When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
Jason C. McLean and Dawn McSweeney discuss bizarre comments from FIFA president Gianni Infantino defending holding the World Cup in Qatar, the politics of letting oppressive regimes host huge global events, Twitter falling apart, Trump running for President and other reasons the world is on fire.
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Jason C. McLean and Dawn McSweeney discuss protest and privilege: climate change activists throwing tomato soup at a Van Gogh, the Emergencies Act inquiry, the Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaing former President Trump.
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Jason C. McLean and Dawn McSweeney discuss the FBI raid on former US President Donald Trump’s resort home Mar-a-Lago, author Salman Rushdie being stabbed multiple times while on stage and a judge suspending two articles of Quebec’s Bill 96.
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Jason C. McLean and Dawn McSweeney discuss some of wilder stories coming out of the January 6th Hearings in the US, reconciling Canada Day with the colonial treatment of indigenous communities and Canada’s bizarre ban on importing dogs.
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It’s official: Joe Biden is now the 46th and current President of the United States and Kamala Harris is now the 49th and current Vice-President of the United States. They were sworn in on the steps of the US Capitol just before noon eastern time today.
This is the very same Capitol was the site of a domestic terrorist attack and attempted coup two weeks ago. Today, Washington DC’s National Mall (the Capitol Region) was on lockdown and only invited guests seen on camera were present, with 200 000 flags standing in for an audience.
Biden mentioned the attack on American Democracy as well as the lingering threat of white supremacy in his inaugural speech. He also took a moment of silence for the lives lost to COVID-19 and promised to re-build America’s international reputation.
It was a moving speech with some firsts, such as actually identifying white supremacy as a threat by name. It was also a return to the classic “President of all Americans”-type speech with a call for unity, without specifying who was unifying with whom.
There was one huge break with tradition: while former Presidents and outgoing Vice-President Mike Pence were there, now-Former President Donald Trump was not. He flew back to Florida earlier this morning.
Normally, something that is scheduled to happen for months actually happening is not breaking news, but with all the legal, rhetorical and eventually violent threats to the results of the last election, this time it is.
Biden and Harris have now left the US Capitol. Biden has promised a slew of Executive Orders on Day One to rescind Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban, re-enter the US into the Paris Climate Accord and World Health Organization and more.
We will see how quickly his actions match his rhetoric. Regardless, the US has now turned a page.
The US House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump. This makes Trump the only president in United States history to be impeached twice.
The House voted on an impeachment article named “incitement to insurrection” which says:
“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
– House Resolution 24 (H-RES 24)
232 members voted for the resolution, 197 voted against and 5 abstained. Ten Republicans joined all but one Democrat in voting to impeach the President.
This vote came in the wake of last Wednesday’s violent, armed riot and coup attempt at the US Capitol which, now according to an official House Resolution, Trump incited and encouraged.
The Article of Impeachment now goes to the US Senate. If the current Senate votes to convict, Trump will be removed from office immediately, meaning the presidency will pass to current Vice-President Mike Pence until President-Elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th.
It is possible, though, for the Senate to delay voting until after the new Democratic-controlled arrangement will be seated. This would make removing Trump from office, but not all of what a conviction entails, moot.
Regardless of if it happens when he is in office or after leaving, Trump will lose the lifetime Secret Service protection afforded to all former presidents and be barred from running for office again if the Senate votes to convict.
Jason C. McLean and guest Der Kosmonaut discuss the roots of pro-Trump domestic terrorists storming the US Capitol on Wednesday, the hypocrisy of the police response and what needs to happen immediately to save American Democracy and the reputation of the US around the world.
Joe Biden has won the 2020 US Presidential Election and will be the 46th President of the United States. After the former Vice-President secured Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College Votes, pushing him over the 270 mark required to win, major networks like The Associated Press and CNN made the call.
Some outlets like Decision Desk HQ and The Young Turks had already made the call yesterday morning. Given the contentious nature of this election and the fact that sitting President Donald Trump had already declared victory on Tuesday (Election Night), the major networks waited until they could be absolutely certain that Biden would take Pennsylvania.
