I think about the Bible sometimes. When the Internet was cut off in Gaza, and the electricity, I thought about the "terror by night"--the nameless and wordless horrors of the obscured, when the beasts come out after sundown, and you can barely make out the face of friend from foe. The thieves and knives come out at night.
That terror is called "pachad". It is the terror for one's life. What is also to be feared? The arrow by day.
That arrow pierces to the quick, because the target is seen. There is nothing done under cover of night that doesn't come out in the daylight.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled this week over Nina Turner's loss to Shontel Brown and what it means regarding progressive and "establishment" Democrats, but I'm going to just say that this primary had a lot to do with some critical errors on the part of the candidate with all the name recognition and quite a lot of money and doesn't really say anything about the direction of the party. It says something about how to campaign and be part of a team.
Which made her opponent look pleasant and trustable in comparison. It isn't deep. People saw her grievances, and lost sight of what she could do for them, and her campaign didn't turn that impression around.
But keeping in mind that tomorrow....exists, how Turner has chosen to lose is also very puzzling, because the faults that lost her the race are how she's going to stick her impression. Like, just what were her comments about "evil money" supposed to mean when she also had some really good fundraising? And if she wants to talk about corporate money, well, okay then, let's do that. And why is she saying that her loss is about how the establishment does progressive candidates specifically dirty when she earned her retaliation by specifically pissing on the establishment in the first place? It feels to me like she could have gotten backing with her name recognition if she didn't start off on the entirely wrong foot.
Also, now that we are are well past the 2020 Democratic primary, I'm just going to say it--Bernie Sanders has questionable taste. Regardless of whether any fundraising has fossil fuel money behind it, Brown's priorities per her website generally support the Green New Deal, and she says she would be a vote for Medicare for All if it ever came to the floor. That's not a candidate who is not progressive, that's a candidate who is, but just doesn't have Turner's progressive connections. Which reminds me that Sanders also had David Sirota, who was a great communicator that blocked a shit-ton of liberals on Twitter and also seems to hate the MSM, as one of his press folks and had Shaun King as a surrogate. It isn't necessary or helpful to defend Turner's primary loss as having a damn thing to do with corporate money when there is a general election to be won, no matter how much of a guaranteed D district it is.
Sometimes a personality just isn't a fit for a job. And taking a loss without any grace, and by deriding the process as being at fault instead of showing any introspection, basically pulling a Trump, isn't a great look or demonstrating that any lessons were learned. This is how not to lose. It isn't winning, because it precludes the possibility of figuring out how to win. It doesn't help anybody,
I'm not saying Turner is a very bad candidate, just that she wasn't the best candidate for right there and then, and needs to see a direction away from that loss that is positive and meaningful. Her initial response was anything but.
We must come together to defeat the most dangerous president in modern history. I'm joining @JoeBiden's livestream with a special announcement. https://t.co/AC3zh3ChX3
Nobody wants to say that if Elizabeth Warren gets out of the race before Super Tuesday, Crazy Bernie Sanders wins virtually every state in a blowout...NOT EVEN CLOSE! I haven’t heard one member of the Fake News Establishment even mention this irrefutable fact. FAKE NEWS!
Super Tuesday, regardless of the verb tense that the president appears to be using (he has a Very Good Brain, he tells us!) happened five weeks ago. We actually have the results from those elections, and no, what he's saying isn't even remotely true. Most people who could have voted for either Sanders or Warren, voted for Sanders. People who supported Warren up until she dropped out after Super Tuesday weren't automatically Sanders supporters afterward. The media isn't reporting this as a fact because it isn't one. If he believes it is, he's reealllly quite staggeringly bad at math. (In much the way he is at spelling or geography or history, or meteorology, or epidemiology, or...or, you know, government.)
But I think he's trying to troll Sanders supporters into a game of agreeing with him that the elections are rigged, and that Trump is at least honest enough to tell you that. He trying this out because Sanders dropped out and he thinks he can capitalize (?!) But it's just nonsense to be talking about five whole weeks ago as if nothing else happened in the interim. A lot happened. March 2020 was like, the longest month on record.
It's just weirdly obvious and desperate anymore. He's flailing, like empty clothes on a line in a storm.
