Biden-Harris Offers Personal Diversity but Ideological Uniformity

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via ET

 

After much (and I really do mean much) deliberation and suspense, Joe Biden has announced that his running mate will be Kamala Harris. This is hardly unexpected: for months, Harris had been talked about as one of the top candidates for the slot. Nonetheless, it is a significant choice, in more ways than one. Perhaps the most obvious significance of the choice has to do with Harris' identity: she is the first Black woman to be chosen for the VP spot on a major-party presidential ticket, and would be both the first female and first Black vice president if she and Biden are victorious in November. In this regard, she brings diversity to the Democratic ticket and serves as a balance of sorts to Joe Biden—an old, white man (who, unlike Harris, boasts a long public career and, therefore, "experience"). But when it comes to actual ideology, Harris brings neither diversity nor balance to the ticket. On the contrary, she brings stark uniformity—a reality that Biden and his handlers surely recognized.

To be clear, personal diversity at the highest levels of government is a worthwhile goal. It is better, both symbolically and probably in terms of measurable effect, for the makeup of the government to reflect that of the population with respect to race, gender, religion, and other aspects of personal identity. But it is also undeniably not everything. A government whose composition is as diverse as that of its country can still be a bad government. It can also still fail to represent the populace it's ruling over: people are more than just their race, or gender, or religion, or sexuality. In fact, ideology is more important in this respect than personal identity. While this might seem like a brash or insensitive claim, it's generally reflected in the opinions of voters throughout the country. Most people would rather be represented in government by someone who shares their opinions and priorities (and who they feel is well qualified), rather than someone who shares some aspect of their personal identity. How else can we explain the fact that, for instance, Black voters in the Democratic primary favored Joe Biden over Cory Booker or Kamala Harris? Or that Latino voters were much likelier to support Bernie Sanders than they were Julián Castro? Or that Pete Buttigieg was unable to carry the LGBTQ vote? And, indeed there is good reason for this: while electing a member of a marginalized group to office may be a valuable and inspiring symbolic victory, their ideology determines how they will wield their power—and how they do so may affect the livelihoods of many millions of people. With this in mind, in terms of real-world impact the ideological similarity between Biden and Harris outweighs their differences in personal identity.

From a hardline left-wing standpoint we could, of course, simply say that (like virtually all politicians in the United States) Biden and Harris are both defenders of capitalism and America's sprawling empire overseas, and be done with it. This is true, but even if we get into the finer details the two are often very much in sync. Let's take Medicare for All, for example. We know Biden's standpoint: consistently and unshakably opposed. How about Harris? Initially, she was actually a cosponsor for Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill. But once her presidential campaign got rolling, she pretty quickly abandoned it. The plan she ultimately ran on would, like Biden's, only offer a "public option" while allowing private health insurers to provide competing plans—a weak and inadequate compromise, for reasons I've explained elsewhere. 

When it comes to higher education, the case is similar. Biden has consistently stopped short of advocating for universal free college (which already exists in a number of similarly wealthy countries). He has also shied away from wide-scale cancellation of student loan debt. During her presidential campaign, Harris offered up a student loan debt forgiveness proposal so narrow as to verge on unintentional comedy. As a CNBC article described it, 

Borrowers will have a lot of boxes to check before they can get the $20,000 in student debt forgiveness on the table in her proposal.

They will have to be 1) a Pell Grant Recipient who 2) starts a business in a disadvantaged community and 3) manages to keep that business afloat for at least three years.

When it came to the cost of college going forward, she only promised to "fight to make community college free, make four-year public college debt-free." Incidentally, how to ensure college is "debt-free" without making it tuition-free is something I have yet to hear adequately explained. 

One of the biggest criticisms of Biden from the left is his often-cozy relationship with the finance industry. Harris is similar here, too. As the Attorney General of California, Harris was strongly urged by her own staff to sue Steve Mnuchin's bank OneWest. The bank foreclosed on tens of thousands of homeowners in the state, in possible violation of an agreement with the FDIC. But despite her staff's "strong recommendations," Harris did not file a case against OneWest. Mnuchin, in turn, donated to Harris' 2016 Senate campaign—making her the only Democratic Senate candidate he gave money to in that election cycle. That case seems to be just one instance of a greater trend: the Wall Street Journal has reported that Wall Street is "sigh[ing] with relief" now that Biden has chosen Harris as his running mate, while CNBC notes that "Wall Street executives are glad" about the pick. 

Nor are Biden and Harris far apart on foreign policy. The Times of Israel  observes that "[u]nlike some of the more liberal members of the caucus...[Harris] has not bucked the [Democratic] party’s traditionally supportive posture toward Israel, or called for fundamental changes to the nature of the alliance" and "has also maintained a close relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)." She has tried to outflank President Trump from the right on the issue of North Korea, excoriating him for canceling joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and daring to meet face-to-face with Kim Jong-Un. While her presidential campaign website promised to "end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and protracted military engagements in places like Syria," she has hardly taken a strong stance against ongoing U.S. meddling in the region, telling the New York Times that "I believe we should bring back our troops from Afghanistan, but I also believe that we need to have a presence there in terms of supporting what the leaders of Afghanistan want to do in terms of having peace in that region, and certainly suppressing any possibility of ISIS or any other terrorist organization from gaining steam."

While Harris obviously can't match Biden's tough-on-crime record, here there are commonalities as well. She played a significant role in pushing for harsher penalties for truancy when she was running for Attorney General in California, resulting in a new law that would punish the parents of truant kids with up to a year in jail. Although (unlike Biden) she has recently voiced her support for legalizing marijuana, her record on that issue offers reason to be skeptical: when running against a pro-legalization Republican in 2014, Harris literally laughed at his stance, and an investigation found over 1,500 people were sent to California state prisons for marijuana-related offenses from 2011 to 2016, during her tenure as AG. Her treatment of California's prisoners when she held that office is also controversial: she's faced criticism for sending a brief that sought to deny sex reassignment surgery to transgender inmates, although she claims to have only been enforcing existing policy even as she worked behind the scenes to change it; and when a man convicted of murder sought DNA testing that could exculpate him, Harris did not act on the request (it was later granted by Gavin Newsom). She additionally faces accusations of being soft on police misconduct, and of having slow-walked an investigation into misuse of jailhouse informants by deputies and prosecutors. 

On the environment Harris does strike a more progressive posture, having teamed up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push for climate legislation, cosponsored the Green New Deal resolution and voiced support for a fracking ban. But once more, there are reasons for doubt. Her presidential campaign was advised by Michèle Flournoy, "a career Pen­ta­gon offi­cial who has repeat­ed­ly urged increas­ing domes­tic fos­sil fuel extrac­tion as a key part of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, and sup­port­ed sev­er­al poli­cies that have helped turn the U.S. into one of the world’s worst car­bon pol­luters, such as Obama’s repeal of the ban on domes­tic oil exports" (in the words of writer Branko Marcetic). A 2019 Washington Post article noted that Harris had "accepted donations from a top attorney at CITGO Petroleum, among others at natural gas corporations, federal filings show. After an inquiry from The Washington Post, Harris’s campaign said it was in the process of returning a gift from a vice president at Consumers Energy, a Michigan-based natural gas and electricity company."

If all of this feels like picking out the most objectionable bits of Harris' record, that is only because—once again, as with Biden—I find it difficult to discern much in terms of a positive agenda or vision that she really stands for. It would be easier to overlook some of these imperfections if they seemed to be mere blemishes, distractions from the true substance of Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to discern any true substance that can be separated from the imperfections. 

