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Bernie Sanders already projected to win in Nevada

With just 6% of the votes in, Fox News has already projected that Bernie Sanders has won the Nevada caucuses, suggesting that he already has such a lead that the others are unlikely to overcome it.

With six percent of delegates in, Sanders has 54.7 percent.

According to those returns, former Vice President Joe Biden is in second place with 17.9 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has 9.7 percent, and former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has 9 percent and billionaire Tom Steyer has 7.4 percent. Ultimately 36 delegates are at stake.

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Every American should live for a while in a country that has a single-payer health system

Here is Jon Shore responding a year ago to someone who asked him the question: “How do countries that have a single payer system handle people with preexisting conditions and special needs specifically?”

Shore’s answer is very simple.

I am an American and have lived in 4 EU countries over the past 19 years. All of them have single payer systems. Most people in countries with single payer systems do not even know what a ‘pre-existing condition’ is or why it would matter. They are shocked when I explain it to them. The only person who needs to know your medical history is your doctor. If you or someone in your family has a special need then they get the special treatment necessary. It is really that simple.

As an American expat, even after all these years I still have a subconscious fear of telling a doctor about a pre-existing condition because it might raise my health insurance premium or cause me to lose my coverage. I have to remind myself that I live in a civilized country now and that my right to high quality healthcare is guaranteed no matter what. [Read more…]