The Coop Scoop: #1 Bernie, Bolton, and Iowa

JANUARY 28-29 2020
INAUGURAL EDITION

HOUSEKEEPING:

1. Welcome to The Coop Scoop! These musings will be delivered to your inbox once or twice o more times per week.

2.They will also be posted simultaneously in our closed and private Facebook group where you can read the same content, find the archive and freely comment and interact with yours truly. Please note the address for our PRIVATE FACEBOOK group below. This is where you should place all comments and reactions. Unless you indicate otherwise I will feel free to excerpt some of your comments in the next edition of the newsletter. Again, this link is your PRIMARY source to The Coop Scoop. Please use it so we can get some obuest debates going.

THE COOP SCOOP NEWSLETTER LOUNGE, ARENA, PLAYGROUND AND ARCHIVE

When you click to join this group you will get a popup asking you 2 or 3 basic questions. After you answer them I will approve your entrance (within 24 hrs).

3. If you would like me to publish any response you have to the content, just send it to the email address below. Also feel free to query me if you feel like writing a "guest" post (of any length (subject to my approval :)

4. Contact Email: coopscoopnews@gmail.com

Now... Down to business!

In this edition: Impeachment, Bolton, Iowa, Bernie Surge or Bust?


IMPEACHMENT SUCCESSES

For those who understood the underlying strategy of impeachment going back months and months ago, the current impeachment process is an unqualified success. Those who do not fully understand the American political system never understood that this was always going to be an electoral strategy, not a parliamentary one to remove the president.

The Democratic leadership might not be geniuses but they are hardly political idiots. Nobody ever thought for even a moment that there would be enough Republican votes to remove Trump. The goal, instead, was to take the daily narrative out of Trump's hands and make it all about impeachment and his sordid deeds rather than let him dominate every damn news cycle with his distractions, misdirections and old fashioned bullshit. That mission has been accomplished.

People pile out of bed every morning no longer to see what the Clown-in-Chief did overnight, but instead to see what new surprise has popped out of the impeachment box. The strategy was to get out as much as dirt as possible on the President and allow the voting public -- not the Senate-- to absorb as much of it as possible. This prolonged Trump trashing on national TV and echoed in the rest of the media can only weaken him.

IMHO this is also working. The swing in poll numbers has not been great. But the needle has moved. The number of voters who have moved toward supporting approval has risen to around 50% or more and the polls on letting witnesses appear is over 70% with 69% of Republicans also supporting this. Call me naive, but I sense absolutely no serious backlash to the impeachment as so many feared.

No doubt, after the smoke clears, the impeachment process will motivate BOTH the Republican and Democratic base to get out and vote. That's fine. There are many many more Democrats than Republicans. Really.

Opposition to impeachment has spawned a Red/Brown Halloween Coalition of Right and Left that makes me laugh. The right, as we know, is in outer space on this issue and is just waiting for Trump to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue so they can applaud and acquit him.

It's (I hope) a small section of the hard left that also chimed in to oppose impeachment. Their argument is that impeachment does nothing to take down the American Empire, it only changes faces, and that it does nothing to beat back or overturn the corporate control of the Republic. Well, in general terms, that is true. But to suggest taking down the most dangerous president in history and preventing his re-election is somehow a distraction from storming the Winter Palace is. well, idiotic. It's also immoral. There are real differences between one "imperial" regime and another. The Republican version runs ups back breaking deficits, bloats the military even more, pisses all over rule of law, throws babies into cages, takes away food stamps, threatens the media, corrupts Federal agencies and so on. I think we can take a few minutes away from manning the barricades to run an election campaign to get this guy out and move on from there.

Democrats are no dream, for sure. But at least some progressive groups get a seat at the table or at least a voice in the room with them in power and not just a swift kick in the nuts as under Trump/. Here is exhibit A of the leftist (and Olympian) poo-poohing of impeachment. Absurd.

HEEEERE'S JOHNNNIE!

