By surrendering every election cycle to the least worst, liberals proved they have no breaking point. There never has been a line in the sand. They have stood for nothing.
Bernie Sanders arose in 2016 as a political force because he, like Trump, acknowledged the bleak reality imposed on working men and women by the billionaire class. This reality, a reality ignored by the ruling elites, was spoken out loud. The elites were held accountable. The Democratic elites scrambled, successfully, to deny Sanders the 2016 nomination. The Republican elites squabbled among themselves and failed to prevent Trump from becoming the party nominee.
The 2016 chessboard has reappeared, but this time in the Democratic Party primary. The Democratic hierarchy, as horrified by Sanders as the established Republican elites were by Trump, is flailing about trying to find a political savior to defeat the Red menace. Their ineptitude, Sanders' primary asset, was displayed when they mangled the Iowa primary. They, like the Republican elites in 2016, are woefully disconnected from their constituency, attempting to persuade a public they betrayed and no longer understand.
Joe Biden, long a stooge of corporate America, for example, is frantically attempting to paint himself as a champion of poor people of color after his defeats in the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The onetime vice president, however, was one of the driving forces behind the strategy to take back the "law and order" issue from the Republicans. He and Bill Clinton orchestrated the doubling of the prison population, the militarization of the police, and mandatory minimum sentences along with juvenile boot camps, drug courts, policing in schools and the acceleration of the deportation of "criminal aliens." During Biden's leadership in the Senate where he served from 1973 until 2009, when he became Obama's vice president the Congress approved 92 death-eligible crimes in an almost identical period. These Democratic "law and order" policies landed like hammer blows on poor communities of color, inflicting untold misery and egregious acts of injustice. And now Biden, who pounded the nails into those he crucified, is desperately trying to present himself to his victims as their savior. It is a sad metaphor for the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.
Biden, however, is no longer the Democratic ruling elite's flavor of the month. This mantle has been passed to Bloomberg, once the Republican mayor of New York and a Rudy Giuliani ally whose indiscriminate stop-and-frisk harassment of, mainly, African Americans and Latinos was ruled unconstitutional. Bloomberg, whose net worth is estimated at $61.8 billion, said he is ready to spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, what The New York Times has called "a waterfall of cash." He has bought the loyalty of much of the ruling Democratic establishment. He spent, for example, $110 million in 2018 alone to support 24 candidates now in Congress. He is saturating the airwaves with commercials. He is lavishing high salaries and perks on his huge campaign staff. Sanders, or anyone else defying the billionaire class, cannot compete financially. The last desperate gasp of the Democratic Party establishment is to buy the election. Bloomberg is ready to oblige. After all, Bloomberg's money worked miracles in amassing allies to overturn New York City term limits so he could serve a third term as mayor.
But will it work? Will the Democratic elites and Bloomberg be able to smother the Democratic primaries with so much money that Sanders is shut out?
"As with Republicans in 2016, the defining characteristic of the 2020 Democratic race has been the unwieldy size of the field," Matt Taibbi writes. "The same identity crisis lurking under the Republican clown car afflicted this year's Democratic contest: Because neither donors nor party leaders nor pundits could figure out what they should be pretending to stand for, they couldn't coalesce around any one candidate. These constant mercurial shifts in 'momentum' it's Pete! It's Amy! Paging Mike Bloomberg! have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to continue doing so."
If Sanders gets the nomination it will be due to the Keystone Cops ineptitude of the Democratic leadership, one that as Taibbi points out replicates the ineptitude of the Republican elites in 2016. But this time there will be a crucial difference. The ruling elites, once divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton, with most of the elites preferring Clinton, will be united against Sanders. They will back Trump as the least worst. The corporate media will turn its venom, now directed at Trump, toward Sanders. The Democratic Party's mask will come off. It will be open warfare between them and us.
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