Joe Biden's comeback makes my progressive heart happy

All through the already seemingly endless Democratic presidential primary process I've been thinking, "Geez. Joe Biden is a boring old white guy who doesn't excite me. I much prefer... [fill in Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg].

But what a difference South Carolina and Super Tuesday made. I'm now totally on board with Biden being the Democrat who takes on Trump. I watched his surprisingly large victory in South Carolina and over-performance in yesterday's Super Tuesday contests with joy.

Because Bernie Sanders makes my heart worried, while Biden's comeback makes it happy.

All that counts, really, is making sure Trump is a one-term president. Well, plus assuring Democrats keep control of the House of Representatives and ideally taking back the Senate. With Biden at the top of the ticket, there's a much greater chance of all that happening.

I don't enjoy watching Sanders speak. His finger pointing and lecturing wear on my nerves. Worse, Sanders is extremely rigid, self-righteous, and unduly proud of his democratic socialist label -- which Trump, naturally, would incessantly simply call socialist.

It's also disturbing how Sanders responded to Biden kicking his ass on Super Tuesday. I heard a lot of talk about the Democratic establishment conspiring to deny him the presidency, along with their corporate overlords. Yet the plain fact is that African-American voters were most responsible for lifting Biden up.

Thus I can't understand why Sanders thinks it's a good idea to insult Democrats, since he's seeking to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Like Trump, Sanders seems to have only one goal: appealing to his base. This keeps him stuck at 30% or so in primary contests, even though he should be working to broaden his appeal to moderate Democrats and non-affiliated voters.

Now it's being reported that the Sanders campaign is trying to change course.

The decades-long refusal to air negative TV ads is out. Spots highlighting former President Barack Obama’s praise of him are in.

After facing questions for weeks about whether Sanders would shift his message to broaden his base, Sanders’ campaign co-chair, Rep. Ro Khanna, said his candidate will work to appeal more to older voters and mainstream Democrats.

“We need to make the case that single-payer [health care] will provide long-term care, dental and vision for seniors, that our policies are pro-innovation and -economic growth,” he told POLITICO, “and that we are very proud of the accomplishments of the Democratic Party, starting from FDR, and are building an inclusive coalition to complete the New Deal.”

The question for Sanders now is whether his shift is too little, too late. After the Super Tuesday dust settles, more than a third of the primary’s delegates will have been awarded. And, with Mike Bloomberg’s withdrawal from the race and endorsement of Joe Biden Wednesday, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party is now firmly behind the former vice president.

As the moderate wing should be. Which includes myself, I guess, even though I consider that I'm a progressive, along with Biden.

I just am a practical progressive who doesn't want to see the Democratic party founder on the shoals of Medicare For All, free college for everybody, demonizing international trade, praising Castro's policies, and other Sanders positions that make Trump salivate at the anticipation of standing with him on a debate stage.

I've got a lot of confidence in Democratic primary voters. They weren't out to ditch Sanders in South Carolina and the 14 Super Tuesday states. They just want someone who can win next November.

Of course, there will be plenty of surprises between now and the Democratic nominating convention, though Biden is the front-runner. Bloomberg has dropped out, and Biden wisely is indicating that he'll be pleased to accept Bloomberg's money for his campaign. That's the smart thing to do, not rail, as Sanders does, against the "billionaire class and super-PACs."

A VOX piece has a great headline: "Sanders can't lead the Democrats if his campaign treats them like the enemy." Indeed, Sanders and his supporting cast of Bernie bros seem to look upon the normal process of politics as an affront, not as a challenge. When he got trounced by Biden on Super Tuesday, this should have been a wake-up call to change his ways. But instead...

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have been running very different kinds of campaigns, built on very different ambitions. Biden’s been running to lead the Democratic Party more or less as it exists today. Sanders, by contrast, has sought to lead a political revolution that will upend not just the Democratic Party but American politics more broadly.

On Super Tuesday, Sanders’s political revolution didn’t turn out, but the Democratic Party did.

“A big problem for the Sanders theory of this race is that when turnout is high, he wins,” writesDave Weigel, a political reporter at the Washington Post. “Turnout is way up, but the most reliable new voters are Biden-curious suburbanites.” As election analyst Dave Wasserman noted, the new voters Sanders promised to pull into the party didn’t emerge, and as a result, he’s lost ground from 2016.

...In recent weeks, Biden has been racking up endorsements from Democratic Party heavyweights. Days before the crucial South Carolina primary, Rep. Jim Clyburn blessed Biden — giving him the single most important endorsement a Democrat can win in South Carolina. Biden went on to win the primary by almost 30 points. Days later, Biden got endorsements from Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, and Harry Reid — endorsements that, in his speech Tuesday night, he credited with helping him notch a shockingly strong Super Tuesday performance.

Sanders’s supporters have reacted to these endorsements with fury. To them, it’s proof the fix is in.