For many, the historical import of Harris' placement on the ticket—and the promise of a return to the "sanity" of the Obama years—will be enough to win not just their vote but their enthusiasm. I find this response misguided, but those people are entitled to their opinion and I won't scold them for it. However, we should at least be able to retire any claims about Biden running on The Most Progressive Platform Since FDR, or seriously adopting any ideas from the Democratic Party's left flank. A nominee's choice of running mate is always important, and especially so in Biden's case (for obvious reasons). Faced with possibly the most consequential decision of his general election campaign—he may have just picked our 47th president, after all—Biden chose someone who is far closer to him, ideologically, than she is to Bernie Sanders (who was, lest we forget, the first runner-up in the crowded Democratic primary field). That he did so is neither a surprise nor a scandal, but it certainly tells us more about how he would govern than any of the words in his platform do.

The Revolutionary Spark in the Ongoing Protests

Protestors in Brooklyn (Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images via Vox)

It is said that after the famous storming of the Bastille prison, King Louis XVI remarked "Why, this is a revolt!" only to be corrected by the Duke de La Rochefoucauld: "No, sire, it is a revolution." While the recent protests in Minneapolis and across the nation have not made that leap, there is some core there that undeniably goes beyond either anger at one police officer or even police department, hope for reformist measures, or desire to simply express dissatisfaction at the prevailing conditions. In this sense, one could say there is a sort of revolutionary spark to them—and in this sense they may differ, in degree if not in kind, from the plentiful other protests that have been seen in the years since 2014.

The pattern should be familiar by now, as it's been seen repeatedly over the past few years—in France, Hong Kong, Chile and now the United States: first, something happens to spark mass outrage and protest (fuel taxes, extradition bill, public transport fares, and now a police murder). Before long, though, the protests have taken on a life of their own, as the practical expression of a kind of collective rage at the pervasive injustice in society. To acknowledge this is in no way to downplay the importance of George Floyd's murder (and that is what it was) or to de-center the issue of police racism and brutality. But there can be little doubt that more than just these issues are motivating many of the protestors, and to dismiss those for whom this holds true as interlopers or "white anarchists" rings false.

Even thinking only in terms of racial issues, the question is hardly what to protest as much as it is what not to. The median black household's wealth is hardly more than one-tenth that of the median white household; the mortality rate for infants born to black women is over twice that for infants born to white, Hispanic, or Asian women; even in the midst of a pandemic that we've been assured does not care about race, social class or any aspect of personal identity, it is clear that black people are being hit disproportionately hard, and make up more than their share of the deaths from COVID-19. Throw in the growing joblessness and social disruption inflicted by the lockdown—and, especially, the government's failure to adequately address these problems—and the only surprising element of the protests is that they didn't materialize earlier.

The general disorder and occasional looting and property destruction have predictably led to accusations that the protests themselves have lost their focus, or that they're being exploited by outside agitators and greedy opportunists. But these accusations miss the reality of the situation. While there will inevitably those who exploit mass unrest for either selfish or sinister purposes, the real reason behind much of the looting and vandalism is a genuine anger—not simply at the police, but at the society that tolerates and reinforces injustice on a daily basis. James Baldwin addressed this point in a 1968 interview with Esquire:

[A "looter" taking a television set] doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you. It’s just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn’t want it. He wants to let you know he’s there...you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting.

In this respect, the presence of "looting" and property destruction is often far from indicative that a protest has lost touch with its purpose; rather, it reveals the sentiment that's driving the protest goes beyond whatever issue served as a point of ignition, and has become an anger at the whole social structure that manifests itself in everything around the protestors. To simply attribute these acts of law-breaking to interlopers is to refuse to reckon with how deep the anger (rightfully) goes. When regular people become so outraged they react with seemingly gratuitous disobedience and destruction, it says something about the health (or lack thereof) of the society they live in. Acknowledging that normal people might turn to such extreme measures requires us to acknowledge that perhaps society really is so broken they would feel the need to do so.

It is also worth noting that many of the most consequential uprisings in American history were "non-peaceful" in nature. In 1963, after bombings targeting a motel owner and the brother of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil disorder ensued in Birmingham, Alabama in which (per a contemporary New York Times report) "[a]bout 50 persons were injured, including a policeman and a taxicab driver who were stabbed." The uprising additionally "wrecked scores of police and private automobiles and burned six small stores and a two-story apartment house." Rather than serving as a boon to the "law and order" Right as one might expect, the ultimate effect was quite the opposite. Malcolm X described it thusly:

 [R]ight at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham—remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up 'side their head—yes, they did. That's when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. So, and right after that, Kennedy got on the television and said "this is a moral issue." That's when he said he was going to put out a civil-rights bill.

Of course, one can still embrace the spirit behind the unrest happening now but argue against looting or property destruction as tactics. This is essentially the same approach as Martin Luther King took in arguing that "riots are socially destructive and self-defeating" but also "the language of the unheard" crying out for justice in an unjust society. But despite the superficial similarity, this is an entirely different approach than either arguing that the protests have "lost their way" or trying to neatly separate the "real" protestors from the supposedly insincere "looters" and "outside agitators." To take a truly King-like approach, one must genuinely understand and endorse the outrage driving this unrest (in all the forms it takes)—and, if rejecting certain tactics, at least propose a genuine alternative. One should also realize that the approach advocated by King himself was, while nonviolent, nonetheless dependent on creating "such a crisis...that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue." Demonstrations that fail to disrupt society—whether violently or nonviolently—simply are not a viable tactic for any revolution.

I should be clear here that when I speak of revolution and a "revolutionary spark" I do not mean the actual overthrow of the United States government, or any government—a goal that probably few of the protestors would endorse. I mean it in the broader sense, defined by George Orwell as "a fundamental shift of power," one that "is not primarily a question of change of government" because "if we alter our structure from below we shall get the government we need." It is no secret that, while we are all (for the most part) equal on paper, there are gross inequalities not just of wealth but of power in society. Any serious person understands that someone like George Floyd was never on anything resembling equal footing with a Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, or even with a comfortably middle-class white person. It is this fundamental imbalance of power that has to be dealt with—and to do so would demand a truly revolutionary effort.

Of course, the "revolutionary spark" that exists in the recent unrest is only the genuine desire of the participants to effect that change, and their willingness to take action in order to do so; by no means does its existence ensure that the protests will have their intended effect. What comes out of them in the end is anyone's guess, though any attempts to draw conclusions from historical parallels are overly hasty. For now, the protests serve not only as inspiring acts of rebellion (if not always against the law, certainly against the larger unjust social order), but also to reveal the truth about police forces across the country as they respond with shocking acts of violence and escalation. All that can be done is to support the protestors through whatever means are available, and to oppose the police response—as well as the still more disturbing possibility of the military being deployed to quell the nationwide unrest. The moment we are at now could ultimately prove to be a turning point—but whether that turn is toward a better society or a repressive police state remains to be seen.