By the end of this week or early next week we will know if the great and wondrous John Bolton will testify before the Senate and really dirty up the floor. This is what you call KARMA. Trump picks a werewolf to join his cabinet, cuts him loose, and the werewolf gets pissed and bites back. Yay! You do know that come hell or high water Bolton's story WILL be told as his book comes out in mid-March, About the time of Super Tuesday. The Republican Senators are in a big squeeze as I write this and I am going to make a dangerous prediction. I don't think there will be four GOP senators who will vote to hear him. I predict there will be five to ten. These quislings are not quite ready to cut Trump loose but they are far from happy with him and I think there will be a handful or two of GOP Senators who will want to brushback Trump a little with this vote.
In no way does that mean Trump will be removed. But he's gonna get hurt some more with Republican voters and that's all that really counts. As with impeachment, I see today...again..some lefties moaning over the fact the Bolton id a right-wing dog, a war monger and basically the Devil. Yes! True! Great! Put him in a closed cage with Trump and let him go at it. Or have we reached the point where even witnesses against an authoritarian president now have to be vetted for political purity? Let's hope not. Long Live John Bolton! (at least until next week).

THE BERNIE SURGE

Uncle Bernie is feeling pretty groovy. His ticker is holding up, the chopped liver this morning was fresh and the deli pickles were crackly and new. Oh, and his poll number have been surging. There are now dozens of polls all over the place but here's the bottom line. Give or take a couple of points, Bernie and Biden are leading nationally with about 25% each. Actually, Bernie just overtook Uncle Joe in a respected betting poll 39-35%

Of all the candidates, it is Bernie who is doing the real moving. He's taken the lead in delegate rich California. That's BIG NEWS. He's on top in New Hampshire up 7 points in two weeks and at about 30%.
He's widening his lead in Iowa. He's up 13 more points in Utah of all places.

OK, cutting to the quick. As of today... Bernie is the front runner.

But....

IOWA

The caucus is next Monday. Wish I was there and they are one of my favorite political events. Again, as of today, Bernie holds the lead in Iowa. And the timing is crucial. After having been there for a whole lot of caucuses, I can tell you that this final week is always treacherous. More than one leading candidate went into Iowa only to come a week later, after the caucus, totally shredded. Think of Howard Dean. John Edwards,. Hillary Clinton to name a few. From where I sit, Iowa is looking good for Bernie. Yet, it's still anybody's guess. Biden has a lot of quite but muscular ground support from the firefighters and other unions. Liz has been spending big time on her ground operation as well. I will rule out Little Petey as I think he has had his 15 minutes. And. Amy? Well, if reporters cast the deciding votes she would win big time. She will, however, finish maybe at 10-12 percent and probably lower.

Given his current status, Iowa is Bernie's to lose. And anything but a first place finish would be very bad news for him. Biden HAS to finish in the top three but no guarantees.

Here's a random thought btw.. based on nothing. If Bernie wins Iowa and NH and Biden fizzles, is this match gonna come to down to Bloomberg Vs. Sanders? What a trip that would be!

ANTI-BERNIE

A few disclaimers. I have known Bernie for almost 40 years. I have interviewed him countless times. I have shared a stage with him at some local events (years ago). I have given money to his campaign. I support him. And I will vote for him.

Now, can I reveal my doubts and questions? Thanks!

We all know what the competing strategies are between Biden (and the Moderate Lane) and the Bernie Lane). Do you try a "safe" candidate and hope that Biden appeals to swing moderates. After all this election might be decided by 300,000 voters in a half dozen mostly upper midwestern states chock full of white males. Or do you go with a rabble rouser like Bernie who excites a younger, broader base and brings enough new people into the party to win?

I have chosen this latter strategy. But I have no idea if I am right. I certainly hope so. But I am nagged by the thought that the only Democrats (barring Obama) who have won the White House in my lifetime have all been southern White Males. So Maybe Obama is not an outlier. Maybe he was a harbinger of changing demographics in the electorate. Again, I hope so. But unlike some of my friends I am not sure.

