Politics

If you can do activism, do it around policies in a principled manner, and steer clear of elections.

If you can do funding, fund principled activist organizations, not political candidates.

If you must divert your energies and money into elections, I have a recommendation for how best to do it (not that you’ll necessarily listen to me, having already ignored my first two paragraphs, but what the heck):

Part of getting better governance out of Washington, D.C., will have to come from shifting power back from the White House to the Congress and putting better people into the Congress.

The coming election for the White House has, as always, an even worse lesser-evilism problem than it had the time before. The lesser evil is a bit too evil for a bit too many people. Some want to pinch their nose and go for it anyway. Others want to try for something better next time by, for once, withholding votes that have certainly not been earned. Others would support lesser-evil voting if not for the fact that so many who engage in lesser-evil voting develop symptoms of lesser-evil thinking and behaving and cheerleading on a long-term basis.

Eighteen years before Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named George Floyd on Monday, Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named Christopher Burns. Today, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar decries the killing of Floyd. Back then, Minneapolis chief prosecutor Amy Klobuchar refused to prosecute city police for killing Burns.

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and this TED Talk, has a new book called Touching the Jaguar. You can pre-order it here and get an online workshop and other bonus materials that I haven’t seen but recommend purely on the basis of having read the book. Perkins also is doing an online workshop in July that you can sign up for here. An interview he’s given about his new book is here. And I’ll soon be interviewing him on Talk Nation Radio.

I saw a criticism of NPR for reporting on claims that coronavirus is being used to set up a world government. The criticism was that NPR never mentioned that the claims are nonsense lacking any documentation. I have an additional criticism: neither NPR nor its critics mentions that it might be a very good thing if such claims were true.

There’s nothing completely new here. Often the very best ideas in U.S. politics are things that paranoid rightwingers allege are happening. But it’s worth explaining why, and getting some of the details right. For example, I’d rather not have the Antichrist be in charge of the new world government, in part because he sounds horrible, but principally because he’s a nonexistent fictional character. (Same with Satan and the rest of the gang.)

Also, there’s a bit of a contradiction between the secrecy sometimes attributed to these plots and the widespread size and reach attributed to them. I’d prefer to resolve this contradiction by dropping the secrecy and going with a widespread movement that maximizes public involvement.

But why have a global government at all? Why might that be a good thing?

During the five weeks since Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign, many fervent supporters have entered a “WTF?” space. The realities of disappointment and distress aren’t just about dashed hopes of winning the presidential nomination. Much of the current disquiet is also due to a disconnect between choices made by the official Sanders campaign in recent weeks and his statement on April 8 that “we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions.”

The Presumptive Nominee seems to be in trouble. Reuters just released a national poll showing that “Joe Biden’s advantage over President Donald Trump in popular support has eroded in recent weeks” -- and the contest is “essentially a toss-up.” In a half-dozen key swing states, Biden is only up by an average of 4 percent. Even among the Democratic faithful, enthusiasm for Biden is low.

Whatever our political differences, vast numbers of Democrats and others agree that it’s imperative to defeat Donald Trump. But with scarcely five months to go before the voting starts, Joe Biden is not helping to assemble a broad tactical alliance. Instead, he’s ignoring the wisdom that Jesse Jackson offered at the Democratic National Convention in 1988: “It takes two wings to fly.”

Right now, Biden is idling in the cockpit of a political aircraft with one wing.

As chair of the Democratic National Committee at a time when the party’s presumptive nominee for president seems likely to crash and burn, you should be openly working to fix the problem rather than merely proclaiming that Biden is a great candidate.

This week, soon after Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign, one of its most effective message-crafters summed up a vital challenge ahead. “The best hope to defeat Trump is to positively and constructively motivate a large Democratic turnout,” David Sirota wrote.

There’s a video of Lawrence O’Donnell, spokesperson for MSNBC, saying in 2020 what he’s paid to say, namely that electing a candidate with a platform you approve of is somehow in conflict with electing a candidate who can win. The logic of this is that most people are expected to vote for a candidate with a less desirable platform, which is only self-fulfilling if nobody shouts out that the hold-your-nose candidate has no clothes before a mysterious substance called “momentum” can be declared to exist and the candidate whom people actually prefer can be persuaded to give up.

There’s a video of Lawrence O’Donnell, years ago, saying something that would get him fired from MSNBC in a heartbeat:

Pressure on Bernie Sanders to quit the presidential race is intensifying. Over the weekend, the Washington Post splashed a major story under the headline “Some Top Sanders Advisers Urge Him to Consider Withdrawing.” While sheltering at home, comedian Larry David couldn’t curb his enthusiasm for an end to the campaign, telling a New York Times columnist: “I feel he should drop out. Because he’s too far behind. He can’t get the nomination.”