Coop scoop #6 The Bernie Boom Edition

The Bernie Boom Edition

Issue #6 February 23, 2020
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"Nobody knows anything," once said writer William Goldman about Hollywood's total inability to predict whether any given movie will really make it or will bomb at the box office. He might as well have been talking about American electoral politics, especially these last two presidential cycles. Bernie Sanders crushing runaway victory Saturday in Nevada was of a scale that virtually nobody predicted or foresaw. And it's driving the bi-partisan establishment nuts. It's as if Ishtar won the Best Picture Oscar.

There's so much happening now and this week that it is almost impossible for me to provide a single narrative for this edition. Instead, I have chosen to focus on a few key points and highlight who got it right, and why, at least after the fact.
Proof of Concept: Of Course Bernie Sanders Is Electable
Of all the Nevada post-mortems to read, I am going to recommend Ryan Lizza's piece in Politico "Sanders eviscerates conventional wisdom about why he can't win."

No coincidence that Lizza wrote it. He is far and away the most distinguished writer and thinker at the otherwise mediocre outlet. And he's only there because The New Yorker unfairly screwed him out of his job at the more august journal over sex charges that were later knocked down by everybody who investigated. The New Yorker's loss. But back to his fine story. He gets to the point, as he should, right in the lead sentences:

"On Saturday in Nevada, Bernie Sanders laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries. You could see the dominoes of punditry cliches falling inside the caucus rooms. At the Bellagio Hotel, which held one of several “Strip caucuses” meant to be easily accessible to hospitality workers along Vegas’ main drag, 75 Sanders supporters gathered along the wall of a ballroom."

He goes on to describe how dozens of mostly Latino workers in their Culinary Workers signature red T-shirts held up signs, in front of their union leaders, proclaiming their support for Sanders. So much for the supposed influence of the supposedly all-powerful Culinary Workers Union that had opposed him over his health care plan (supposedly... I actually think the union was going to endorse Biden and then pulled it back after the NH catastrophe but still wanted to get a shot in against Bernie).

"[T]he Sanders victory still exploded a lot of myths," adds Lizza. "He was said to have a ceiling of 30 percent or so. Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47 percent to 53 percent. (He was at 46 percent with a quarter of precincts reporting as of late Saturday.) He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22 percent) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden."

Perhaps just as importantly, "In Nevada, he exposed his main rivals as weak, divided and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about their viability."

Stand in front of a mirror and repeat that last line three times as you carefully listen and read your own lips. There is NO viable Democratic opposition to Sanders. I write this not as a shill for Sanders (I have donated to him) but rather as a political journalist with 40 years experience (disclaimer: I also often known nothing but have been paid to pretend otherwise).

I've been saying it for weeks but now I really believe it. Klobuchar, in spite of the best media CPR efforts is already in her candidacy afterlife. Ditto with Liz Warren who, according to the latest betting pools, is now a 100 to 1 long shot to win the White House. If you understand Texas Hold 'Em she is basically a 7-2 off suit. A very compelling candidate for sure. A very smart woman and politician. A magnetic personality. A pretty good program. But after three primaries she has never finished higher than 3rd. She landed a miserable 4th in Nevada. She got an anemic 10 percent of the vote after she had been polling twice as high only a few days earlier. Sorry to say, she's out of the family business. If Bernie wins the White House maybe she will be given Treasury, I don't know, Also, after she loses next week in South Carolina -- and she will-- she will be forced to drop out right away. Super Tuesday is 3 days later on March 3rd when more than a dozen states votes and she is not going to expose herself to losing in her home state of Massachusetts. At least, I don't think so.

Mayor Petey got a whopping 2 percent of the black vote, came in third Behind Joe Biden (!) and will quietly disappear in the swamps of South Carolina next weekend. He also is running out of money and has spent ZIP so far in any of the Super Tuesday states. He will, like Amy and Tulsi and Steyer, soon become asterisks (anybody remember Andy Yang, or for that matter Kamala Harris?).

One more point on this electability issue: WTF sanders skeptics are thinking when they argue that ...fill in the blank... has a much better shot at beating Trump when this mythic candidate (whoever he or she is) has failed to even win the most number of Democratic votes? Does anybody with an IQ about 65 believe that somebody who finished second, or third, or who did not run at all in the Democratic primaries has a better shot than a front runner? Really?

Here's the bottom line: Sanders demonstrated his proof of concept. He successfully built a multi-racial progressive coalition, got about 70% of the vote of those under 30, won the biggest chunk of the union vote, the biggest chunk of the Latino vote and fell only a point or two short of Biden in gathering the black vote. As of today, Biden is the only rival SORTA breathing and for him it will all depend on South Carolina where he is currently losing his lead to...um...Bernie.

Democrats and Republicans Are Not the Same But they Are Co-managers of a Dysfunctional System

I would posit that the Democratic Old Guard, the Establishment if you will (and this goes way beyond the feckless DNC), as of today is in about as much denial as the GOP leadership was on the eve of the 2016 election. The country is in a deep, deep crisis and people want real change. They thought they would get it with Obama but ior the most part it did not come. For those who want change they can believe in, Obama was the floor, not the ceiling.