Former Senator (and ex-Montrealer) Kamala Harris will be the first female, first African-American and first South Asian-American Vice-President in American history.
There are still recounts pending and the Trump team has several lawsuits in the works. No one can be sure of a smooth transition, but President-Elect Biden is now scheduled to take office January 20, 2021.
In the premier of the FTB Fridays video series, Jason C. McLean speaks with spoken-word artist, writer and seasoned political observer Der Kosmonaut about the fallout from the 2020 US Presidential Election and what might happen in the courts and the streets if Joe Biden wins but Donald Trump refuses to leave.
Joe Biden officially named Kamala Harris as his running mate in the 2020 US Election on August 11th. Since then, all eyes have understandably been on the California Senator and former Presidential candidate.
Biden was leading in the polls prior to the Democratic National Convention, and performed better than expected at the DNC. The former Vice President has already said that he will rely quite a bit on his VP if elected. Also, to put it as delicately as possible, if Biden wins, there is a chance that his VP pick might secure the nomination for President or the Presidency itself sooner than eight years from now.
So who Biden’s running mate is carries a weight both in terms of winning and governing that VP picks don’t usually have to deal with.
Right-wing pundits have dusted off the whole “radical left agenda” chestnut, proving that they will level those claims at truly anyone the Dems put up. Also proving that actually having a radical left agenda is no more dangerous for a candidate than not, as Fox News and speakers at the Republican National Convention (RNC) will say you do regardless. But I digress…
As expected, so-called centrist Dems, or the Democratic Establishment (basically the MSNBC crowd), are all very excited and supportive of the VP choice. So are the Liberal-supporting centrists here in Canada.
They are joined, though, by more than a handful of Canadian progressives. I’m talking “I vote NDP but wish they went more left, Trudeau’s just Harper with good hair and slightly better social policies” progressives.
Not sure if it’s because, when it comes to US politics, the bar is in a much different place, or the fact that Harris is an ex-Montrealer who went to Westmount High School. I didn’t go to Westmount High myself, though quite a few friends did, and it isn’t a private school, but a public one with a bit of a rough reputation — at least it had one in the late 70s and early 80s when she attended.
When it comes to American progressives, the VP nod has split opinion into three camps:
Some have brought back the “Kamala is a Cop” narrative, to remind people of her significantly less-than-stellar criminal justice record as both a District Attorney and the California Attorney General. Given that she once referred to herself as the “top cop” in the state, you can’t really say the charge is unfair.
Harris’ time as a prosecutor has been both decried as regressive and even hailed as progressive. Democracy Now recently had two guests on that outlined their points.
Given the current climate, Harris’ record, when combined with Biden’s co-authorship of the 1994 Crime Bill, puts up a couple of red flags progressives find hard to ignore. And many aren’t.
Apparently the answer to a movement for black lives is someone who helped perpetuate a lock em up regime while letting the powerful in Silicon Valley and Wall Streeters like Steve Mnuchin loot with impunity. Happy 2020. #BidenVP https://t.co/EQNKglP0gM
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) August 11, 2020
It’s also what might help deflect any last-ditch attacks from the Trump camp. With the current President’s COVID-19 response failing across the board, the Law and Order card is the last one he has to play, and it may backfire if he tries to play it against former prosecutor Harris.
Harris is both the first black woman and the first Asian-American to be a major party nominee for the Executive Branch. So this would be a paradigm-breaking administration, which is needed, especially given the rise of white nationalism under Trump.
That, along with the argument that her Senate record on Criminal Justice Reform, which many argue is significantly more progressive than her prosecutorial one, has some on the left genuinely excited by her candidacy. This includes some you wouldn’t expect.
In 2018, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King said that the two candidates he would not support with 99% certainty were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Good thing he didn’t say 100% because last week he tweeted this:
That’s it for me.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) August 11, 2020
I am incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU grad, chosen as a Vice Presidential nominee.
I’ve done political work my whole life. It’s rarely things dreams are made of.
Kamala Harris is the most progressive VP nominee in American history.
