The Coop Scoop Newsletter #4: The Bernie Vs. WHO? Edition

Issue #4 February 11, 2020
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THE BERNIE VERSUS WHO? EDITION
Pity the poor Democratic voter, at least those we could see in New Hampshire and the thousands of others in public anguish online. They are so scared, so depressed, so worked up over the Very Good Week that Donald Trump had, they just about lost their minds. With Trump rattling around in their heads and keeping them up at night, they went all hyperkinetic, scurrying around like crazy trying to make the most strategic vote possible, worried about "electability."

Now, I've got nothing against folks making wise, sober and dispassionate projections about an election. And though there is very little if any science to it, and nobody really knows nuthin', it is recommended that these usually worthless projections make some nod to hard data and research. But...no...Democratic voters somehow think it is better to spin their mental wheels over this question right up until the time they walk into the voting booth and then still play spin the bottle once inside.

Okay, but here's the reality. The big loser in New Hampshire was the Democratic Establishment and the big winner was insurgent Bernie Sanders (theoretically the LEAST electable) and arguably, Pete Buttigieg, himself hardly a pillar of the Democratic Nomenklatura -- though his policies are quite establishment.

How about, then, a short handicap of where we are and where we are POSSIBLY going, as the Nevada caucuses, South Carolina and Super Tuesday are all lined up over the next 30 days.

I think it best to start with the obvious: Joe Biden (once the most electable!) finished a miserable single digit fifth place in NH. He left NH before his 426 votes could be counted and was spotted this morning wandering the desert near Pahrump, Nevada mumbling to himself about record players and Ford Edsels. Unless he is somehow magically resurrected by the large African-American vote in South Carolina, his next job will be as an extra in Season 10 of The Walking Dead. Fact is, Joe, people just aren't much that into you (except some of the very elderly who also think we are still in 1966). Biden is in so much trouble that zillionaire Tom Steyer is actually cutting into Joe's base of black support in SC. Now, that's pretty sad.

Yang is gone. Too bad, he was fun, Phantom candidates Deval Patrick and Michael Bennet have also joined the ranks of the fallen, Bye. And that brings us to dear Liz Warren who nosed out Joe for the number four position but still below the 15% threshold to win any delegates. An argument can easily be made that Warren was actually the biggest loser because NH is but a dependency of her own Massachusetts. Warren is another one who needs nothing short of a miracle to survive the next 30 days. Remember that when you begin to lose, as she has, you quickly run out of money and infrastructure. And she is now in a ramshackle state of affairs. Her appeal is basically limited to tenured college professors and a few psychiatrists and while seemingly a very nice and smart person she is also now an officially failed candidate. She had her moments but got too smart by half when she tried to explain the gory details of how she would pay for Medicare For All even though she was not longer really for Medicare For All. Nice try. She will make a good continuing senator.

Then there's Amy Klobuchar, that Minnesota Nice Lady with a voice like nails on a chalkboard. As the Washington Post's Meg Sullivan, puts it, Amy is now "Queen for a day." The wet dreams of so much of the press corps were realized when in fact she did surge (can we get rid of that word?) into a respectable third place finish with about 20% of the vote. Pretty damn good for someone who has flatlined until now. There's only one problem here. Poor Amy has literally nowhere to go (except maybe down again). She clearly benefited from her last debate performance, the implosion of Joe Biden, and the frantic search by so many Democrats for an Establishment candidate, no matter who it is.

Klobuchar will get a fund raising bump. no doubt, over the next few days but she's basically broke -- especially when compared to Bernie and Pete and Mike and Tim. She has virtually no national organization, only pennies to spend, an anemic staff and much worse, very little appeal beyond well-thinking and polite white middle class school teachers. Her black and Latino support are a couple of goose eggs and, she is about the least inspiring candidate I can think of. While she was surging in NH her national poll standing was 4% and that sounds about right. Hey, could she be named VP if Bernie wins? Wouldn't rule that out. She might be just the right salve for those former Hillary voters who would rather cut their hearts out than vote for Bernie should he win.

How about Mayor Pete? Before saying anything serious about him, I DO have to admit there's something quite off putting about his person, and as much as his more moderate policies have been trashed by Warren and Sanders, he is far to the left of, say, Hillary and Old Bill, but he is very hard to trust. OK, I'll just say it. I find him smarmy.(and I apologize to those who support him). He's still a bit of a wild card, but my best guess, and I am guessing here, is that he's gonna hit a couple of sand traps on the way to Super Tuesday. All-white Iowa and NH are perfect states for him. Not only are they small allowing him to get well known but they lack the people of color among whom he's another with sub-zero support. He's got some naive young people supporting him but let let's see how far they get on their next date with a Sandersnista.