Bernie Sanders: "I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere in the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour." https://t.co/ih97JpAlkUpic.twitter.com/3K2wTG501W
If one has to end a campaign, it should be in good conscience that the campaign was done well, that it raised significant issues, and that ending it is the best thing to do to further the policy goals intended. We aren't living in normal times at all, as this last, appalling primary in Wisconsin made very clear. Defeating the Republican party is the only way for any kind of progressive agenda to take hold because, in part, of what the conservatives in this country have made of the courts. Senator Sanders was a damn good candidate, and is a damn good senator and a strong ally in the fight against the current corrupt administration. He demonstrated that when he said, "Not me, us", he meant it.
It will take many people of good conscience to get rid of Trump. All of us who believe in a system that is fairer and more just. That are sick of the lies and hypocrisy. The Democratic party isn't a perfect vehicle, nor former VP Biden a perfect candidate, but it's the shot. In good conscience, what in the hell would four more years of Trump bring?
I have talked my share of smack about Rep. Gabbard with respects to her penchant for going on Fox News to run down fellow Democrats (I have kept my opinions of her "present" vote regarding the Trump impeachment to myself), but I have to give her credit for doing as she said she would--throwing her support to the probable nominee at the end of her race. I see the endorsement as also being a measure of saying she isn't planning a third party run, and I think she can certainly try to run for congress again. She's leaving on an honorable note, and I respect that. I'll go so far as to say I'm pleasantly surprised.
Her endorsement may piss off people who saw her as aligned with Sen. Sanders, but being aligned on some policies or political views doesn't always mean automatic support. Her support can't do Sanders any major favors and it isn't owed (as I've said about Senator Warren as well). It's entirely her choice to make as an independent person. She using her endorsement to say something about the status of the primary.
Bernie Sanders will assess his presidential campaign after the Vermont senator's poor showing in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, his campaign manager says https://t.co/1rt2f5RGkJpic.twitter.com/JGSazOFRiy
Former VP Joe Biden decisively won the three primaries held on Tuesday. Based on the current....everything! even holding future primaries has become more onerous. Also onerous--the task of trying to overcome a delegate deficit when two very important things affect the outcome: past performance and future expectations. At this point, there will be voters who submit Biden votes just to end it. The upcoming primary calendar and general Democratic polling aren't showing wins for Sanders. There isn't a lot of room his campaign has, at this point, to change things up. Both of these candidates have strong name recognition, and it is very unlikely that voters are making up their minds at the last minute at this point, as they may have done in the Iowa caucus.
The above video shows former VP Joe Biden giving what-for to someone over the idea that wanting some firearms regulations is the same thing as being against the Second Amendment--he said the guy was full of shit, and as talking points go, Biden is correct. Even Antonin Scalia in the Heller decision recognized that the Second Amendment wasn't an absolute right to all and any gun ownership. Talking points themselves are full of shit.
You can't reason with people that way. The premise of the argument "You gun control people are taking our guns" starts with a straw man; it implies a belief that people making regulation arguments are acting in bad faith. That's not a discussion, it's just a fight. It's a bad faith fight.
Biden wasn't having it, and said so. This was re-tweeted by the Trump campaign, by the NRA and by some Sanders supporters as if to imply he doesn't speak respectfully and has (maybe) lost his mind out here.
But a lot of people, me included, read that as "The man said, 'No Malarkey', and he meant it." Do you drag something into the sphere of respectability for someone who already isn't respecting you? Or do you let them know? Joe saw something and he said something.
There's something about the prospect of the remaining couple of weeks of a two-man contest between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders that I am not looking forward to. I have a lot of respect for both men and I could vote for either of them and justify my vote entirely. But the prospect of the next few weeks (I genuinely think it will only be a few weeks) of randos and not-so-randos trying to talk shit about Bernie's heart and Joe's brain is basically going to bring us all down to the fucking floor of the discourse.
It just didn't have to be like this, and a part of me feels deeply it shouldn't have been. When I say "heart" and "brain", I'm talking about the literal organs of two gentlemen in their seventies, amply gifted with both, metaphorically. They are both older than my dad, and I'm as old now as Obama was when he ran--twelve years ago. They are both older than Trump, who, despite the fluffing by his flacks, flunkeys and fawners, is, under the bronze paintjob and teased hair helmet, looking especially decrepit and deluded these days.
If you watch the above video of Symone Sanders just up and hauling off a protester while Jill Biden guards her husband, I feel like that says an awful lot about work in this Democratic primary. Biden was protected and promoted this evening in large part by Black and women voters. For all that anyone might want to ding his campaign turnabout on the donor class or elites or the establishment, the fact is--working class people, and marginalized people, and all kinds of people actually in fact voted for him. You can't take away from that by mislabeling his support.