A Response to the USA Today Article on Tara Reade's Allegations

Former Biden staffer Tara Reade
(Max Whittaker/The New York Times)

After seeming to fly under the radar for a while, former Biden staffer Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against her ex-boss are finally a major point of focus. It's no surprise, then, that they're getting pushback—and, given that the target of the accusations is the presumptive Democratic nominee, that the pushback often takes a disgusting form. Michael Stern's recent USA Today article is a prime example of both the pushback itself and the vile form it takes. While its goal is to discredit Reade's allegations, all it ends up demonstrating is that prosecutors have no actual expertise when it comes to psychology or uncovering the truth, and that USA Today has editorial standards somewhat lower than the Mariana Trench.

After a brief introduction ("During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases...When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them..."), Stern delves into his reasons for doubting Reade's allegation, each laid out with its own subheading. I will attempt to go through all of them as concisely as possible and demonstrate why his arguments fall woefully short, and reveal him to be far from any sort of objective source on Reade's credibility.

Stern's first reason for skepticism is that Reade "Delayed reporting…twice." "[I]t is reasonable," he intones,

to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable—but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.

We are already off to a poor start. Several of Reade's acquaintances have confirmed she told them her story long ago, and it is far from unheard of for sexual assault victims to wait decades before coming forward. The fact that this fact could be missed by a liberal like Stern after the Kavanaugh affair in 2018 is quite remarkable, if not indicative of willful blindness.

Next is Reade's "Implausible explanation for changing [her] story." Stern explains:

When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story.

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.

That someone would struggle to talk about probably the most traumatic incident in their life is actually not at all hard to believe. Neither is it hard to imagine that, after the backlash she received due to her initial allegation, Reade would sit back and hope Biden's campaign would tank all on its own (as it almost did) rather than trying to find someone else to tell her full story to.

Next subheading: "People who contradict Reade’s claim." All three of these people are former Biden staffers who deny Reade made a complaint to them. Obviously, even if Reade made no such complaint her allegations about the sexual assault could still be true. It's also quite possible that people who worked for Biden have some loyalty to him and aren't being honest. As journalist Paul Blest notes, Biden aide Dennis Toner—one of the three people Stern mentions here—"not only called the allegation 'preposterous' but denied ever knowing Reade at all, something that’s much more far-fetched than anything Reade has said."

In the following section, Stern notes that Reade claims she filed a written complaint against Biden, but no copy could be found and she didn't keep a copy herself. "It is odd," he remarks, "that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties changed 'the trajectory' of her life." It is actually not odd that a woman wouldn't want to keep a memento of the time her boss sexually assaulted her—and the fact no other record could be found could have something to do with the fact that Biden's senate papers are sealed until two years after he leaves public life.

The next mark against Reade is her "Memory lapse":

Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a "semiprivate" area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los Angeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade’s amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.

For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation. 

It's actually quite common for victims of trauma to have fragmented and vague memories of the event in question—something it's hard to imagine Stern wasn't aware of.

Next up: the "The lie about losing her job." After originally claiming "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ" after she refused to serve drinks at an event, according to The Union, Reade now says she was fired for filing her sexual harassment complaint. Again, the fact Reade was reluctant to tell her full story is not at all surprising, and feeling "pushed out" and leaving "Biden's employ" already sounds like a euphemism for being fired.

But, Stern, goes on, Reade had "Compliments for Biden" as recently as 2017: "It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her." Is it? Survivors  of abuse and assault often defend and make excuses for their abuser, especially if it's someone they knew beforehand. Presumably Reade went to work for Biden because she agreed with his positions and thought he had some value as a political figure, and there were likely plenty of friendly interactions she had with him during her employ. Assuming she's telling the truth, it's not shocking she would rather emphasize (and remember) the good side of Joe Biden rather than focusing on the time he assaulted her.

The next three sections ("Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders," "Love of Russia and Putin" and "Suspect timing") are where the article takes a turn for the truly disgusting. As the titles imply, here Stern focuses on Reade's support for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, a 2018 blog post she wrote praising Vladimir Putin, and the fact that she came forward with her allegations against Biden after he won a string of primary victories. At best, all of this offers a possible motive Reade would have to lie. Stern, however, uses it to insinuate Reade at least suffers from emotional instability (given she had previously criticized Putin, and has now disavowed her former praise) and possibly has a loyalty to a foreign despot. He even manages to work in smear against Sanders, claiming that he has "a long history of ties to Russia[.]" The source linked to in order to back up this claim is a Politico article about footage of Bernie and Jane Sanders' 1988 trip to the Soviet Union—hardly evidence of the sinister Russian ties Stern seems to be hinting at.

Reade's misguided, and now-disavowed, praise for Putin has no bearing on the truth of her accusations so I won't waste any time on it. Using Reade's support for Sanders as evidence against her allegation is just taking a page from the playbook conservatives relied on to try to discredit Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh's accusers—and it's obvious why she would support the Democratic candidate who didn't assault her over the one who, she alleges, did. Her "suspect timing" is not actually suspect, either: as noted earlier, she would have probably been hoping Biden would tank all on his own and retire into obscurity. Once his campaign had come back from the dead and he was well on his way to the Democratic nomination, it would have been obvious that her story was still relevant. Besides, if Reade's allegations were designed to inflict maximum damage on Biden, wouldn't it have made sense to attack before he had won "a string of March primary victories [that] threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination"?

After this despicable garbage, Stern addresses the recently unearthed call from Reade's mother to Larry King Live, in which she talks about how her daughter left "after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him." Because her call was anonymous, Stern thinks, Reade's mother should have been willing to go into graphic detail about what happened instead of only vaguely hinting at it. This is truly bizarre thinking. Is it really hard to believe that a mother calling into a live TV show—even anonymously—wouldn't want to discuss her daughter's sexual assault in detail? For a former prosecutor, perhaps it is. For the rest of us, it should be obvious why she would want to exercise some discretion when telling her daughter's story, apparently without that daughter's permission.

Stern also pooh-poohs this evidence on the grounds that "I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of 'respect' for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice." Again, Stern betrays either deliberate obtuseness or a lack of even basic knowledge about human psychology. It is entirely conceivable that Reade might have rationalized her assault as being partly her fault (self-blaming being common among assault survivors) and not wanted to publicly embarrass—and potentially damage the career of—a man she had respected enough to go to work for. And the idea that the choice was between "painful silence" or "justice" reveals absolutely no understanding of the fate that befalls many survivors of assault if they come forward. Talk to Christine Blasey Ford or any of Donald Trump's victims about the "justice" they got by telling their stories.

Next, Stern tries discredit the corroboration offered by Reade's acquaintances (her brother, several friends, a former colleague) by implying that perhaps they, too, are lying. Or perhaps Reade simply lied to them: "Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat." The idea that a woman would lie to her friends about being sexually assaulted in order to "save face" seems rather unlikely at best, but that's the best explanation Stern apparently has for why Reade would have spent decades telling the same story.

Lastly, there is a "Lack of other sexual assault allegations" against Biden. Of course, there were those "several women" who spoke last year about how Biden had made them uncomfortable—one of whom, Stern lets us know, he wrote an article criticizing. But Reade is the only person to have publicly accused Biden of sexual assault. "It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade," Stern admits. "But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once...like Donald Trump, who has had more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia."

But, as it turns out, Biden may have been accused of sexual misconduct more than once. In a 2008 piece published in the left-wing magazine CounterPunch, political journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote the following:

Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like.  On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

As it stands, he has a well-documented problem respecting women's personal space. It may have once been easy to treat that as some innocent byproduct of his being of an older generation—as I once did—but now that there is a well-corroborated accusation of sexual assault against him, it should be harder to overlook.