There’s another line of thinking espoused by some progressives, including hosts on The Young Turks and by me, at least in solidarity. I can’t vote in the US Election, but if I could, this would be my stance.
Put simply, it poses the question: Who would you rather fight for four years?
Joe Biden is clearly not in the progressive camp of the Democratic Party, far from it. But he is someone who listens to people in the room.
Kamala Harris may have a few more progressive bona fides than her running mate, but she is also far from an ideal lefty choice. She is, however, also someone who knows how to read the room and who acts accordingly.
Harris was originally for Medicare-for-All…before she was against it. While that may be something a typical shifty politician would do, it also means there is an opportunity to get her to switch her position back to the left.
Of course that is unlikely, but at least there is room to try. And if her and Biden don’t deliver, they can be primaried in 2024.
Come to think of it, if Biden serves out his full first term but declines to run again, Harris will most likely face multiple primary challengers, even from the center and right of the Democratic Party. These challenges would not even be motivated by ideological ideals, but by old-fashioned greed.
Even if that doesn’t happen, fighting against people who will listen and who need your votes to stay in power is a helluva lot better than the alternative.
Donald Trump and Mike Pence won’t listen in political circles. And if the RNC’s actions this week are any indication, they will make fighting back in the streets very difficult.
Oh yeah, there’s the whole inevitable dive into unchecked fascism that a second Trump term will bring. But I digress again.
It’s clear who the better opponents are.
Last night, a gunman shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin and injured a third. This was on the third consecutive night of protests sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Blake, and unarmed black man, was shot in the back seven times in front of his three young sons, paralyzing him.
Today, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he will be sending federal law enforcement to Wisconsin after getting Governor Tony Evans to agree to the deployment:
It’s clear to anyone who has been following Trump’s response to protests these past few months that the “violence” he hopes to quell is the protests themselves. In reality, though, the most devastating violence in Wisconsin these past few days was at the hands of the police and the young gunman.
Speaking of the gunman, there are reports from witnesses that he passed a line of police before the shooting, carrying a large weapon, and they thanked him for being there. Multiple people on the scene claim that he is part of one of the “self-styled militias” that have been present at the protests.
He was arrested in Antioch, Illinois and while authorities initially refused to give his name as he is a minor, various social media posts and now CNN confirm that he is 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch. I generally shy away from repeating the names of murderers who crave notoriety, but in this case, it may not be an open-and-shut case legally, plus his influences are relevant, so making him famous could be a necessary step towards getting justice.
So what do we know about him? At this point, not much for sure.
Is he a member of an organised militia? Probably.
Is he a white supremacist? No evidence of that, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
One thing we can tell through his social media posts is that he is very much pro-police. I’m talking cosplay fetish-level pro-cop.
So it’s not too much of a stretch to say that he viewed the protests as a threat. Of course, the fact that he crossed state lines to march around them with a large weapon pretty much confirms that.
This is all happening while the Republican National Convention is in full swing. One of the recurring themes of the RNC this year is that America is under attack from “dangerous leftist radicals” in groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa (which isn’t even an organized group, but whatever).
Forget the heady days of “good people on all sides” as a way to normalize white supremacists by drawing a false equivalency with anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters. Now, Trump and his GOP cronies are full-throated police state advocates.
Their messaging is clear: People protesting police violence are a threat! Their messaging to protesters is equally unambiguous: Stay off the streets! If some vigilante influenced by us murders some of you, rest assured that we’re still coming for you, not them!
Whether Rittenhouse was actually inspired directly by what’s being said currently at the RNC or not is irrelevant. The narrative that leftists are dangerous that started with them has now sunk through to other levels of society, including armed 17-year-olds.
Donald Trump’s messaging has casualties in Wisconsin.
Featured Image via Democracy Now!
Sure, I had “Donald Trump Attempts to Cancel US Democracy Itself” on my 2020 Bingo Card. I even had the excuses he would use (mail-in voting/Coronavirus) and the method of notification (tweet). But, let’s be honest, so did pretty much everyone else.