Here's what they want: to beat Trump because he's actually, actively harmful to them. Biden's successes this evening come from the hopes of lots of people for a government that recognizes them, and it wasn't brought about by money. It was brought about by people believing in the network of goodwill he got from the people who said they would stand with him, because they knew what he stands for. And when I see anyone denigrating that as if the people who stood in line and took the time out of their day to make their vote were somehow dazzled into it by some nefarious fuckery--shit, I don't have to agree with it to acknowledge it for what it is. These people believe he can beat Trump. They believe he has the coalition.
Having a team matters. Being a part of a big thing, matters. It might not be a revolution, but it is not nothing.
But before I get into anything to do with these results (which aren't all in yet) can I vent on the subject of Elizabeth Warren?
I sense there are some folks out there experiencing some alarm that progressives are on the verge of nominating someone they see as the most electable progressive choice, but really? Our ideas about electability should have died a hard death when Donald Trump won an election. A multiply-bankrupt, serial adulterer, with several credible sexual harassment and assault claims, fraud claims and settlements, surrounded by the right wings' worst collection of dirty tricksters, with allegations of support by Russian bots, leaks, etc., compounded by the pretty obvious fact, ongoing to this day, that there is something, maybe even organically, seriously wrong with how the man understands the concepts of right and wrong....
Sanders is incredibly electable if our comparison is Trump. Above is then-Representative Sanders, talking about how much the US spends on defense vs. on American workers. He says, "Let's invest in American industry." He talks about feeding and educating our kids. That's who he was then; that's who he is now. And he excoriates both parties, because some Democrats were a little bit full of shit then, and some are a little bit full of shit now. (Democrats, for some reason, thought about a budget-balancing amendment for a minute back then. Think about the utter damage that would have done to the safety net for so many. Something something, Department of Defense, something something, bake sales. )
That was 1992. When I became aware of what he was standing for, it was this 2010 filibuster (ish) stand. Yes, he goes against what he is calling the "Democratic establishment"--also, I sometimes think the entire Democratic party could go bolder. Organize more. Fight like hell for the things we love.
Criticizing the Democratic party isn't about electing Trump. It's about saying there are sides and you have to choose one. And anyone who chooses Trump over someone like Sanders is saying they like fascism, racism, misogyny and lies. The party should be able to take arguments. If the Democrats are, in fact, a large and diverse party, that will have to be expected. But that is over policy differences, and in the meantime, there is a world at stake, our universal human rights, and the fight to preserve our environment.
The opinions of Never-Trumpers should have no bearing on Democratic conversation. Obama got into office without them--with many of them working against him. If they understand now the kind of bullshit statist liberals were trying to fight against then, and don't know how their attenuated McCarthyism (like the destruction of ACORN due to peckerheads like O'Keefe and Breitbart) fueled leftist rage, they can go get stuffed. Even Liz Mair, who is getting sued alongside an internet cow, by one of Trump's most captivated Renfields. What is her game? Because she needs an entire grip if she thinks you go from sued the entire fuck to hell and gofundmeing on it to...ooohhhh! Fuck me! (Keep an eye on that lawsuit right there.)
He is better than his stans--that seems enough. But if you all are a Democrat and wanted a unity candidate that would do--notice that Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg are all standing in that gap. If Bloomie wanted to make a way for a moderate, he done fucked up by uniting lefties under Sanders.
Warren is probably the unity candidate for non-Berners. I'm not being pro-anyone, even if I' m telling you that despite what the news says, Sanders is not an op. He's been real since way before Russia took an interest in him. I'm just letting you know--don't freak out. Maybe Democrats being a little bit leftist isn't actually a whole fucking news flash.
Sen. Warren's performance against Bloomberg's record (and his seeming lack of preparation to defend it) was pretty damn satisfying for me to watch, but I took notice of a handful of folks on Twitter who were having issues about "tone". "Oh she was mean." All standard disclaimers about politics not being beanbag obviously pertain, with a helping of "and if this were a male candidate?" on the side, obviously, but for crying out loud, this was a demonstration of what Warren wants to do to Trump, that Bloomberg, with his baggage, can't do onstage to someone like Trump (assuming that Trump won't be able to resist debates because it means he'll be on TV), and that Warren is uniquely able to.
I also noticed some people wondering why she didn't go after Sanders. I think it's been strategic. Her support would have to come in part from people who are pretty loyal Sanders supporters if her star was to rise, and she's being cagey about not alienating them (or pissing them right the heck off). Leave that to the other people in the competition.