He MIGHT have a shot to finish in the Nevada top tier only because there is a big rural, cranky and again all white vote in the hinterlands, but I think he will go over like a Mars bar in a diabetes ward in Vegas and Reno. Those cities are just too diverse for him and my best hunch is he will fade quickly after these two first strong showings. And do not underestimate his relative lack of name recognition even though the media has had a love fest with him to date. If he somehow maintains his strength going forward, he will then come under increased scrutiny and he will have a lot of splainin' to do about his handling, or better, mishandling of police and race in his hometown, wherever it is.

By way of transition to Bernie Sanders, be aware that much of the party apparatus, and unfortunately, too many grass roots voters, are now fully enrolled in the ABB movement, Anybody But Bernie. Somehow or another ONE establishment candidate, one mainstreamer is going to arise to be the counter-Bernie, we just don't know who that is yet. It MIGHT be Pete, but I think he lacks the gravitas to take on that Superman role. That leaves a big hole... and we'll come back to that and Mike Bloomberg in a moment.

Hats off to Sanders, though, He's won his second victory in NH and all the king's men....you know the rest. Don't you love how the Chucktodds of this world have knocked him for not straying from his core speech over the last 30 years! OMG, a politician who has principles he sticks to! Can you imagine such tomfoolery? Of course, this is Sander's true strength. He's not just for economic justice, he actually believes in fighting back in the class war that has been waged against the bottom 2/3 of America for the last 40 years. Let it be noted that when it come to electability, a full 12% of his NH vote he got came from people who voted for Trump four years ago. And in a state where half the voters are declared independents, Sanders won a plurality of about 30%. And I doubt many of these formerly undecided were really closet socialists.Could that be some signs of "electability?"

Perhaps, maybe, possibly, his message of economic justice and fleecing the rich actually resonates across party lines in a country where 60% of the population does not have enough money to pay for a $400 emergency, and where one out of three consumers fear they will soon max out one of their credit cards. Bernie's program is NOT socialist, says this socialist. It's a mild social democratic proposal for which hundreds of millions of others vote for in countries less subject to six decades of ultra-capitalist brainwashing. Maybe it's time for Americans to make some "common sense" choices about the economy. Maybem unless they scurry for "safe" cover.

What about Sanders' future? How the hell should I know? I will project him as the most likely winner in Nevada where he has a strong organization and where he has been making a strong pitch to the state's large Latino population. And in 2016 he came within a few hairs of beating Hillary there (but did not, effectively ending his campaign). South Carolina is anybody's guess. But black voters, black women voters ARE strategic voters. They know better than anybody the false promises of almost all campaigns and rarely if ever vote for a loser (like Biden). If they line up sufficiently behind Bernie, he might be in a position to run the whole table. That is truly TBD and second guessing the outcome of South Carolina is a job only Jake Tapper or Don Lemon should handle!

Bernie also has vulnerabilities. The massive youth turn out his ultimate success is predicated on has yet to fully materialize. As well as the new voter turn out.. (only 4 percent of NH voters last night were first timers). On the other hand, Sanders is the only candidate who has consistently and unfailingly created the most energy, excitement and inspiration and that counts for a lot. I get bored saying it but am gonna say it again....Bernie's big problem is that we do NOT have a massive social movement under him. He's got a base and he's got voters. But if he should be nominated or elected, people are gonna have to get up off the couch as the fight will just be beginning.

To win the nomination, Sanders will be fighting a multi-front war and is going to need more support than he currently has. Those 25-26% finishes are gonna have to VERY soon move up 10 or 15 points to give him enough to muscle through.

I am NOT one of those who moan about press coverage of Sanders. Of course, it sucks. But that's a given and should not be used an excuse by his supporters to explain away any failures. When you run as a socialist in America don't expect the media to be your ally. Reporters HATE ideological candidates because they learned in J School that social commitments and even a point of view are plain evil.

That said, I did appreciate Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan's take on why "The Media keep falling in love -- with anybody but Bernie Sanders" in today's edition. It's not just that reporters, in their infinite wisdom, think he's unelectable, she says, but "the subtext behind much of the disdain is a partly a deep-seated sentiment that Sanders, if nominated, has little chance of winning the general election. But it’s also partly — and more insidiously — that many journalists don’t identify easily with Sanders in the same way they do with, say, Warren or O’Rourke or Buttigieg....

