How strange. It’s political gold and the Democrats are just ignoring it. It’s almost like a prominent Democrat might be vulnerable.

Thank God the Daily Boulder is covering this.

Michele Obama is the only one consistently beating Trump in polls. Not that I want Obama v2, but that’s where it stands currently.

Done properly, a replacement would get a big bump with the nomination, but that’s not much to count on.

Jon Stewart would probably wipe the floor with Trump if anyone can figure out how to draft him.

The presidency gained expanded immunity not expanded powers. He can give the CIA illegal orders without fear of prosecution, but the CIA is not bound to follow them.

That’s the key difference in how this change impacts a Biden Presidency, and how it would impact a Trump presidency. Biden has surrounded himself with people who respect the law, while Trump will surround himself with criminals, lackies, and cultists.

Their best interest is also whatever helps keep them in office. Terrible representatives are typically only secure in their offices if they have the protection of the party. The President has as much power as leader of their party as they get from their actual office. FDR used that to great effect.

You mean on principal? Those in Congress with principals are on our side. Those without principals can be convinced it’s in their best interest. Don’t fall for the facade that anything that happens in Congress is ideologically driven.

Do a poll asking Americans their political alignment and the balance will be center right. Poll them again on specific issues and the average end up well to the left of the Democratic party. For a prime example, look at how all the abortion referendums have turned out in red states.

An establishment cheerleader accusing the left of being condescending. That’s hilarious.

The military leadership is deeply neoliberal. They are definitely not leftist, but aren’t fans of Trump and MAGA either. However, expect Trump to start replacing them as soon as he takes office.

That’s the point of the firebrand President. We have not had a President since FDR who knows how to stand up to special interests and even their own party when necessary.

Oh, Biden himself does actually believe that, but that’s true of pretty much every president. I do think it’s a little more extreme in his case than for most.

How would I know? The point is that the best thing he can do with his position in the Senate is to look forward. He’s not the type to pursue his individual interests at the expense of the cause.

This is something a lot of my compatriots on the left don’t seem to get. Good activists don’t make good politicians, and good politicians don’t make good activists. We need both. Bernie is a politician, and I’m not.

I actually have moved on in a lot of ways, except that I want us to learn from past mistakes so we don’t repeat them. I want every person in America to understand how the establishment (of both parties) manipulates the national conversation so we quit falling for the same bullshit.

Look to FDR as a model of what happens when a progressive agenda gets a firebrand President. It’s not like the politics were all that different, or Congress any less corrupt.

This wasn’t true about Biden. The establishment didn’t care who won that primary, as long as it wasn’t Bernie. I think Harris was their first choice, but they flipped to Biden when she tanked.

I was explaining why Bernie moved on. I’d love to move on but it seems like every few months Hillary pops up in the media with another sneer.

Anyways, given where all the establishment fuckery of the past 50 years has led us at this particular moment, I feel like a little anger is justified, no?

That’s how all campaigns die, a death by a thousand cuts. Such things should be anticipated. Nothing hurt Hillary more in that election than Hillary being Hillary.

As for the emails, they could never have been leaked if they didn’t exist in the first place. The complaint is essentially that they got caught. How Trumpian.

Bernie was fucked by the establishment stranglehold over mainstream media, inherent flaws in the primary system, and some truly underhanded tactics. There has been no good evidence of any kind of tampering with the votes.

Bernie has always been a pragmatist. The progressive movement has nothing to gain by him obsessing over sour grapes. Contrast that with Hillary who will live the rest of her life locked into the day she lost.

This year they literally canceled the presidential primary in several states so, no, we don’t have a primary every four years.

Radical consolidation of the media industry has largely killed independent journalism. There is a long list of media personalities who were taken off the air for daring to speak the truth. Anchors are selected to represent the establishment perspective on everything. Media ownership and the establishment work together to dominate the narrative. For profit or non-profit is irrelevant. PBS is now as captured as the private networks.

New media caught the establishment by surprise and did manage to make inroads, but that has largely been brought under control. Democrats and Republicans cooperated long enough to pressure social media companies to tweak the algorithm to direct viewers to “trustworthy” news sources, a group that laughably includes FOX News and MS-NBC and excludes independent news providers.

Electing Biden can’t preserve democracy where none exists. There was that study out of Stanford that showed zero statistical correlation between the policy desires of voters and what legislation gets passed. We have the facade of democracy, but no actual democracy.

What we do have is the fight for Democracy, and that fight has a much better chance under Biden than Trump. That’s not a minor distinction. I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy. They are democracy’s enemies, and they are my enemies. The entire fight for democracy in an age of media manipulation is a fight to pull back that curtain. That fight doesn’t stop because of Trump.

Well, at least in the states where they didn’t succeed in keeping everyone else off the ballot.

There was no real primary. Even 2020 wasn’t a real primary. The fix is in with mainstream media and the major outlets taking their queues from the establishment.

The idea that we have an actual democracy is laughable, and the Democratic party does everything in their power to keep it that way. Biden won in 2020 because the establishment picked him and the media did as they were told. There is no democracy without an independent press.

Biden is a better choice than Trump for a multitude of reasons, but not saving democracy.

Then let’s hold a primary.