It is, at the same time, an unprecedented and frightening attack on the fundamentals of American Democracy, plunging the US one giant step closer to dictatorship, and a move so predictable I could have written most of this post a few months ago and just filled in the blanks with details today.
This morning, US President Donald Trump tweeted:
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
In case you were wondering, no, he can’t, on his own, postpone a Presidential Election, or any election, for that matter. Unlike parliamentary democracies such as Canada, where Minority Governments are a thing, US election dates are fixed.
The Presidency is a four-year term, no more, no less, period. That’s why, when a president is impeached, steps down, or passes away before the four years are up, the office and all of its powers transfer to the next one in line instead of holding an election when it’s not the appropriate time.
The only way to move the voting day, even slightly, is with a law passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the President. Changing the date a new president takes office or an incumbent president starts their second term, on the other hand, would take a constitutional amendment. (As a Canadian, thanks to Cenk Uygur of TYT for this info, which apparently most Americans learn in high school civics.)
Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi and her sometimes lackluster legislative opposition to Trump, there’s no way she lets him get away with this one in the House. Meanwhile constitutional amendments take years, not the weeks, and the election is fewer than 100 days away, so also a no-go.
So, if Trump can’t legally pull off what he suggested in his tweet, why worry? Putting aside the fact that legality doesn’t seem to be that much of an obstacle for him, the real concern is the tweet itself.
While it’s structured like a typical Trump toilet tweet, there are some noticeable differences:
All this leads me to believe that someone else read it and edited it before he sent it. Maybe someone else even wrote it. This is Trump on-prompter written to sound like Trump off-the-cuff.
It’s not the unhinged ramblings of a troll. It’s a political test balloon.
They’re seeing how many people will go along with subversion of democracy either before or after the election and laying the groundwork for a challenge to the election results if Trump loses. And it looks like he might very well lose.
Sure, the polls in 2016 were saying that Hillary Clinton would win, but not by as much as they are saying Joe Biden will win this time. Also not in the same places – Trump’s poised to lose the suburbs hard.
Biden’s strategy of staying at home, poking his head out occasionally and letting Trump destroy himself in the spotlight seems to be working. Subverting American Democracy itself may be the current president’s last option.
We all knew it would come to this, but that doesn’t make it any less scary.
Featured Image: Painting by Samantha Gold
Last Sunday, approximately 10 000 people took to the streets of Montreal demanding justice for George Floyd and all the other victims of racist police violence. This Sunday there’s another local protest against police brutality.
Before we go any further, I’d like to address what I knew every newscast would lead with the following day right after it happened: Yes, there was some looting. A bit of looting and some broken windows, nothing that should detract from the valid and necessary reason so many people were out, social distancing as much as possible during a pandemic.
Lenny Lanteigne, owner of Steve’s Music Store, the main target of the looters last Sunday, gets it. He told CTV that he thinks the protest was necessary and while he’s obviously not thrilled people stole his inventory, he knows what’s important. “They’re guitars, not human lives.”
In the US currently, there’s a strong argument that some of the rioting is actually quite necessary to be heard and affect change. In just over a week, the story changed from “the cops are fired” to “we’ve arrested one cop and charged him with third-degree murder” to (just yesterday) “we’re charging him with second-degree murder and the three cops who stood by with aiding and abetting second degree murder”.
The looting last Sunday in Montreal, though, came across more like a mini hockey riot with mostly white dudes using the opportunity to steal stuff than something tied into the message of police racism. The SPVM officers kneeling to put on their riot gear before teargassing the crowd (which preceded the looting), though, was a small reminder that the police here aren’t really all that different than those in the states.
The protest last Sunday may have been in solidarity with demonstrations across the US and now across the world, but it was also demanding justice for victims of racist police violence in Canada and Montreal too. For every George Floyd or Eric Garner, there’s a Regis Korchinski-Paquet or Fredy Villanueva.
We also have a serious problem with Canadian police indiscriminately brutalizing Indigenous people. From the so-called “starlight tours” out west to a recent local incident next to Cabot Square where a Native woman in distress had to deal with 17 cops and the SPVM (Montreal Police) canine unit before getting an ambulance, it seems like our police don’t think that Native Lives Matter.