It may well be that he doesn’t need or want the help of cable pundits, columnists and other opinion-makers.

From Beto to Biden, their crushes, so far, have turned into heartbreaks.

Maybe media love — fickle and fleeting — is a valentine Bernie Sanders would rather do without."

Well, yeah. Shall we quickly review some of the better known candidates of recent years who were also deemed completely and totally "electable" by the media geniuses? Jeb Bush. Chris Christie. Al Gore. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton, Beto, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and so on.

As poor old Joe would say, here's the deal: The Democratic Party is in very much the same place as the Republicans were 4 years ago. In deep deep water and VERY unpopular. I think ANY Official Democrat is bound to be rejected, not only in the general election but also in the party's own primary. It isn't so much progressive versus moderate. It's some sort of reality (or in Trump's case, sur-reality) versus the Same Old Party Bullshit.

It's not an accident that apart from Sanders, a socialist, it's also Pete that is leading the pack. A 37 yr old former mayor, with no national connections and who is gay certainly qualifies as some sort of "party outsider." The two have crushed all the big name establishment candidates who now are hardly even remembered.

Bottom line: The Democrat establishment and its fellow travelers in the media are gonna do everything possible to strip the bark off of Sanders who they see as a mortal threat and a sure loser to Trump. It's going to be ugly and dirty with an uncertain outcome.

My fear is that the fear-driven Democrats are gonna flock to the arms of Daddy Bloomberg who will be erected as the only guy rich enough and strong enough to quash Bernie. Again, no idea if this will work but this is definitely a likely play. Look, I don't know if Bernie can beat Trump. But I'm pretty sure Bloomberg can't. The deciding factor here is gonna be... drum roll... the voters. Are rank and file Dems gonna get spooked into this ridiculous position of electing a plutocrat to save America from ruin? God, I hope not!

While we are on that subject, I am obligated to remark on something quite distasteful to me and something that illuminates yet another malady in the Democratic universe, Generally speaking I am a BIG fan of the hotel and casino workers Local 226 in Las Vegas with it 60,000 members. They are always a major if not decisive factor in Nevada politics and are among the most progressive forces in the state. The union is also chock full of Latino workers who vote.

In a very sad move, the union leadership is now actively campaigning against Sanders even though it has yet to endorse anybody else. These last few days, union work sites have been plastered with leaflets trashing Medicare For All along with Sanders and Warren. Sanders, the union warns, would “End Culinary Healthcare” and “Require ‘Medicare For All.’” Warren, the union says, would “Replace Culinary Healthcare after 3-year transition or at end of collective bargaining agreements."

No question that Local 226, thanks to its militancy, has platinum health care, superior to Medicare. It's also true that if Medicare For All would ever happen, it is many many years down the road and that if Sanders or Warren were president, you could bet there would be carve out deals for powerful unions like Local 226. I am not suggesting that the union blithely surrender its hard won medical care. Yet, there are clearly better ways to handle this issue than public scare tactics trying to frighten its own workers. No candidate is nearly as pro-union as Sanders is this is really a dark sport on the record of 226.

It's hard to guess why the Local has taken such an ugly move. Perhaps it's just preliminary to formally endorsing a Sanders rival. That would not be pleasant but it would be understandable. It's politics. It's also possible that the union actually believes its own propaganda, and that would be the height of betrayal of its principles. This union's favorite word is Solidarity. But what kind of solidarity is it when a union basically says: we don't care if 20 or 30 million American workers don't have health insurance as long as our 60,000 members get to keep ours that is marginally better than Medicare? Not pretty.

The question is, will the rank and file of Local 226 follow its mistaken leadership or not? I wouldn't put any money on either side of that proposition. The other question is just how much power does the Local still really have statewide? A lot for sure. But not as much as 10 or 15 years ago. BTW, if you want to stay informed on haps in Nevada, the best source is The Nevada Independent and its grumpy editor Jon Ralston

And now a few words from my pal Tim Frasca. Tim and I have been friends since 1980 and we were born the same day and hour though a couple of thousand miles apart. We agree on most stuff though he's one degree more misanthropic than I am, hence the title of his blog, Biped Twilight. Read this latest piece of his looking at what went down in NH. It's well worth it!