Politics
Let’s be blunt: As a supposed friend of American workers, Joe Biden is a phony. And now that he’s running for president, Biden’s huge task is to hide his phoniness.
From the outset, with dim prospects from small donors, the Biden campaign is depending on big checks from the rich and corporate elites who greatly appreciate his services rendered. “He must rely heavily, at least at first, upon an old-fashioned network of money bundlers -- political insiders, former ambassadors and business executives,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Biden has a media image that exudes down-to-earth caring and advocacy for regular folks. But his actual record is a very different story.
A new film, Corporate Coup, (trailer at link https://vimeo.com/292721963 ) is premiering in the coming days in Washington, D.C., (April 26-27 at Filmfest DC) and Toronto (April 29, 30, and May 3 at Hot Docs Festival).
The film is vague about when the corporate takeover of the U.S. government began, probably because it actually predates the U.S. government and wasn’t entirely new in the 1970s or the 1980s but did see, at that time, a major acceleration that in some ways was a leap backward and in other ways a leap into something unseen before.
The progressive liberal Democratic-Republican hero was supposed to be handed the presidency in 1800, and instead there was a tie.
Somebody was going to have to pay. And the proper payment would be a charge of treason.
We know that Thomas Jefferson was a progressive liberal because he said really nice things. He also enslaved and whipped and raped. He invented claims of white racist superiority to prove that all men were not created equal — claims that inspire fascist visitors to Charlottesville to this day. He invented the right of slave states to “nullify” federal law, not to mention being the principal creator of our beloved two-party system.
It was Jefferson’s presidency. He had waited for it. It was his turn now. And that blasted Aaron Burr had exactly as many votes as he had. First this would have to be fixed. Then Burr would have to be punished.
To understand Beto O’Rourke as a candidate, it’s vital to go beneath the surface of his political backstory. News watchers are already well aware of the former Texas congressman’s good looks, charisma, youthful energy and fundraising prowess. But most remain unaware of an inconvenient truth that could undermine the O’Rourke campaign among the people who matter most -- the ones who’ll be voting to choose the Democratic presidential nominee next year.
O’Rourke is hardly eager for those upcoming voters to realize that the growth of his political career is rooted in an alliance with powerful Republicans that began 15 years ago. Or that he supported raising the minimum age for Social Security in 2012. Or that -- during six years in Congress, through the end of 2018 -- he often aligned himself with Republican positions.
If facts matter, such weighty facts could sink the “Beto for America” presidential campaign. Since his announcement, information gaining traction nationwide runs directly counter to the Beto brand.
Democrats have gone all atwitter (pun intended), scattering ruffled feathers all over the barnyard as if a fox were after them when the only serious threat to their blinkered preconceptions comes from a bird of different plumage. Not all Democrats are squawking like chickens with their heads cut off (as it were), but enough of the older, backward-looking birds are making enough noise to make the whole party look idiotic.
In plainer language, the Democratic Party remains in the grip of white privilege, which can only be a losing position in a country where there’s no effective challenge to Trump for the white supremacy vote. Want proof? Nominate Biden. But that’s only a prediction. What’s going on right now in the House of Representatives is reprehensible enough as reflexive ideologues swarm to block the smallest whiff of any fresh air.
On March 8 the Cincinnati Socialist Feminists coalition and allies from Columbus decided to send Ohio Governor Mike DeWine a message for International Women’s Day. A dozen women and men attempted to access DeWine’s upper-floor office at the Columbus Riffe Center.
After being turned away, they went to the ground floor lobby and held a sit-in. “Our bodies, our choice!” they chanted. “Governor DeWine, abortion’s not a crime!”
The protesters were targeting Ohio Senate Bill 23, the so-called “heartbeat bill” which would ban abortions six weeks after conception. DeWine has pledged to sign the bill if it’s passed by the Ohio legislature.
When the lobby closed at 5 PM, State Highway Patrol officers ordered the demonstrators to leave. Depending on their level of resistance, they were escorted, dragged, or carried out of the building. There were no arrests. Outside, the protesters were joined by about 40 supporters and held a rally on the sidewalk.
When the New York Times front-paged its latest anti-left polemic masquerading as a news article, the March 9 piece declared: “Should former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. enter the race, as his top advisers vow he soon will, he would have the best immediate shot at the moderate mantle.”
On the verge of relaunching, Joe Biden is poised to come to the rescue of the corporate political establishment -- at a time when, in the words of the Times, “the sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats.” After 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, Biden is by far the most seasoned servant of corporate power with a prayer of becoming the next president.
Some people are attached to the idea that the Democratic National Committee will “rig” the presidential nomination against Bernie Sanders. The meme encourages the belief that the Bernie 2020 campaign is futile because of powerful corporate Democrats. But such fatalism should be discarded.
As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Of course top Democratic Party officials don’t intend to give up control. It has to be taken from them. And the conditions for doing that are now more favorable than ever.
The effects of mobilized demands for change in the Democratic presidential nominating process have been major -- not out of the goodness of any power broker’s heart, but because progressives have organized effectively during the last two years.