CT Blue

Dear Bernie Bros:

It has now become clear that Joe Biden will enter the convention with a majority of pledged delegates and will not have to rely on Super Delegates to get himself over the top.

Just a few weeks ago, Bernie’s folks were arguing that the nomination should go to whoever gets to the convention with a plurality of delegates. A majority is more than a plurality. Only a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Some non-foolish consistency is now in order.

For my own part, putting Tulsi aside, I would have preferred almost any of the other serious contenders to Joe, for reasons I have spelled out in previous posts. I suspect that many of the votes cast for Biden were cast with noses firmly clasped by those who were convinced by our media that he was the only electable choice. Nonetheless, he will be the candidate, and he is preferable to the crypto-fascist that occupies the post currently. And no, he is not senile, as Russia and the genius would like us to think, and as many Bernie Bros are parroting, just as some embraced the Hillary email non-scandal in 2016. Biden sometimes puts his foot in his mouth, but by any reasonable standard one would have to say that the genius hardly ever takes his foot out of his mouth. This charge is particularly ironical, considering the fact that the moron Joe is running against is himself quite likely in the beginning stages of dementia. Bernie Bros: keep in mind, when they accuse us of something it’s because they’re doing it themselves. You could look it up.

Already, the pure of heart, Bernie supporters all, are announcing on various social media platforms that they will not vote at all if they cannot vote for Bernie.

In 1980 the pure of heart voted for John Anderson or Barry Commoner, which gave us Ronald Reagan and the beginning of the march toward fascism/kleptocracy/autocracy (take your choice, I’ll stick with fascism from here on) that has reached a temporary zenith under he whose name I shall avoid mentioning in this post.

The pure of heart gave us George W. Bush in 2000 and a regime that pushed us even farther toward fascism, by, among other things, stacking the courts with judges who are perfectly happy to see our system of elections warped by voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering. Perhaps the factual basis for no Supreme Court decision has been so effectively refuted by history as the assertion by the Roberts Supreme Court, while eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, that the Act’s preclearance protections were no longer needed because those Southern States were now totally uninfected by racism. The result has been voter suppression of staggering dimensions. And bear in mind that the guy who wasn’t pure enough for those folks in 2000 was Al Gore, who was warning about climate change even before it became clear, as it now is, that it is the major issue of our times.

The pure of heart helped us get losses in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, paving the way for what is, in all but name, a fascist regime. Our concentration camps may not boast ovens, but they exist nevertheless, and we have destroyed the lives of countless children who cannot even understand what is happening to them. Stephen Miller, the man most responsible for these abhorrent policies, is an out and proud Nazi. Right now we are hearing that the most important thing about an oncoming plague is managing economic loss, one of the tools for doing so being stealth destruction of social security. A loss in 2020 for the Democratic nominee will pave the way for a permanent fascist state, which may, like Rome did for a while, maintain the trappings of a Republic. Justice Ginsburg can’t live forever, and when she goes the Republicans will solidify their hold on a court system now dedicated to legalizing any unconstitutional or statutorily illegal act committed by a Republican. Voter suppression will be condoned in deed if not in word, while gerrymandering has already gotten a free pass. Our only hope on this score is that a Democratic congress and a Democratic president can pass voter protection laws to at least attempt to redress the impending destruction of the Republic.

If you doubt that we will be in for a dictatorship if we don’t stop the incumbent, consider that the entire Republican Party is now comfortable with a level of criminality in the executive (providing it’s a Republican executive) that makes Richard Nixon, the man who resigned because his party would no longer back him, look pure as the driven snow. If the yellow one is re-elected, he will do whatever he wants without consequence, even if the Democrats get control of the Senate. They’ll never get two thirds, and that’s what it takes to convict him, providing the Supreme Court doesn’t rule impeachment of a Republican unconstitutional. Already people are getting worried, with good reason, that he’ll use the corona virus crisis, a crisis largely of his own making due to a late and incompetent response, as a reason to “postpone” the election.

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No aphorism is more true than this: the perfect is the enemy of the good. If Herr Trump is reelected, it will quite likely be by the slimmest of margins. Every person with a pure heart who does not vote will have, in effect, cast a vote for the would be dictator. This is especially true in those states (otherwise known as swing states) that are well stocked with, but not overwhelmed by, whackjobs.

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It comes down to this: It’s Joe Biden or the end of American democracy. I’m no fan of Joe, but I’ll take Joe if that’s the choice. Once he’s in, it will be our job, Bernie and his followers included, to push Joe into doing what’s needed to save the country. It’s a sad fact of life, but you prove nothing by taking a holier than thou position and paving the way for dictatorship.

Update: On the demential issue. Watch the videos here. Bernie and Joe are both old men, but neither of them have dementia.