Younger voters, and here I am talking about people up into heir 40's are tired of a system that guarantees nothing except daily stress. Younger people see NO future. No house. No job with a real salary. No college for themselves or their kids. No Dreamers law. More deportations. The medical and drug industry are run as if by used car salesmen or, worse, bankers and insurance companies. People were fed up in 2016 and buying none of the mush from Jeb or Ted or anybody else other than You Know Who. Trump has now failed on his promises as well and has brought chaos down upon us. People still want change. And young people don't disagree with Joe Biden or even Liz Warren, or God Forbid, Scolding Amy. They don't disagree because they don't even bother to listen. They know that nothing real or tangible is coming from them except the same Old Bullshit that is promised every four years. The Democratic Party, as we currently know it, is to young voters as is black and white Philcos are to video. This is what "capitalism" means to them and they are not scared shitless over the very mild and very democratic socialism of Sanders.

Every major political party in the West (and in the East) is in a major crisis for similar reasons. Capitalism just isn't working that well. The poor ruling Christian Democrats in Germany has had to admit real life neo Nazis into some smaller regional coalitions to get a governing majority, just to cite one example. American Exceptionalism is one more myth in this regard, Neither major party is forever...The Republicans disappeared overnite swallowed up like one more Big Mac by The Cult Leader. The Democrats also imploded in 2016 and are now paying the consequences as a democratic socialist eats their respective lunches.

This is usually how massive social change at least begins. It sneaks up on those in power who are asleep at the wheel who usually wake too late, or never do. That's one explanation as to why Biden and not Sanders does so well among my elderly generation of Boomers. They already have houses, often in the plural, they already went to college and paid for it, they have retirement accounts and some even fixed pensions. They are comfortable. And most of them really don't give a hot damn if anybody else is. Why should they vote for substantive change? They much prefer to either stick with Trump or the Democrat who promises pretty much a return to the status quo ante.

Not to despair. Nobody was counting them on anyway. Radical social change always is driven by young people. No exceptions.

Bernie Might Be The Nominee But He Cannot Beat Trump. He's like McGovern

Who told you that? The producers of Ishtar, or was it Heaven's Gate? I suggest you take a serious gander at this piece by Ed Kilgore in New York magazine titled Why Bernie is not George McGovern and 2020 is not 1968. It's a good one. Yes there are some policy agreements between dear departed George and Bernie but times and things are very different. Perhaps the single greatest factor that makes this race way different is that Nixon was vastly more popular than Trump. While the latter is floating somewhere in the 40's and has never hit 50% favorability, on the eve of the '72 election Nixon was at a sizzling 62 percent. Frankly, ANY incumbent with that level of support for his re-election would probably beat any challenger, not just George mcGovern, Also Trump has become so extreme, he cannot possibly grow his base of support which further weakens him. Nixon had much more room for maneuver.

The major issue that divided the country in 1972 was the war in Vietnam with each candidate on opposing sides. Problem was, that the Democratic Party itself was not that sure about opposing the war. The AFL-CIO were terribly pro-war, completely in bed with the CIA on Cold War activities, and they despised McGovern (recall the infamous attack by hard hats on anti-war protesters in NYC). Labor has gone through a complete life-change since then and there is no candidate closer and acceptable to so many unions as Bernie Sanders... at least to their membership.

McGovern did totally bungle the Eagleton affair and it gave the Democratic Establishment the excuse to write him off as a tyro in above his head. Also, McGovern was really the first Democratic candidate to try and build the same sort of multi-racial coalition that Sanders is doing but times were very different then. There were still lingering Dixiecrats in the party. Always an uphill climb to do fashion that sort of coalition but ten or twenty times harder back then than now.

That Sanders is not McGovern in no way means that a Sanders victory over Trump is a slam dunk. Far from it. The missing piece so far in Bernie's strategy is a tsunami turn out of new voters who will wash away the Trumpies. There are some, I repeat some, early signs of such a possibility coming out of the Nevada returns. But the real test is yet to come. I think, along with Kilgore, that it's probably a poor idea for the Sanders team to count on it. That means that true Bernie devotees have to do a much better job of wooing over already existing and voting Democrats and must be ready to compromise with them on the way to the final general election. Alienating your closest possible allies is always suicidal and those who are called Bernie Bros, in a an unfair and derogatory way, will anyway have to put a lid on some of their excessive exuberance and cool it. Building this movement will requite a lot of hard work, a lot of persuasion, a lot of tedious organizing, a lot of face to face work in the swing states. There will be no room for cajoling, trashing or intimidating. That is, in fact, an infantile response.

One thing you might want to note on your calendar are the dates of the Democratic Convention in Milwaukee. My good friends Suzi Weissman and Bob Brenner are suggesting we prepare massive, peaceful demonstrations at the convention site if this nomination goes to a brokered convention. Sanders will need our support as the Dinosaurs attempt to knock him out if he falls short of a clear majority -- currently about a 50-50 chance. Maybe we can get Steven Still to write an anthem version of "Coming to Milwaukee."

What happened in Nevada last night was absolutely historic. It might become the beginning of a sweeping historic change in American politics. But those of us who are Bernie supporters should not engage in a mirrored denialism of the Establishment. There is nothing automatic about this process except a lot of hard work and, still, against some stiff odds. Remember: "Nobody knows anything." Including you.

See you after the SC debate this week!

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