Or Black Lives, apparently.
In a CBC study of fatal encounters with police of all levels across Canada over 17 years, Black and Indigenous people were seriously over-represented when compared to the overall population. Meanwhile a 2019 report commissioned by the City of Montreal revealed that the SPVM was four to five times more likely to stop Black or Indigenous people than whites.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did admit that Canada has a problem with police racism, after 21 seconds of awkward, probably staged, silence, while dodging a question about US President Donald Trump. Of course, anything that came after the 21 seconds, he knew, would get lost in the shuffle.
Quebec Premier François Legault, while supporting the protest, denied that systemic racism exists in Quebec. This from the man that, pre-pandemic, was all about systemically discriminating against minorities through Bill 21.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, to her credit, admitted that systemic discrimination does exist in our city. The question now becomes what she is going to do to fight it.
After initially opposing outfitting police with body cameras, she now says it will happen as soon as possible. This is largely due to pressure from boroughs like Côte-Des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-De-Grâce and the public.
Body cameras on police would be a welcome improvement, because unlike their counterparts south of the border, our police are camera-shy when it comes to race-based brutality. This helps our political leaders propagate the lie that violent and murderous police racism is a shameful American problem, but there are only a few bad apples here.
In the US, violent racist cops are brazen and kill in the daylight, either not caring who is watching or filming or hoping to be the next white supremacist champion or MAGA hero. George Zimmerman has fans and he wasn’t even trained.
Here, they’re just as brutal, but know to avoid the spotlight as much as possible. For the person on the receiving end, though, the result is the same.
With the only real-world empire most of us have ever known burning before our eyes and crumbling into a failed state, the kind the US would usually think of invading, it’s easy to get distracted. When we see peaceful protesters teargassed and assaulted by gleeful cops, it’s easy to forget that we have problems here too,
Solidarity with those fighting to get out from under Trump’s boot is essential, but remember that the underlying problem of racist police violence is a Canadian one, too.
The next Montreal Anti-Police Brutality Protests starts Sunday, June 14th at 11am at Place Emilie-Gamelin
Photos by IK (see the album)
On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders announced that he is suspending his campaign to be the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States. Thursday, his now suspended campaign released and ad.
Yes, you heard that right. They took a portion of his live announcement that he was no longer running and turned it into an inspirational video called The Struggle Continues:
So why would he drop out then produce an ad? Well, first off, he didn’t actually drop out of the race, he suspended his campaign.
Now usually the two mean the same thing, in fact, up to now, the two have always meant the same thing in practice. Technically, though, they’re not.
And Bernie made it clear in his announcement (a part that didn’t make it to the video) that he was remaining on the ballot in all the upcoming primaries. He also said that he hopes to amass as many delegates as possible.
While he admits that former Vice President Joe Biden will be nominee, Bernie knows that more Sanders delegates means a greater influence for him and his movement on the party platform at the Democratic National Convention. Bernie also knows that Biden will need much more than his support to beat Donald Trump, he will need to run on policies that the movement Bernie started can actually get behind.
A full-throated endorsement of Biden wouldn’t work at this time and would probably only sideline Bernie and make his personal support moot. This is still early in the campaign season and if it wasn’t for the fact that massive on the ground volunteer mobilization and huge rallies were a major public health risk and also illegal for good reason, Bernie would still be pushing forward to try and win the nomination.
Also, as Bernie mentioned in his statement, with the COVID-19 pandemic laying waste to the world, his time will be better spent in the US Sentate trying to push through legislation that will actually help people right now. It’s ironic that the health crisis that sidelined the Sanders Campaign is also the best argument for Bernie’s signature issue, Medicare for All.
So, while state governors are, in most cases, doing their best to keep their people safe, at the national level, Trump is just being Trump, shilling for a snake oil cure he stands to financially benefit from while treating the worst health catastrophe anyone has faced in over 100 years as a stumbling block to his re-election. Meanwhile Biden is pushing the narrative that he, as President, would handle it better without getting into too many specifics (yes, of course, he would handle it better, but that bar is really low).