Anyway, I think there still is a tendency for these debates to more or less reinforce attitudes, rather than change them, and even though I miss some people who are no longer in the race, the fewer people on the stage, the less of a mess the process feels like.
I've been noticing a silly argument on Twitter that I won't link to, because it is silly: whether "Bernie bros" will put people "on a list" if they support or work for former Republican NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Whatever that list might mean, I really don't think people in this country can get shut out of working for campaigns or commenting on politics based on their previous support. My goodness, Jill Stein supporters manage to get attached to Democratic campaigns today, don't they? And the mainstream media doesn't look like it will ever give up it's love affair with Republican-lite/moderate Democrat cross-overs. For the unity!
But let's get real, the country will not be unified over Mike Bloomberg. Sure, he's got a whole lot of money and his ads do nail Trump right in his vanities and failures. But that doesn't equal a plausible Democratic candidate against Trump (it may even have some drawbacks as an outside antagonist, as I hope to demonstrate).
In the past, I've blogged about my support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Me Too movement. If a Democratic candidate does not have a good record with, or can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the impact of economic inequality, the wealth gap, the failures of the system to protect consumers against fraud and predation in ways that harm economic security and mobility (as well as the way it intersects with racial inequality); if a candidate does not have a good record with, or can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the impact of racial inequality especially as it has related to the tools of the criminal justice system being used as a weapon against black bodies especially; and if a candidate does not have a good record with, and can't demonstrate fundamental understanding of, the ways men in power deploy misogyny and exercise their privilege against both women and men in sexualized ways, then, this party should not want them.
Unless you are super on-line, I think maybe the average person is almost aware of Greenwald because of Ed Snowden, about whom my opinions have been registered. I don't even know who knows who Neera Tanden is in the not-very-online world.
But because I do a little politics blogging now and again, I want to take a look at what he's saying, because WTF?
The President of the largest Dem Party think tank continues the personal & sustained attack on the party's front-runner with critiques that could cripple him against Trump.
Not sure if she's motivated by pro-Trump sentiments, pro-Putin ones, are (sic) both, but it's highly disturbing:
Says the Greenwald tweet (capped because it might go away). The Tanden Tweet he quote-Tweets is this:
Just FYI: Other Dem candidates who are his age have released their medical records going back decades. What’s the problem with Sanders doing the same? I don’t understand the mystery here. https://t.co/V5GxWqGcSY
Trump's campaign has access to the same shit Neera Tanden does, because they are called newspapers. They will bring up the same issues she does because: political campaign. Because certain underlying facts exist, they will get brought up in the general campaign. Ignoring them now would be, therefore, lacking in even the least bit of foresight.
She's not pro-Trump, she's against the Democratic party throwing in 100% with a candidate she has reservations about. The Trump Campaign in 2016 pretended Hillary Clinton was dying because she fainted when she had a touch of pneumonia. (She got better!) Does anyone seriously think Sanders is not going to get attacked for being older than Trump and having had a serious cardiac incident (even though we still don't know a whole hell of a lot about Trump's little excursion to Walter Reed).
Just because something shouldn't be fair game, doesn't mean it won't be treated as such.
The first thing to get out of the way is--well, I'll be damned! Maybe Mayor Pete had the right idea to declare his pleasant surprise at the Iowa results (that weren't, exactly, yet) Tuesday night, because he did pretty damn well.* You can chalk that up to a handful of things, of course. Warren, Sanders and Klobuchar did have to do their duties in the Senate. His campaign speaks fluent "heartland." Also, although he polls well, previous primary campaigns have left me wondering how former VP Joe Biden does in reality versus on paper.
I know the Shadow/Acronym stuff looks really shady, but for the love of democracy, let's not do conspiracy theories. For one thing, the whole Iowa caucus thing is close and weird and the results are wonky, historically. For another, it looks like folks just wanted to up the digital game and inserted an app where it overpromised and underperformed. In the grand scheme of things, that's a far cry from any kind of "rigging" that I can tell.
And I just want to talk for a minute about how cool it is that Buttigieg did well here, in the home of the FAMiLY Leader and all that. There's a lot of tolerance out there, and it's growing. (Despite the example of this person, who is getting her information about candidates from some very questionable sources. Of all the things I think one might have known going in about Buttigieg...that he served in the armed forces and is a happily married gay man: those are the two things.)
