race to the middle…vanilla ice cream for everyone…

1.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/joe-biden-fuels-2020-campaign-110057816.html

So, Joe Biden is marketing himself as “the most progressive Democrat in the field” should he decide (when he decides) to run to be President.

Wow! That’s pretty ballsy given that Bernie Sanders is already in the race, and pretty cynical as well, coming from the man who spent much of his political career fighting the desegregation of public schools and finding ways to put as many Black people in prison as possible. (Biden supported the infamous law that gave crack cocaine users – primarily Black people – more prison time than powdered cocaine users – primarily White people.)

Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which deployed more police officers, increased prison sentences, and built more prisons. America now incarcerates more people (per capita) than any other nation in the world. He also supports capital punishment.

Not to mention making sure no bankers went to jail for the 2008 Wall Street swindle of the American working class which brought America to its economic knees.

Sure, he is socially more progressive than many Republicans (he supports LGBTQ rights, stronger gun controls, and Roe vs Wade).

But that hardly makes him the most progressive candidate in the Democratic field.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/13/as_joe_biden_hints_at_presidential

2.

I couldn’t help make comparisons between the sheer and utter vacuity of Beto O’Rourke’s presidential announcement and the useless generic musing Justin Trudeau also made when he was running to be Prime Minister of Canada.

“Look at me, I’m so sexy! I was born to lead…”

O’Rourke nonsensical interview in Vanity Fair magazine, where he says, “I was just born to do this,” and that it is a “mystery” where his inspiration comes from, sounded more like he was running for High School Student’s Council than to be the President of the United States.

Though, since Ronald Reagan, this has been the general approach in American presidential politics – it’s all just vacuous celebrity reality TV nowadays.

I especially liked O’Rourke’s thoughts on how he gives a political speech:

“I don’t ever prepare a speech,” he says. “I don’t write out what I’m going to say. I remember driving to that, I was, like, ‘What do I say? Maybe I’ll just introduce myself. I’ll take questions.’ I got in there, and I don’t know if it’s a speech or not, but it felt amazing. Because every word was pulled out of me. Like, by some greater force, which was just the people there. Everything that I said, I was, like, watching myself, being like, How am I saying this stuff? Where is this coming from?”

It’s like…like…magic!

It’s like I can hear the Texas panhandle wind blowing between his ears…

3.

And if you have been watching, at all, you will notice how quick the media has been to jump on the glory bandwagon for Biden and O’Rourke – two white guys – the first with a record of racism and corruption, the second with no experience at all. These shall be ordained our two serious candidates!

For all of the media’s rhetoric regarding the diversity of the Democratic nominee’s, their coverage of Biden and O’Rourke immediately and completely overshadowed how they covered the launch of other candidates.

Kamala Harris launched her campaign before 20,000 supporters and it was but one small article in that day’s news’ cycle.

Bernie Sanders, being the most well known (and the other white guy in the race) got considerable first day coverage, but much of it with that underlying somewhat dismissive tone of “he’s too old”, and “why’s he trying again?”

Most of the rest of the candidates, most of the time, get the media’s page three treatment – if they get anything at all.

No, corporate media has already ordained Biden and O’Rourke as the two true candidates – Biden the puppet of Wall Street and O’Rourke the puppet of fossil fuels – two neoliberal, corporate status-quo centrists, safe and amiable white guys, who would not rock the corporate/economic/military boat in any way.

Two centrist white men who would return America to the calm center, to business as usual. They will make America great again.

Of course I expect Harris and Booker and some of the others to summarily dismantle both Biden and O’Rourke on the campaign trail and in debates – but when you have the media in your side, you’ve already won half the battle.

Or, at least, you get a good jump out of the gates.

Here’s to hoping they both implode spectacularly, and then put their support behind someone who actually wants to try and do something about the mess America finds itself in…but I ain’t betting on it – the DNC elite are experts at ignoring the needs of their supporters, and shooting themselves in the head.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/22/beto-orourke-political-saviour