And then there’s Bernie. Suspending his campaign so he can devote his time to actually helping and not put his volunteers and supporters in harm’s way.
Not me. Us. A slogan, sure, but also a mantra that it’s now clear Bernie Sanders actually lives by.
Did he get into the race to become President? Absolutely. Was that his ultimate goal? No.
The Presidency was a means to an end. A way to give his country universal healthcare, a living wage and more. If he can get those ideas into the White House without moving in himself, so be it.
The campaign may be over, but the movement Bernie started is most definitely alive and more than well. Bernie is no longer just a guy tossing a job application but the defacto leader of millions demanding to be heard.
He doesn’t need the Dems to nominate him to be heard and what he does over the next few months won’t be construed as a candidate trying to get coverage, but it will get coverage. Bernie is now the most important national political figure in the US.
After the pasting Elizabeth Warren and most of the other presidential hopefuls gave billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg in the most recent Democratic Debate, dropping out of the race would be the logical thing for the former New York City Mayor to do. Of course he won’t, though.
Bloomberg, the sixth richest man in the US, has the cash to stay in and the ego to think it’s a good idea. Unfortunately, there are many in the Democratic Party establishment who think it’s a good idea too.
Their logic is simple: He’s like Trump, but different in the right ways.
The thing is, in many ways, Bloomberg is like the current US President. Unfortunately their differences actually help Trump in a general election, or at best don’t matter and their similarities scream unelectable for a Democratic candidate.
The narrative in favour of Bloomberg goes something like this:
“He’s a billionaire from New York but unlike Trump, he’s not a loudmouth anti-intellectual slob. And New York high society doesn’t laugh at him behind his back.”
Yes, that last part is actually part of the narrative that Bloomberg pushed in a tweet last week:
.@realDonaldTrump – we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence.
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 13, 2020
I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will. https://t.co/fO4azmZaUg
The intent is clearly to get under Trump’s skin and it probably will. However it will also harden the current president’s bogus narrative that he is an everyman and maybe even win him votes from those who feel they would also be mocked by coastal elites.
Aside from members of the Trump family and Rudy Giuliani, people who care what New York high society thinks didn’t vote for Trump last time. Most likely neither did people who think an expansive vocabulary, high intellect and public decorum are the most important traits a president should have.
Trump won in spite of being a rich guy from New York and largely because he came across as not your typical respectable presidential candidate. Well, that and racism.
Speaking of bigotry and prejudice, let’s move onto where Trump and Bloomberg are similar.
While Trump didn’t have an elected political record when he ran for President in 2016, Bloomberg isn’t so lucky. He was Mayor of New York City from 2001 through 2013.
Those turned out to be 12 of the stoppiest, friskiest years the city’s young male African American population ever experienced. Bloomberg took Giuliani’s Stop and Frisk policy and, as Michael Moore said recently, put it on steroids.
While Bloomberg now claims that he is “embarassed” by stop and frisk having “gone too far” under his watch, audio from 2015 unearthed by Benjamin Dixon tells a different story:
Audio of @MikeBloomberg’s 2015 @AspenInstitute speech where he explains that “you can just Xerox (copy)” the description of male, minorities 16-25 and hand to cops.
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) February 10, 2020
Bloomberg had video of speech blocked.
Perhaps because of the problematic explanation he gives for #StopAndFrisk pic.twitter.com/Fm0YCi4ZRy
Racial profiling was a top down policy and the guy at the top is only now “embarassed” by it because he is running for President and got called out. Racial prejudice is one of the traits Bloomberg has in common with Trump.
Another one is his problem with women working for him. Some have reported rather misogynistic things he said, and others, not sure how many others, have signed nondisclosure agreements. This came up during the last debate:
Following that exchange, Bloomberg decided to release three women from their NDAs and left the door open for others. The first signs that some of what transpired on the debate stage actually got through to the billionaire candidate.
Trump also has problems with sexual harassment and worse. But running as a Republican, that sadly doesn’t seem to matter, neither do his racist policies.