No, it's proof that most Democrats aren't comfortable with what Sanders brings to the presidential nomination table. If Sanders had moderated his extreme positions, thereby making him more appealing to those who are less interested in a revolution and more interested in beating Trump, there's a good chance he would be the front-runner now.

But he isn't. And the odds are looking good that Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee for reasons a New York Times piece makes clear. Here's an excerpt from "Biden's Delegate Lead is Small, but Could Be Hard to Overcome."

Mr. Biden, in contrast, will continue to find many states in the next few weeks where black voters represent an average or above-average share of the population. He is all but assured to win commanding delegate majorities in Mississippi, Georgia and Florida. And there are many other states, including Missouri, Ohio and Michigan, where Mr. Biden would be the favorite if he could continue the pattern of his success with white voters in the East.

He needs around 54 percent of the remaining delegates to claim a majority heading into the Democratic nomination, and his path to accomplishing this might be as simple as repeating a Super Tuesday outcome under a more favorable set of states, without the burden of early votes cast before he emerged as the top rival to Mr. Sanders.

Comments

[Skyline]

Fine.
But in the VERY unlikely event that voters chose Biden over President Trump, One should hope that Biden has a VP choice that is good for American families and workers.
Seriously, and this IS NOT meant as snark; I believe Biden will be in memory care before his first year would be completed.
Nobody's perfect, but Joe is a nickelodeon of continuous flubs, bloopers and gaffs these days.
Did you hear his wife after the demonstrators were escorted off the stage? "You're O.K., You're O.K."
CLEARLY, she is already in the caregiver mode. He is in pretty bad shape.
Sad...

[Jack Holloway]

Joe Biden – Progressive?!?

There are lengthy records all over the internet detailing decades of Biden's disgusting right-wing, anti-people and pro-corporate activities and votes.

Here's an excerpt from one of them:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/joe-biden-is-still-the-frontrunner-but-he-doesnt-have-to-be

“Economic issues and healthcare are at the top of concerns for respondents, and Biden has not addressed those concerns adequately at all in his campaign, while he leaves behind a trail of conservative economic policy that will likely sink him if the debates come down to him squaring off with Donald Trump. 
“Biden has a 40-year history advocating cuts to Social Security, which harm older black voters. Despite urban communities grappling with soaring housing costs and displacement, he is the only Democratic candidate in the Iowa debate who has not offered an affordable housing plan, apart from some cursory mentions in his criminal justice plan about housing the formerly incarcerated. Further, Biden at times held more conservative positions than Republican hero Ronald Reagan on the war on drugs and frequently sided with segregationists. And this is all before touching his alignment with the banking industry that preys on working class Americans, refusal to embrace Medicare for All, and lack of vision on climate change. 
“Biden’s preference for scolding individual black behavior instead of a racist and capitalist system that has stymied black wealth and health will not resonate for key younger demographics who are also necessary at the polls in swing states. As with the exposure of Hillary Clinton’s criminal justice ideology and corporate ties throughout her campaign, if he is the nominee, increasing focus on Biden’s conservatism will undoubtedly suppress black enthusiasm in swing states where Democrats need it most.”

And just to hammer the point home:
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1235220579650854913/

[Jack Holloway]

I should have mentioned Biden's very obvious early-stage dementia, examples of which are all over Youtube.

Republicans are already savaging him over this –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4ytSI4PFm4
– and if you think that's brutal, wait until Trump starts in on it.

Then there's the official investigation just getting underway, into Biden's apparent siphoning of millions of US aid dollars – intended for Ukraine – into his own and his son's pockets. Included with that will, undoubtedly, be the time Biden put Hunter on Air Force Two and flew him to China so Hunter could avail himself of almost a million dollars worth of “investments” into his ailing hedge fund.

All of that will – without the shred of a doubt – find its way into the fall campaign.

The entire official national Democratic party apparatus is fiercely opposed to democracy, and are united in their desperation to prevent the only genuine, small-d democrat in the race from becoming president.

The 2016 election presented voters with the single most ghastly choice of major-party presidential candidates in US history. Now, 2020 seems to be on its way to eclipsing even that horror.

[tucson]

"Joe Biden is a boring old white guy"

-- Are you a racist ? Sounds like it. White people suck. Right?

[tucson]

Why would Biden make anyone's "heart happy"?

First of all it appears he's developing dementia. Not a happy thing. Second, it appears he is corrupt. As Jack Holloway pointed out above, this will not be ignored during the campaign. I think there is a chance Biden could be forced to step down for one or both of those reasons.

On Jan. 27 Pam Bondi convincingly exposed Joe and Hunter Biden's corruption in the Burisma (Ukraine) matter in the following video. She thoroughly and methodically details all the evidence. Plenty of fodder for the Trump campaign..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnC_pipIjxM

[Will Landstrom]

The author of this Bernie hit-piece is so ignorant of facts and history and so full crap it would take a month to unwrap it all. Just pathetic.