Stern wraps up with a section titled "What remains," concluding with some theatrical hand-wringing ("I've dreaded writing this piece") and an anecdote about how, as a prosecutor, he questioned the credibility of a rape claim that later turned out to be false. Naturally, he also makes sure to clarify that he is actually the best friend the #MeToo movement, and sexual assault survivors, could ever have:

We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That’s not how I see the #MeToo movement. It’s too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that. 

This is probably the worst article I've ever responded to on this blog, and absolutely one of the worst I've read from any outlet. Regardless of whether you believe Reade's allegation, it deserves to be discussed more seriously, and in better faith, than Stern appears capable of. I hope my point-by-point dissection makes that clear. But I thought it might also help to summarize my arguments once more, in a format more amenable to Michael J. Stern and USA Today. So here it is:

Why I'm skeptical about Michael Stern's skepticism about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Blogger

During my six years as a blogger, I've written responses to many articles. The vast majority of them have been dogshit. When media outlets publish an article, my default response is to give the writer a chance to make their points. But as I read Michael J. Stern's article in USA Today, I became increasingly disgusted. Here are some of the reasons why:

Poor understanding of human psychology. Throughout his article, Stern shows he understands very little about how sexual assault victims process trauma, or human psychology in general. We aren't talking the fine points here, he doesn't even have a Psych 101-level grasp of this stuff.

Blatantly political motivations. Between his defense of Biden, his focus on irrelevant Russia bullshit and his gratuitous smear of Bernie Sanders, it's pretty clear Stern falls somewhere in the insufferable "#Resist" Democrat camp. His Twitter bio confirms this, with phrases like "#Resisting all things Trump" and "#BlueNoMatterWho." Since he believes Tara Reade's political views should be treated as counterevidence against her sexual assault allegations, it's only fair to use his own political views as a reason to discount the sincerity of his article.

Full of irrelevant points. Stern's digressions about Bernie Sanders' supposed "long history of ties to Russia" and Tara Reade's Putin blog post show he's not able to focus on actual evidence, and raise questions about his emotional stability.

Former prosecutor. A prosecutor's job isn't to find the truth, it's to get a conviction. They don't deserve to be treated as experts on human psychology, or credibility, or truth, or anything. Many of them are also, frankly, freaks. If you don't believe that, just watch any true crime show about someone who was wrongly convicted and listen to what the prosecutor who put them behind bars has to say. I don't like to make blanket statements, but a lot of these people were born without souls. While Stern's political convictions put him in an odd spot for a former prosecutor—arguing for an acquittal in the court of public opinion, not a conviction—he marshals all the scummiest tricks of his trade to portray Tara Reade as a villainous harpy out to destroy good old Joe Biden.

What remains. The article is, once again, very bad.

The House Wins Again

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via Business Insider)

The 2020 Democratic primary is over—and the last man standing is Joe Biden. His first war is won: he will be the nominee, the one to face off against Donald Trump in November. Barring, that is, the possibility that he steps down, citing health reasons or something along those lines, so the party insiders can crown someone younger and more dynamic at whatever virtual convention ends up happening this summer. That turn of events feels more plausible than it would in a normal year. But otherwise, it's all Joe. 

After every other candidate in the "moderate" lane of the primary dropped out and threw their support behind Biden, the only obstacle left was Bernie Sanders—who, as of my writing these words, announced he was suspending his campaign about 12 hours ago.* It would be short-sighted to overlook the significance of Sanders' achievements in this race. With the entire Democratic Party establishment, the economic elites, and much of the media class dead-set against him, he was still able to out-fundraise his opponents, win the popular vote in the first three consecutive states, dominate the youth vote and, ultimately, come in second place out of a field that once had over 20 candidates. But it wasn't enough. The consolidation that happened behind Biden, the media's continued hostility, and increased suburban turnout—perhaps because there was no Republican presidential primary worth voting in, or perhaps motivated by a fear that a socialist really would capture the Democratic nomination—proved too much for Sanders to overcome. There are certainly things he could and should have done differently. Phone calls and door-to-door canvassing, it's clear now, weren't enough to turn out the young voters he needed. Emphasizing the common ground between himself and Obama might have helped him perform better among more moderate Democrats. And the fact he's spent decades calling himself a socialist almost surely did more harm than good. But in the end, maybe the elite hostility to leftism of any sort and the voters' readiness to be cowed into voting for an "electable" centrist would have doomed him no matter what.

So now we're left with Biden, a candidate who's a laughable anachronism in the year 2020. Instead of taking the opportunity provided by the pandemic to call for a single-payer healthcare system—for which popular support has surged—he's busied himself arguing that Italy shows us it wouldn't make it any difference if we had one. Any notion that the left could meaningfully pressure Biden to govern as some kind of social democrat is nothing but a bad joke. With two-thirds of the American public and 21 of Biden's former Democratic primary opponents in favor of legalizing marijuana, Biden still can't even bring himself to support that. He's an inveterate left-puncher and has spent his whole career as one, and whatever rhetorical concessions he might make to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party will be forgotten as soon as he's elected—if that happens.

Whether he will be able to pull it off is anyone's guess. Against a normal president he'd be as good as dead, but Trump is no normal president—and, according to FiveThirtyEight, no incumbent since at least Harry Truman has gotten reelected with approval numbers like his. COVID-19 looks certain to be the dominant campaign issue, and how the pandemic plays out between now and November might well be the decisive factor. If it—and the economic mayhem it's unleashed— can be brought under control, that could boost Trump's image enough for him to get four more years. If not, Biden should have an easy path to victory. A cold comfort if ever there was one.

It's not clear what future there is for the left-wing movement Bernie Sanders represented, either. Regardless of who wins this election, he will be too old to run again and he has no obvious successor. It's completely unclear whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will have the experience, political acumen or even principles to take up the mantle from him in four or eight years, and it's even harder to imagine Rashida Tlaib mounting a successful presidential campaign. Aside from them, there are few high-profile left-wing politicians who would even be eligible. If Biden goes on to win the election, it could be a major, and lasting, victory for the Democratic Party establishment—particularly if he picks Kamala Harris or someone else with known presidential aspirations as his running mate. But then again, nothing is certain anymore. The idea that we could revive the old "normal" just by tossing out Donald Trump is just as much ridiculous nostalgia-mongering as his promise to Make America Great Again. For the foreseeable future, American politics will likely be as bizarre and unpredictable as they've been since 2016.

So what would a Joe Biden presidency give us? On the plus side, a reprieve from the worst excesses and savageries of the Trump Administration. But not much more than that. Four (or eight) years of feckless centrism, while Trump's base embraces paranoid fantasies about how the Communists are secretly pulling all the strings. The Republicans in Congress will go back their old game of blocking every bill or nomination that could be a feather in the Democratic president's cap. But even when he's able to act without Congress, Biden—like Obama—will not be bold or aggressive enough in trying to tackle any of the major crises we face. Inequality will keep getting worse. Any hope of keeping climate change in tow will slip further away. Our military will continue dropping bombs on people in faraway lands. Even after the current pandemic-induced crisis has abated, the economy probably won't be booming over the course of the next several years, either. After one or two miserable terms of this, it's not hard to imagine a right-wing populist more savvy—and more dangerous—than Trump coming to power. There are no shortage of candidates here, either—it could be freshman Missouri senator Josh Hawley, who's made a name for himself by ranting against the "cosmopolitan elite." Or perhaps Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who blends Trumpian racism and nationalism with über-neoconservative foreign policy views. For that matter, it could end up being Fox News host Tucker Carlson—another media personality, like Trump, but one who's proven far more articulate and consistent in promoting far-right ideology.