As a Democratic candidate, though, both do. Bloomberg is just a bridge too far for many voters who lean to the left but are willing to suck it up and vote for almost anyone running against Trump.
Bloomberg the viable Democratic presidential candidate is the embodiment of the incredibly wrong decades-old belief of many establishment Dems that you can only win swing states and flip Republican states by running as GOP-lite. In this case, it would actually mean running an officially former Republican with a few decent policies to keep the blue states in line.
You don’t turn a purple state blue by wearing a bunch of red. If you want to win over independents and even some Republicans, you need to be a bold alternative, not a watered down version of the other side.
While it may have been Warren who eviscerated (in this case, such an over-the-top click-baity word is appropriate) the former mayor on stage, Bernie Sanders gained the most that night. He walked into the debate the front runner and left it still on top of the pack.
That wasn’t lost on anyone, in particular Bloomberg, who has squarely re-purposed a significant amount of his bottomless ad buying power to attack the Vermont senator. So much for attacking Trump…he is instead attacking the best chance the Dems have to beat him in November.
If Bloomberg truly wanted to use his fortune to remove Trump from office, he would have challenged him in the Republican Primary and then in the General Election as a third-party candidate. He’d take some of the old guard Republican vote and even some of the corporate Democrat vote and leave the working class and socially progressive voters all to Bernie.
Sure, he wouldn’t win, but neither would Trump. In the unlikely event he becomes the Democratic nominee, Trump would undoubtedly win.
Bloomberg won’t save the country from Trump. He’s trying to “save” the Democrats from Sanders, and if that means his old golfing buddy Donald gets another four years, so be it.
Bloomberg is a disaster that hopefully will never happen.
Jason C. McLean is a Canadian political observer who, like everyone else in the world who cares about politics, is following the 2020 US Election quite closely
On Friday, US President Donald Trump agreed to re-open the US Government for 15 days without funding for his much fetishized border wall, thus ending the longest government shutdown in American history.
Pretty much everyone knows that part, but not everyone knows the main cause of Trump’s sudden capitulation. At least I admittedly didn’t on Friday when I half-jokingly posted potential reasons on Facebook, including so the State of the Union could go ahead and Roger Stone’s arrest that morning by unpaid FBI agents.
Within minutes, a couple of FB friends, who had been following things a bit closer than I had, provided me with the real answer. It was one of those “of course” moments.
For weeks, we had been hearing about the back and forth in Washington between the President and newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. We had also been hearing about furloughed government workers struggling to make ends meet with no pay.
Those were the dominant shutdown narratives. But there were also stories of increasingly larger delays at US airports because unpaid air traffic controllers and TSA screeners were calling in “sick” for work in large number.
Then, on Friday morning, enough unpaid air traffic controllers failed to show up for work that no planes landed at or took off from Laguardia Airport for a little over an hour. The FAA had been forced to temporarily shut down half of of New York City’s air transit.
With the risk of this spreading to other airports, Trump re-opened the Federal Government a few hours later. It was essentially a strike, though an unofficial one, that forced the President’s hand.
This didn’t go unnoticed, at least not by people like AOC:
I am so proud of the air traffic controllers, flight attendants, & workers who, through their organizing, should be credited for their role in ending the shutdown.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 26, 2019
Dems only have the House (for now), so we must rely on the bravery + organizing of everyday people to push change. https://t.co/4vFzvZ1PrM
and Bernie:
Thank you air traffic controllers, flight attendants, federal workers and contract employees for standing up for your rights, holding rallies, organizing and sharing heartbreaking stories over the past 35 days. You are the reason that the government shutdown finally ended.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 26, 2019
Still, the dominant narrative is the one that focuses exclusively on the interplay between the politicians. Pelosi beat Trump. Yes, she did, and she executed the correct play of not backing down beautifully.
Pelosi gets credit, sure. But we shouldn’t ignore the workers who ultimately forced the President’s hand and ended the shutdown.
This was one of the most successful labour actions in recent US history and should not be forgotten. Sometimes people power trumps (forgive the pun) political machinations.
Featured Image: Kristoferb via WikiMedia Commons
