The Ball is in Joe Biden’s Court
If it seems Joe Biden has been quiet lately it’s likely because he is trying to negotiate an end to the primary with Bernie Sanders, who laid out his policy preferences publicly after his losses in Michigan and other key states.
Before the last debate, Biden did agree to a college tuition plan based on Bernie’s policy, but unlike Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is expected to go much farther -according to Joe himself.
But then there’s the billionaires. They speak through well-funded organizations like Center for American progress or Third Way, trying to put a populist Democratic face on a bunch of manipulative oligarchs.
The trick for them is to get a candidate elected who will not raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy, who will keep campaign finance as is, and keep the juicy profits in banking, fossil fuels, real estate, high tech and military contracts.
Case in point, this statement:
“We’re quickly coming to the point where we all have to be all-in for Biden and not inadvertently create permission structures for people to make it harder for him to win,” said Robby Mook, who served as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager.”
Notice how he debuted a new focus-tested phrase for progressives to shut up and sit down?
Though I myself will vote for a Dem nominee even if it was a brain in a jar, I speak to many a Bernie-or-Buster and even some Bernie-to-Trump voters. I see they are eminently waiting and ready to repeat history and boycott Biden if the Dems do not learn the lesson of 2016 when the party made little effort to unite with the younger, progressive factions.
What I don’t get are the Biden supporters online (including former Pete, Amy, Warren folks) telling Bernie to drop out, and telling Bernie supporters to give up and pipe down. I ask them why they aren’t instead pressuring Biden to improve — and especially since the pandemic outbreak — to pivot to the policies people actually need, and which have only been magnified lately.
There are pragmatic Democrats saying this, including Jesse Jackson and exemplified by Elizabeth Warren’s run. Even Rep. James Clyburn is calling for Joe to “incorporate as much of the efforts being proposed by Bernie Sanders as he can.”
And Biden voters know it’s true — exit polls consistently show voters prefer Bernie’s policies even as they vote for Biden. They readily admit putting ‘electability’ above ‘better policies’. This means Biden should pick up the baton.
Is it really a question that we desperately need the Green New Deal now, with so many traditional businesses unlikely to continue?
Biden may be cruising to the nomination, but especially as primaries like those in GA and OH are delayed, isn’t this the time to tell the candidate with one voice the age of corporate exploitation of workers must end? People stuck home for weeks could take a minute to reach out to Biden and the DNC and say hey why not sign on to universal childcare, a financial transaction tax or ban fracking?
Biden seems like a big-hearted, compassionate grandpa with the ability to listen. For the younger and older factions of the party to genuinely come together and shift away from the DC politics-as-usual fueled by payola, he needs to show he is listening.
But the DNC isn’t listening. They just offered both Joe and Bernie “joint campaign funds”, controversial for their ability to launder billionaire contributions.
Through a loophole legal experts call a “grey area”, the Hillary Victory Fund had ultra-rich donors who already maxed out $2,700 to her campaign then give $10,000, the maximum legal limit, to the Maine Democratic Committee, the Alaska Democratic Committee, the Montana Democratic Committee and so on until all 33 states participating in the “joint” Victory Fund had collected up to $330,000 from rich donors like Eli Broad, Laurene Powell Jobs or George Clooney.
Then, they doubled the contributions by doing the same thing again through their wives or children’s names, making it $660,000. And they could do this for two years, both 2015 and 2016, doubling it again to $1.32 million - from a single household. After this, all the state committees just transferred the millions to Hillary’s campaign, making the idea of contribution limits little more than an inconvenience.
Apparently legal, this is clearly a way for Democratic lobbyists and middlemen called “bundlers” to help hedge funders, tech giants and business moguls maintain strong influence over our political system. Many 2016 donors participated in billionaire roundtables conveying their policy asks to Hillary’s campaign staff as they made their payment arrangements.
Bernie tried to blow the whistle in 2016 that these “joint” funds were helping billionaires skirt funding laws as DNC spending was commandeered by Hillary’s campaign, but it fell on deaf ears in the corporate media.
This year, Bernie again declined the offer, which will prevent Biden from having such a fund, showing yet another way the Sanders campaign has battled tooth and nail against money-in-politics.
The renowned economist Thomas Piketty posted an analysis showing working class Americans continually vote against their own economic interests — if they even vote at all — but Democrats make a critical mistake letting Trump and the Republicans capitalize on the obvious dissatisfaction with the rigged economic system. He argues nothing other than a drastic shake-up would get the 46% of non-voters to show up and be counted. If US elections had 70-80% turnout as they do in France and England, there would be less corruption and more self-determination.
So as we have all have a “pause” imposed on our lives, it’s high time to reflect on the disparity and inequity of the rat race, and ask whether we have any say, any agency in our governance or society.
It’s time to send a message to the Biden campaign. The ball is in his court, but he needs to hear it from everyone in the Democratic party — if he is going to be the guy, he’s got to become a champion of US workers in more than words.