On the other hand, another Trump term could be terrifying in its own right. God only knows what Big Don and his gang of crooks, geeks and racists might try if they're emboldened by another electoral victory. More state violence against immigrants, shredded environmental regulations and giveaways to the rich should all be treated as givens. Perhaps it would even go well beyond the horror show we've been subjected to so far. On the other han
d, maybe Trump's second term would be more moderate than his first, as happened with George W. Bush. Either way, the Democrats would likely win big in the 2022 midterms, and perhaps again in 2024—for whatever good that would do.

The whole picture is bleak, and there's not much cause for optimism right now. There will still be important fights for the next four years—in congressional, state and local elections, and outside electoral politics altogether—but the battle for the presidency is already lost, at least for me and every other leftist out there. Don't let anyone delude you otherwise—there is no institutional left that could push Biden to take up any meaningful portion of Bernie Sanders' agenda, and the Occupy movement showed that simply getting a lot of people to make noise does little to influence policy on these issues. No, regardless of what happens in November we are in for four more grim years, and perhaps many more than that. That reality is no excuse for political detachment, apathy, or nihilism—but it is a reality, and it's one worth confronting.
________________________________________________________________

*Obviously, it's taken some time for me to get this post out.

Living in the Future

Sarah Palin appears on The Masked Singer (screenshot via YouTube courtesy of Mic)

My faith's been torn asunder
Tell me is that rolling thunder
Or just the sinking sound
Of something righteous going under

Don't worry, darling
No baby, don't you fret
We're living in the future
And none of this has happened yet

—Bruce Springsteen, "Livin' in the Future"

I had a strange moment as I was driving home last Friday. My thoughts were jumping around the way they usually do on night drives like that one. The main thing on my mind was the COVID-19 pandemic. Much more would come of that outbreak over the next few days, as restaurants and bars were forced to shut down and my state's primary election was ultimately postponed to stem the spread of disease. My thoughts also drifted to another, much stupider recent event: the completely surreal appearance of former governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Fox's already-ridiculous show The Masked Singer. Earlier that week, Palin, dressed in a pink bear costume, had spat reworked lyrics to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in an event that no sober person could have imagined back in 2008 when she first came on the national scene. There was no obvious connection between these two things, a deadly global pandemic on the one hand and washed-up politician's last gasp for relevance on the other. But considering them together, as two wildly dissimilar but contemporary news stories, an ominous question emerged: what if this is just how things are gonna be?

Start with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States at least, we are not faced only with the disease itself but also with a society that seems almost perfectly designed to let it flourish: a state that has been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades, and is now presided over by a former reality show host whose reign has been marked by open incompetence and corruption; a private healthcare system that has little incentive to focus on testing and providing proper treatment to those who need it; and a culture where misinformation readily spreads among a populace that has grown rightfully distrustful of its own government and mass media, as well as of "experts" of any sort. And now that the seriousness of the new coronavirus outbreak is starting to be understood, the deep dysfunction and irrationality is beginning to make itself known: supermarket shelves left barren as people start bafflingly stocking up on toilet paper in large quantities, travel bans enacted against China and Europe over the objections of health experts, the stock market thrown into chaos, lives disrupted as universities and places of employment shut down.

COVID-19 is not the first global pandemic, and it certainly won't be the last. As the planet's climate is progressively altered and the permafrost—home to all sorts of dormant bacteria and vira—melts, and as our globalized culture continues to become more and more integrated with people and cargo traveling from all parts of the world with regularity, it's likely there's more where this came from. While some places, like South Korea, have done an admirable job of responding to the coronavirus pandemic, taken as a whole the global response does not portend terribly well for how these future outbreaks will be handled.

Obviously, the greatest tragedy of COVID-19 and any future pandemics will be the many lives lost to them. But it's fair to also ponder the cultural impact semi-regular outbreaks would have on the vast majority of us who survive them. The irony of the term "social distancing," the practice now being encouraged to prevent the spread of disease, is that it could just as easily be applied to what we've all been doing, willfully or not, over the course of the past few decades. As the collective institutions and groupings that, for better or worse, provided some sense of community have disintegrated (in accordance with Margaret Thatcher's proclamation that "there's no such thing as society"), societies have more and more resembled collections of atomized individuals. We've hardly had much choice to but withdraw further and further into ourselves as practically everything—jobs, homes, acquaintances, marriages—became more and more temporary by necessity. The personal relationships and face-to-face interactions that were once central have become increasingly supplanted by social media, which often encourages the meanest, dumbest and most narcissistic impulses, leaving people more alienated and less empathetic than they once were—not, of course, that we should wax too nostalgic about the "good old days," which were full of their own problems and injustices. And now, if every so often, we must worry that face-to-face interaction might help spread life-threatening illnesses—and cope with the inevitable disruptions to day-to-day life the response and reaction to such outbreaks will entail—that will just be one more factor pushing us towards personal isolation.

It's that same atomization that has helped give us bizarre scenes like Sarah Palin rapping on TV—or a former game show host being sworn in as president for that matter. For politics to be participatory or democratic in any profound sense, collective institutions and organizations—not to mention just some general sense of community—are necessary, and all of those are what's been getting power-washed away like an old coat of paint. So when politics based on mass organization and participation becomes obsolete, what happens? Politics must glom onto some other sort of cultural phenomena, effect some kind of merger. That's where the entertainment industry comes in.

Entertainment, after all, is yet another thing that must fill the gaps left behind by the neoliberalization of modern society. The fact that it's become increasingly available over the past few decades is not simply a fortunate coincidence—and, if possible, it will only become more ubiquitous the further social atomization progresses. How else can you keep a populace of increasingly alienated individuals from either rebelling against the system or simply imploding altogether? It's no wonder that politics and entertainment appear to be merging, up to and including a sort of revolving door that now connects the two of them: at the same time the old forms of politics have died off, entertainment dominates the cultural landscape more and more, and it naturally has to evolve to keep its consumers' attention. If religion was the opium of the masses in Marx's age, something must take its place in an increasingly post-religious landscape.

Not that we will ever reach the levels of, say, the societies imagined in Mike Judge's Idiocracy or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where every form of mass entertainment is artless vulgarity or overwhelming absurdity. No, far from it: people have to get intellectual stimulation from somewhere. There are, and will always continue to be, many shows, movies and books that are intelligent, well-crafted and of serious artistic value. But that's just it: soon enough, the only place that level of profundity or thoughtfulness might be found is in the realm of entertainment, where it's safely directed away from any use that could end up threatening the status quo and serves as just another temporary distraction from the alienation of modern life. It's something of a cold comfort to know we will always have prestige TV and cinema when they serve only as a break from the chaos and irrationality of everything else.

This is the nightmare future we are faced with—not some radical deviation, but merely the worst and most frightening (as well as the most ridiculous) aspects of the past few years and decades made regular, turned into the new "normal." The feelings of isolation and fear we're experience we're all experiencing right now could become just another part of day-to-day life, while politics is finally reduced to the level of a spectator sport—just one more reality show to waste some time on.