Also, the other thing that's going on this year, again, and why people should keep the hell off of conspiracy theories, is that the fuckery is still very much with us:
Yeah. So, when Trump and his little fans want to discuss the caucus as a Democratic clusterfuck, um, no. Maybe a little bit of a cluster, but they helped. (And keep in mind, they want to divide the party by heightening any grievance felt by Sanders backers vs the establishment, so some of that shit needs to be recognized as enemy action on these internets.) Also, the RNC is coronating a smooth-brained impeached and acquitted but not exonerated wanna-be tyrant, so they have earned exactly zero democracy points.
Anyway, on to New Hampshire!
* But it looks like Sanders probably did actually take Iowa on the basis of raw votes. So what do I have to say about that? Um, cool? The Plan B for a possible total Biden implosion (which would hilariously make Trump/Giuliani Ukraine exploits to get "dirt" on him totally irrelevant to the Democrats and totally still damaging to Trump) is to smear the "Commie". But Democrats have been called "commies" since McCarthy. (Tail-gunner Joe, not Kevin. Except probably Kevin, too.) So I am all for "taking it back". This is a referendum on Trump's perfidy, but there's no reason to shy away from how to accomplish the 3rd of FDR's Four Freedoms.
Now, you can say, "How is that? Last I heard, Pete Buttigeig declared victory." And that would be a thing....he did. But just listen to my reasoning here:
Math didn't win in Iowa (Yang). Organization didn't win in Iowa (Sanders). Experience didn't win in Iowa (Biden). The plan didn't win in Iowa (Elizabeth Warren). And common sense sure didn't win in Iowa (Klobuchar). And you can't just congratulate a clusterfuck and decide it stands for a species of win, Mayor Pete.
So, it's looking to me like the whole darn thing went to the dogs. And Bailey is a very good boye.
UPDATE: But, no joke, this process is classist, sexist and ableist, and relies on people without kids or with guaranteed childcare, people who don't have work commitments they can't back out of, etc. It's a dopey process that shouldn't ever come down to "the handful of hardheads that can stay as long as it takes" and "some kind of app and the backup app both of which could be as buggy as a cowflop in July."
At some point, I was going to have to get into this, because my dumb brain won't let me move off of it until I've aired it--I don't like heroes. The idea of "hero" doesn't nestle comfortably in my political bosom. People who go into politics are sometimes abrasive jerks. This is because politics is oppositional. I gave up on the idea of anyone being out in the arena and being above criticism. If someone wants to do the work of influencing public life, there's good strategy and bad strategy. Good tactics and bad tactics. Shit that's effective and shit that is not effective.
Hillary Clinton is not above criticism. I admire, but don't idolize her. I think her trashing of Bernie Sanders right now doesn't do anything positive. He's running, right now in 2020, he's a front-runner, he has considerable support, and any criticism from her is liable to just make those who support him double-down. Maybe the criticism is going to be pointless, especially because it comes from her. She is not some blameless lamb just trying to make a point--she knows very well what's she's doing, and what the stakes are.
I also admire, but don't idolize Bernie Sanders. He is a 78 year man who ran second in a very divisive primary last time around, who does not quite seem to understand that stocking his campaign with people who seem almost created in a lab to piss off Clinton die-hards might be a tad controversial. There are a few who voted for Jill Stein--that's some fraught shit. (The Joe Rogan stuff is also kind of oddball.)
I also admire, but do not idolize The Squad. I like the idea of fresh faces with very progressive ideas who do not step back regarding confrontation with the idea of "how we always did it before" or "conventional wisdom says." I appreciate that these strong women have backgrounds that have informed their opinions and they carry those histories with pride--they are earning their place by fighting for what they believe in.
But, and this goes back to what I've been saying about audiences--no one is ever just among their target audience anymore. Booing Hillary Clinton's negativity towards Sanders and referring to her as a liar count as criticism that might even be legit regarding her statements, but--this is a goddamn primary race, and sooner or later, it might help if Clinton fans didn't come away thinking "These folks are exactly who she said they were."
See, for Clinton backers, Sanders fans were the ones who heckled Dolores Huerta and John Lewis and sprinkled dollar bills to shame Clinton at a fundraiser. I don't know directly how many Clinton folks outside of Twitter feel like Sanders' support was too little too late or that he should have had more talk of unity, but the sentiment is obviously there. Booing Hillary Clinton does nothing.