I am, however, comfortable with my choice. Bernie, if nominated, might get crushed by a tidal wave of anti-socialist propaganda among other vulnerabilities he has. Or he might crush Trump. Bernie DOES have appeal to some of those grumpy white guys who voted for Obama before the went with Trump. He certainly understands DEEPLY the gender and race-based social movements that orbit around the Democrats and, to his credit, he has mostly avoided immersing himself in the gibberish of Wokeness (N.B. The creeping advance of PC language and scolding from SJW's is a wonderful motivational gift to Trump-leaners). But I don't know.

With more certainty, I am convinced Biden would get an ass whipping from Trump. He's. unsteady. He's weak, He has zero appeal to anybody under 40 (Bernie in fact has more support among black youth than Biden does). He's old news. He's a symbol of a discredited establishment. And...frankly..he's done a piss poor job of explaining what his kid was doing for 50k a month on a Ukranian gas company run by an oligarch. If you close your eyes to this issue you are kidding yourself. If nominated, Trump is gonna shove Hunder as fas as he can up Joe's rear's end, so far it will make the Hillary email kerfuffle look like a picnic. Again, I freely admit I might be wrong. I repeat, I don't know.

Here's my deeper concern: There ARE Bernie Bros and they can be obnoxious. So can Hillarbots, Yanggangers, and Biden Biddies. But I expect more and "better" from my side. I am not so worried that Bernie fanatics will irritate some other voters. I am worried that, thru no real fault of his own, even the Bernie campaign is too top down to be healthy.

Campaigns are not the same as social movements. And it is a lot easier, a lot better to to spin the latter into the former rather than the other way around. The notion out there that it's Bernie or Bust, that the world will come to an end if Bernie doesn't win, is both dangerous and ahistorical.

Socialism. democratic socialism, as a politically relevant force in the US is exactly four years old (unless you go back to the pre WWI days). It arose from nowhere with Bernie's 2016 campaign. I am grateful for this and more than pleased, But the whole idea is in its infant --or toddler--stage. We do NOT have a significant ground level socialist movement underneath the Bernie campaign. We would hard pressed to even put together 15 names for a cabinet of his (that would pass Senate confirmation). Who would be his VP? And to be blunt, if Bernie would die tomorrow or next month, who in the world is his second ready to take up the mantle. What we lack in the U.S. are coordinated social organizations.

Ad hoc marches and demos are OK but they accomplish very little. Especially when they are fractured among single issue lines... lines which are getting more stringent as the proliferation of the PC Police continues.

While I feel a great urgency to remove or defeat Trump, I cannot believe that it comes down to Socialism Vs Trumpism at this point, We need to be, yes, grateful that these green shoots of socialism have popped up. But they don't become trees overnight, nor in 4 years. It would be somewhat stunning if Bernie gets elected -- though that would create a whole new set of issues we can talk about in the coming weeks. We should also prepare and brace for a possible defeat for Bernie. When and if that occurs, there is no reason to be downcast or depressed. It will merely mean it will be time to get serious about building more social organization, nurturing and growing what we have and being persistent.

I'll end this rant with a personal anecdote. From 1971-73 I worked in Chile as translator to President Salvador Allende... himself a democratic socialist and the first Marxist to be freely elected as head of state in the world. You know what, Allende served as Health Minister in a center-left govt in 1938. He ran for president in 1952, in 1958 and in 1964 and was defeated each time. He was finally elected in 1970 on his fourth try. In the intervening years since he first entered politics, the Chilean socialist MOVEMENT grew from being a small fringe to to being the biggest political force in the country. There's a lesson there. There are no shortcuts to social change. -- END

Please reply to coopscoopnews@gmail.com

Make sure you access this also on the FB link at the top of the page and voice your comments.

Also, PLEASE ask your friends to donate/subscribe:
www.patreon.com/coopernewsletter
www.paypal.me/coopernewsletter