Of course, it's not yet inevitable. While Bernie Sanders now stands little chance of becoming the Democratic nominee, the movement he helped to build with this campaign and his 2016 one is a promising deviation from the long-term trends we've seen in politics and society. And the coronavirus epidemic plus the economic turmoil it's already wreaking could prove enough of a shock that we're forced to confront the ominous direction we're headed in, and find a way to change it. Those glimmers of hope, however small, do not have to disappear regardless of who ends up winning the 2020 election. But the window of opportunity is closing. Let these past weeks and the months ahead be a warning that spurs some sort of action, and not a preview of what the future will be.

The Vampires Strike Back

Well, no one said it would be easy. We knew that the Democratic Establishment was in full panic mode after Bernie Sanders scored a trio of victories (at least in the popular vote), in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada—the first three states on the primary calendar. Now we're seeing the full extent of their desperation. After Biden managed to score a big victory in South Carolina and became the first candidate to defeat Sanders anywhere, the wagons have circled: Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar unexpectedly called it quits, along with billionaire donor Tom Steyer, leaving Biden as the only remaining candidate in the "moderate lane" aside from Michael Bloomberg.* Shortly after, they threw their support behind Uncle Joe, and were joined by one Robert "Beto" O'Rourke, who long-time viewers will remember as yesteryear's Hot New Thing in the world of Democratic politics, as well as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It looks like Mr. Hope and Change himself, former president Obama, may have even played some role in at least Buttigieg's decision. Now, as I'm writing this, it's Super Tuesday, and Biden looks positioned to stage a major comeback.** FiveThirtyEight already gives him a 31% chance of securing a majority of delegates in the primaries, while Sanders has fallen to just 8% after being the favorite for weeks (the most likely possibility, with 61%, is still that no one secures a majority).

Shirts sold by the Biden campaign, celebrating his latest
endorsements (via Team Joe Store)

This comes just after Biden got caught in an astounding lie about getting arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela, a new spin on his old fabrication about marching in the Civil Rights movement. Of course, it might be unfair to call it a lie for that matter. Joe's been having his share of innocent slip-ups lately, such as saying that he's running for Senate and that if voters don't like him they can "vote for the other Biden," and apparently forgetting the quote from the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal—the one every third grader knows—about halfway through his attempt to recite it ("All men and women created by the—you know—you know the thing.") None of that matters when there's a chance the peons might actually storm the Bastille and nominate someone who really means it when they use the old Democratic Party talking points (those ones about creating a fair economy and looking out for working class people).

No—the one thing the Democratic Party power brokers care about is right there in their name. For anyone who suffers from any other illusion, what we're seeing right now should be the equivalent of Winston Smith's shock treatment in 1984:

"You are ruling over us for our own good," he said feebly. "You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore—"

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

"That was stupid, Winston, stupid!" he said. "You should know better than to say a thing like that."

He pulled the lever back and continued:

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power...We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end...The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

Of course, poor old Joe is just a pawn in their game, to borrow Bob Dylan's turn of phrase—and in a just world, elder abuse would added to the list of charges against all the insiders and hacks pushing Biden's campaign along. There's a poetry to it all. You couldn't ask for a better embodiment of the decrepit, decadent Democratic Center that's been in power for decades: the wizened old moderate who once gave Strom Thurmond's eulogy and was to the right of Ronald Reagan on criminal justice, and who now struggles to go a week without messing up a news anchor's name or forgetting which president it was that he served under. Who needs Thomas Nast anymore when the politicians are already their own caricatures?

There's, of course, no point in whining about fairness in all of this. All's fair in love and war, and in politics, one might add. The tactics the Establishment is relying on aren't even particularly shocking or outrageous. A bunch of losing candidates dropping out and rallying behind the guy whose views are most like theirs hardly seems like any great moral travesty or attempt to squelch out democracy. Even the attempts to prey on electability fears or to paint Sanders as some out-of-touch utopian (or cyrpto-Communist) are hardly some Nixon-style ratfucking. The real scandal is the continuing existence of the Democratic Establishment itself, given the miserable failure of its brand of politics in actually creating any sort of decent society, the way it's broken every promise it ever made to the poor and working class people across the country and the fact that just four years ago it helped give us Donald Trump by sticking us with another uninspiring centrist who epitomized its disgusting lack of any moral center. It doesn't much matter what rules the Establishment plays by—as long as it's winning, the rest of us are losing.

And sweeping all of this aside in the name of defeating Trump is just doing the Establishment's work for it. If there's one thing you can say about Donald Trump and the Democratic power elite, it's that they deserve each other: just one big band of unprincipled, cynical elitists with nothing but contempt for anyone outside of their social tier—especially if, God forbid, those unwashed masses actually start trying to take some kind of control. In the long run, failing to shatter the hegemony the Democratic Party elites exercise will be a far costlier mistake than reelecting Donald Trump would be, anyway. Crises like increasing inequality, uncontrolled climate change and the much-discussed shrinking of the "middle class" threaten to push us toward some kind of quasi-dystopia, what Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"—maybe within a few decades, in my non-expert estimation. Maybe more, maybe less. If these issues aren't seriously addressed soon, Donald Trump may just be the first in a line of authoritarian demagogues to gain power, and the next one might make him look like an amateur.

It would be delusional to think these problems disappear if Bernie Sanders is elected, but electing establishment picks like Biden all but guarantees they will only get worse. But, as I've previously discussed, Biden's far from certain to beat Trump anyway. The video montages of his most unflattering moments ("150 million people have been killed [by guns] since 2007," "Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids") that I predicted in my last post have already materialized, spread by Big Don and his right-wing media allies. Anecdotally, the anger I've seen from younger voters and leftists over the past few days, as it's become clear the party elites will pull out all the stops for Biden, does not bode well for his ability to turn out former Bernie supporters. Low youth turnout alone—or a significant defection of left-leaning young voters to third party candidates—could leave Biden's odds as good as dead. But there's no need to tarry on when I've covered this ground before.

What it all comes down to is that the most important battle to be fought is not, as many would have it, between the Democratic and Republican parties. It's between the Democratic Party establishment—the network of wealthy donors, fundraisers, party insiders, political consultants, and other blood-suckers whose ilk has helped gift us with our current politico-economic nightmare—and those who refuse to accept the rule of these self-proclaimed experts for any longer. The only way the Democratic Party can effectively combat not only Trump and right-wing "populism" in general but also the many other grave threats we face is to become an authentic working class party—one that has a meaningful connection with, and is responsive to the needs of, the poor, displaced and struggling that have been betrayed by our political system and by the dynamics of twenty-first century capitalism. Nominating Bernie Sanders would only be the start of this process. Nominating Joe Biden means we make no progress at all.

*After winning only American Samoa on Super Tuesday, Bloomberg has also dropped out and thrown his support behind Biden. 

**With Super Tuesday over, it's fair to say this happened as expected. Biden how has a 65-delegate lead, though many more still remain to be allocated.

No One's Sure to Beat Trump, but Bernie's Our Best Shot

Bernie Sanders at his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary (Drew Angerer/Getty Images via Axios)

Donald Trump could be reelected this year. This may seem like I'm stating the obvious, but it's a fact that everyone who wants Trump out of office—whether you call yourself a liberal, moderate, socialist, or whatever else—needs to not only know on a factual level, but internalize. Per FiveThirtyEight's polling average, Trump's approval rating is around 43%. That's low, but it's not much lower than that of George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton at this point in their respective presidencies, and they all got reelected. Trump recently received a 49% approval rating in a Gallup poll, a record for him in surveys from that agency. Consumer confidence is currently running high. And it's been nearly 30 years since an incumbent president lost reelection. Trump could absolutely win again in November, and there is no candidate in the Democratic field—or, in all likelihood, human being on Earth—who would be certain, or even nearly certain, to defeat him.