I don't want to rehash 2016. It's the worst. It strikes me that this kind of thing is wasting ammo on dead horses and live asses that should be trained on Republicans. So, rather than demonize anybody, I guess I just in general want to say--get your shit together, you guys. There are no villians here.
Except the GOP. They are always the villians.
UPDATE: Just tacking on this, though--Michael Moore has not one useful or necessary thing to say about electoral politics and should just go fucking do laundry or whatever.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard comments on defamation lawsuit she filed against Hillary Clinton: “I will not stand quietly by as Hillary Clinton or anyone else tries to smear my character.” https://t.co/oHeO6D8pKapic.twitter.com/2b008y04bp
I don't want to give Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's defamation suit against Hillary Clinton more space than it deserves (although I think I just have) but if what Clinton said against Gabbard was way out of bounds, then oh lordy, let me tell you about all the other politicians out there since....history? I'm just saying, it feels overwrought to be intended as a real legal case, and would have a really messed-up effect on political speech if it somehow was treated as one. Also--"damages estimated to exceed $50 million" seems hard to establish. It doesn't seem to reflect future fundraising based on prior campaign figures, does it? Does it reflect potential earnings in other endeavors outside of political office? (I don't know that having a beef with Hillary Clinton has necessarily lost anyone money. It would be as bassackwards as bankrupting a series of casinos. Indeed, many people seem to have profited from hating the Clintons.)
Now, I may be wrong about this, but I noticed grumblings on Twitter about who is even paying for such a lawsuit (after the fashion of: "Who is paying for Rep. Devin Nunes to sue an internet cow and others?"). I think FEC allows for legal costs to be paid for with campaign funds if they relate to the campaign itself so maybe she's going to fundraise on sticking it to the establishment via Hillary Clinton?
Do you support Tulsi Gabbard's decision to sue Hillary Clinton for defamation over her 'Russian asset' comments? Please retweet and share.
I guess we'll see if any fundraising emails mentioning the lawsuit are put out.
Anyhow, just as an aside--while I like tea just as much as the next person, Hillary Unbound, even if she is a private figure now, so to speak, is never going to be, strictly speaking, a private figure. I think she skirts the line on this one, because she's saying something I don't think other people didn't previously think or even say out loud. But there is still a timing issue here--we're in the middle of a serious election! And even if talking at liberty is her way of demonstrating she is 100% not running for office, nope, not even one little bit, the things she says have weight. Tons.
So, I guess what I'm saying is--are we sure about all this? Because we need a smart election, and I'm just seeing the stupid flying around. It is like a haboob. It gets everywhere.
I know, you know, the world knows, the exchange above is going to be the topic after the Warren/Sanders build-up, right? But I have to say, I'm feeling for Steyer a bit here. "Oh hi guys, great debaaaaa...." Timing, right? I guess a mic probably has picked up what was said (and Steyer was right there) but I'm not reading a lot into the exchange. People aren't really the body language experts we think we are.
I think CNN had a problem with asking questions in a way that didn't sound a little loaded. Asking Bernie Sanders how he won't bankrupt the government wasn't just loaded, but actually doesn't really reflect how government debt works, and also doesn't reflect how things like health care provide a net benefit to society and reduce costs along the way. I'm not sure what would help them not be that way.
I think Warren and Klobuchar did especially well, and think that Warren pointing out that both of them were effective campaigners and also calling out the CNN moderators for the topics not handled were highlights.
I cannot believe, however, that after all my pissing and moaning about how crowded the stage used to be, that I'm now "pouring one out" for the folks not up there. But of such is life.
Maybe it's because as a Pennsylvania voter, I don't get to vote in the primary until pretty late, but my feelings about the candidates is a little bit like when a neighborhood cat deposits kittens under the porch: "Don't get too attached to any of them--we're only keeping one."
So how do I feel about the Sanders-Warren foofaraw? I don't actually have a really strong opinion because only one person will win the primary, and then my preference is that whoever that person is, they beat Trump. It's pretty much that simple. This "beef" thing is kind of like wrestling: I don't know how much of it is work and how much is shoot, but I will vote for a Democrat when the time comes regardless, and recognize that primaries are competitive. They're trying to win. It's not that deep.
So, long story short, my opinion is, either you think Senator Warren or Senator Sanders are both highly qualified and would do better than Trump, be more credible, transparent and respectable than Trump in office, and surround themselves with more professional, less questionable people in office, while engaging in a substantive, progressive agenda or, well?
Eh. I like them both. I can't stand Trump. The end.