With that being said, I think it's become increasingly clear who the candidate best-equipped to defeat Trump is: Bernie Sanders. I'm biased, of course, but I do not think this is just me convincing myself that my favorite candidate is also the most "electable" one. I think there's a strong case to be made that, even if beating Donald Trump is your sole priority (which it shouldn't be), Bernie is the guy you want. But let's start out by taking a look at the alternatives, and the reasons I don' t think they would fare so well in a general election.

We'll begin with Joe Biden, the man who, up until recently, was consistently in the lead in national polling for the Democratic primary. His perceived electability has been a big advantage, though that advantage is now fading fast. I already wrote an entire blog post about why I don't think Biden is the most electable candidate, and the intervening months have only confirmed what I believed then. For one thing, there's Hunter Biden, Joe's son: after being kicked out of the military for drug use, he got a high-paying job on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, at the same time that his father was taking an active role in trying to shape the Ukrainian government's policies. It's plain that Hunter was only hired for his last name. Did Joe Biden have any role in his hiring? As far as I know, there's no evidence to suggest it. But Donald Trump will relentlessly claim that he did if Biden is the Democratic nominee, and there's a good chance that that could help Trump deflect accusations that he himself is corrupt and nepotistic. Trump has never done much to hide the fact that he's completely amoral, but has rather fought back against the accusation by indicating that his political opponents are no better in that respect—and the Hunter Biden situation gives him crucial ammunition for those attacks if Joe Biden is the nominee.

There's also the fact that Biden has often struggled with words and even been downright incoherent at many points during this campaign. None of his debate performances have been particularly dazzling, and his Democratic opponents were surely nicer to him that Trump would be. Even if Biden magically becomes completely eloquent and composed in the general election, Trump's campaign could simply choose from the many clips of him getting tripped up, lashing out or spewing out puzzling word salads, edit them all together and release it as an attack ad insinuating that Biden is losing his mind. Trump, of course, has his own moments of incoherence too, but he has an unshakeable (and totally undeserved) self-confidence that Biden lacks, and I don't think Biden's campaign would be cutthroat enough to go after Trump's mental state anyway.

Then there's Biden's long record of supporting "tough on crime" policies that have become increasingly controversial—a record he has continued to defend in recent years. The policies Biden supported undoubtedly helped lock up many people, especially black and brown people. Trump is sure to emphasize this point in a bid to drive down minority turnout, and point out that he, Trump, signed a criminal justice reform bill to help reduce the prison population. It's doubtful that Trump will win too much of the nonwhite vote in the general election, but he could inspire some voters of color to sit out the election or vote third party. Biden is also opposed to marijuana legalization even though two-thirds of Americans are in favor of it, and pro-Trump groups could exploit this by putting out ads that hammer Biden on this point and urge younger voters not to support him.

And then there's NAFTA. Biden was in Congress back when the trade deal was passed, and he voted for it. In the decades since it's been blamed by politicians of both parties for the deindustrialization that's displaced many workers throughout the country. Trump has renegotiated NAFTA, and Congress just passed his new overhaul of the agreement, the USMCA, which has received the backing of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka (although it's gotten poor reviews from environmental groups, which is why Sanders rightly opposes it). This is the sort of issue that matters to the Rust Belt voters who gave Trump the presidency in 2016, and if Biden's the nominee, they might just decide to give Trump another term in the White House.

It's true that Biden has been performing well in head-to-head polling with Trump, but he also led national Democratic primary polling for months before starting out the primary season with a distant fourth-place finish in Iowa and an even more dismal fifth place in New Hampshire. He benefits from name recognition, his moderate image and his everyday workingman shtick, but he does not attract much enthusiastic support. It's dangerous to expect that his support in the general election polls is more solid than his support in the primary polls has so far turned out to be, especially given the many vulnerabilities he would have in a general election campaign.

With Biden aside, we come to the guy who actually had two pretty decent showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg. The vulnerabilities Buttigieg has are all too obvious: the highest office he's held is mayor of a relatively small college town in Indiana, for one thing. That might not have been much of a vulnerability if he were running against 2016 Donald Trump, who had no political experience, but now he would be running against an incumbent president. Furthermore, Buttigieg has failed to find much support from black voters, which doesn't bode well for either his primary campaign or a hypothetical general election matchup. At the New Hampshire debate earlier this month, when Buttigieg was specifically asked about the racial disparity in marijuana arrests during his tenure, he completely failed to give a convincing answer and ended up implying it was because black people were more likely to be involved in gang activity. Despite being a millennial himself, Buttigieg has also attracted little support from young voters, further weakening his odds.

Then there's the other major candidate in the "progressive" lane of the primary, Elizabeth Warren. Warren's performance in the primary campaign alone should be cause for concern. After nearly taking frontrunner status from Biden, she took a sharp dive in the polls. Her lack of clarity and ultimate waffling on Medicare for All succeeded in alienating both moderates and progressives, and she's started out the primary season with a third place finish in Iowa, a single-digit fourth place finish in New Hampshire. At this point, despite the praise for her last debate performance, it looks like her primary campaign is dead in the water: as of my writing this, returns have her in fourth place in Nevada and she's sure to do poorly in South Carolina given her lack of support from black voters. If she somehow got the nomination, it's hard to imagine that she would fare better against Trump than Sanders would, given the weakness she's shown in the face of attacks from her right (even when those attacks come from someone as frivolous as Meghan McCain).

While it feels largely superfluous to even mention Amy Klobuchar given her standing in national polls, I'll do so briefly because of her unexpectedly strong finish in New Hampshire. Klobuchar, too, has found very little support from voters of color (or any voters on a national level), and her moderate platform will do nothing to excite younger voters. Her message so far seems to have mostly been that progressives need to ask for less, which is hardly the sort of thing that will turn out voters in a general election. She has indicated that she intends to run another "have you no decency, sir" type campaign, which Hillary Clinton tried in 2016. Plus, her reputation as an abusive boss would likely come back to haunt her in a general election campaign; again, while we know that Trump is himself personally disgusting, the Democrats appear to forfeit the moral standing to criticize his character if they nominate someone who's also got an unfortunate history, and voters might choose to sit out the election rather than pick between two people they find repugnant.

And then we come to Michael Bloomberg. To be frank, in my view Bloomberg is so reprehensible that it would not be worth nominating him even if he were certain to defeat Trump. But his victory is far from assured. As mayor of New York City, Bloomberg presided over and defended systematic violations of the constitutional rights of people of color. Audio recently came out of him saying that minority neighborhoods deserve to be policed more heavily because that's where the crime is, and,  in a separate clip, blaming the financial crisis on the end of redlining. On foreign policy, he is probably to the right of Donald Trump, having enthusiastically endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 and praised his global war on terror. He and/or his company have been sued by a total of 64 women for sexual harassment or discrimination. And his values are completely and utterly out of step with those of many younger voters: in the past, he has compared Elizabeth Warren's economic views to Soviet-style communism and opposed raising the minimum wage. Bloomberg has consistently stood for the polar opposite of what the Democratic Party claims to represent: he has been unabashedly pro-Wall Street, racist and militarist. It's hard to imagine that wouldn't have the effect of alienating many of the voters the party needs to win. On top of all of those pre-existing vulnerabilities, we can add another one that was just revealed: to put it bluntly, Bloomberg can't debate for shit. A poll taken after the first debate in which he took part showed that Bloomberg's net favorability among Democratic primary voters had plummeted 20 points from pre-debate levels, and his performance has been universally panned among commentators. If that's what happens after one debate on a stage full of Democrats, imagine how well he'd fare in three debates against Donald Trump, a man who publicly humiliated uncharismatic hacks like Bloomberg throughout the 2015-2016 GOP debates.
 
Now that we've covered Sanders' biggest opponents in the primary and their (considerable) weaknesses, let's address his. The main concern I hear seems to be that Sanders is a socialist, which will supposedly scare voters away. But Sanders has been a prominent national figure for years now, and the democratic socialism label has always been closely associated with him: he proudly wears it himself and his opponents of course make sure to bring it up as much as possible. Yet he's still one of the most popular politicians in the country, recent polling gives him the best ratings on values and empathy out of all the Democratic candidates, and head-to-head polls show him in a strong position against Donald Trump.

Critics point to decades-old comments from Sanders where he finds positive (though certainly not unconditionally supportive) things to say about Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas and the USSR (which was at the time under the leadership of Ronald Reagan's friend Gorbachev, one might note). But Sanders' leftist history was highlighted in the last primary campaign, and given that Krysten Sinema—a figure with a more recent history of associating with far-left groups, despite her current stance as a conservative Democrat—recently won an election in a state as right-wing as Arizona, it's doubtful that comments from 30+ years ago necessarily doom Sanders' campaign. Plus, Donald Trump has praised authoritarians like Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping and, yes, Vladimir Putin in much more gushing terms; why would voters be less bothered more by this than by Sanders' qualified praise for Cuba (which was similar to later remarks made by noted communist Kofi Annan) and the Sandinistas (who, in the opinion of European observers, won a fair election in 1984)?

And then there's the essay from nearly 50 years ago that some Sanders critics still like to bring up, where Sanders ruminates on shifting gender roles in a sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion—starting out with a provocative lede that acknowledges how some people, both male and female, enjoy violent sexual fantasies up to and including rape fantasies. The point of the essay, it is clear upon reading, is that traditional gender roles are damaging for both men and women. Some critics, though, claim that it shows Sanders' sexism, or at least that it would be an effective weapon against him in a general election. But Sanders has acknowledged the article, despite the admirable point it was trying to make, was "very poorly written," and the thing is, it has gotten coverage in the media—repeatedly. Plus, the notion that Donald Trump, the man caught on tape talking about "grab[bing women] by the pussy," could successfully weaponize a half-century-old essay and make it seem like Sanders is as anti-woman as he is, is frankly ridiculous. It's the sort of smear that's as desperate as McCain's 2008 attempts to attack Obama for associating with Bill Ayers, and we know how well that tactic worked.

Sanders' health and age are more serious concerns. But still, let's remember who he'd be running against: a visibly out-of-shape and often incoherent 74-year-old, not any sort paragon of youthful vitality. Plus, several of Sanders' primary opponents are also reasonably advanced in age. Bloomberg is only a few months younger than Sanders (and had to have coronary stents put in all the way back in 2000) and Biden only about a year younger, with the latter's age fully and unflatteringly on display as he's struggled to finish his thoughts and gotten tripped up at debates and campaign stops. Even Elizabeth Warren will be turning 71 this year. Klobuchar and (especially) Buttigieg are considerably younger, but it's doubtful their advantage in this respect outweighs their other weaknesses. And late last year, Sanders released three doctors' letters attesting that he was not only healthy, but equipped to deal with considerable stress and activity. His cardiologist, an attending at the University of Vermont Medical Center, expressed confidence that "[Sanders] has the mental and physical stamina to fully undertake the rigors of the Presidency"—a pretty ringing endorsement on the health front.

With those vulnerabilities (real or imagined) addressed, let's talk about the argument for why Bernie Sanders would be an effective candidate against Trump. For one thing, he has a connection with younger voters like no other candidate. He absolutely dominates among the youngest voters in Democratic primary polls, and its quite likely that youth turnout would be exceptionally high with Sanders at the top of the ticket. Higher turnout among young voters was a crucial boost for the Democrats in the 2018 midterms, and it could make the difference in the presidential election this year as well.

He's also increasingly demonstrated strength among voters of color. Recent polls have indicated he's the top choice of a plurality of nonwhite Democratic primary voters, and he's been strengthening his position among black voters—a demographic that he struggled to win over in 2016. Despite (largely manufactured) concerns about Sanders' inability to appeal to people of color, it's clear now he has succeeded in building a multiracial movement.

Furthermore, Sanders' message connects with people. The belief that our political and economic system is rigged is both widespread and accurate, and Sanders' ringing denunciations of its inequities strike a chord. Sanders simply has a clear and powerful message that the other candidates lack. What is Biden's central message? What is Buttigieg's? Klobuchar's? Bloomberg's? Warren once seemed to be running a campaign that, like Bernie's, was focused on economic inequality, but as she's capitulated that message has become more and more muddled. Moderation and pragmatism are not winning messages, at least not at this point in history; transformational change is, and that's what Bernie is selling.

Only one Democrat has actually succeeded in winning a presidential election this century: Barack Obama, who pulled it off twice. How? The first time, by running as an outsider who promised "hope" and "change"; the second time, by running an economically populist campaign and painting his opponent as an out-of-touch plutocrat. He won by turning out young voters and people of color in large numbers. Now let's look at the failed Democratic presidential nominees from this century: Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton—all moderates who ran safe, boring campaigns and lost to opponents they should have been able to beat.

Obviously, Bernie Sanders differs from Barack Obama in many ways, both in terms of personal identity and political ideology. But if there's anyone in this election who can replicate Obama's electoral success, it's Sanders. Which other candidate offers the same sense of excitement that Obama once did? The same aspiration for something different than the defective status quo? The same sense that he represents the hopes and desires of regular people in the face of the faceless Establishment? It's Bernie—the reason being that Obama's presidency failed to live up to the promise his campaigns seemed to offer, and the status quo he ran against has proven more durable than we might have hoped.

Sanders also has the ability to convincingly run against Trump's economic agenda, such as the possible entitlement cuts he floated. Medicare and Social Security are two of the most popular programs in the country, but many Democrats have long been offering to work with Republicans in order to cut them. Not Bernie. He's also the only viable Democratic candidate who has been willing to say Trump's USMCA trade agreement isn't good enough, and he has the credibility to do so as someone who opposed NAFTA from the get-go. Every other candidate would be basically conceding that, just as he promised, Trump "fixed" NAFTA—one of his most important pledges from 2016, and an issue that undeniably helped him the Rust Belt states that propelled him to victory.

None of this, as I said, is any guarantee of success. The primaries are off to a rough start, and the battle for the nomination could last all the way to the convention. If the economic news remains (superficially) good, that could certainly help Trump's chances. Plus, his campaign's ruthlessness will only be tempered by the incompetence of the people he often surrounds himself with. But when it's all said and done, the best bet is still Bernie—and it's not even close.

CORRECTION: Previously this post said it had been over 30 years since an incumbent president was defeated; this was incorrect, as George H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992.