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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Election Year Open Thread: What A Coincidence, Guys!

Election Year Open Thread: What A Coincidence, Guys!

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The media starts talking about Warren’s sterling debate performance, and suddenly it occurs to her competitors that she could very well be a useful second banana…

Still looking for the offer from Buttigieg’s team, but maybe he’s young enough not to automatically assume that any woman would automatically be flattered to be offered a job as his backup. Because Bernie and Biden both have the feeble, misogynistic ‘in my day’ excuse. Unlike, I suspect, the Bernie / Biden staffers who thought it would be smart marketing to put it out there at this point in the race…

Clownshow Mike, demonstrating their ‘rationale’:

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  1. 1.

    Kent

    Um…..how about making Bernie Secretary of the Treasury? Since he knows so much about economics.  And the really hard math stuff, like percentages.

    [snark]

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    The Sanders campaign researched whether Warren could be both vice president and treasury secretary at once.

    That would imply that Wilmer would in this scenario be President. Which will not happen.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    That Biden and Sanders want to make a deal with Warren to get her delegates tells me they think she’ll have enough of them to deal for. That means they think she’s going to be a real contender for the nomination. If they are right, her best move is of course to refuse any such deals.

    I’m a bit surprised that Biden’s and Sanders’ people are letting this get out. It only strengthens Warren’s position as a candidate, at their own guy’s expense.

  6. 6.

    Kent

    @Amir Khalid: It makes them look desperate.  And it certainly won’t win them any Warren supporters because it is insulting to be even talking about it before the first votes are cast.

  8. 8.

    CaseyL

    This seems to be a good place to re-up a comment I made in an earlier, half-dead thread:

    Has anyone else seen the latest explosive shit Sirota took on Twitter?  A long, long series of tweets all aimed at accusing Biden of wanting to cut SocSec.  It’s a strange tweet thread, in that 60%-odd  of it are Sirota tweets; hardly anyone else paying attention.  Then some Purity Ratfuckers chime in on how Biden is an evil corporate Dem and only Bernie can save us.

    It’s a lie, by the way. A few non-cult stalwarts in the thread let Sirota know what they think of him, with “piece of shit” being among the nicer remarks.

    The purity of the disinformation, the venom, the sheer hatefulness on display … it’s like psychopathic performance art.  Bernie & Co. really and truly are the leftish version of Trump’s malignant tribe.  It’s nauseating and horrifying to behold.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    @Amir Khalid: You’re assuming that there’s any truth to the story. The Warren/Biden story is based on ‘a report’ that an attendee at a rally heard; that’s thin at best.

  12. 12.

    chris

    @CaseyL:I saw a bit of that and didn’t bother to read because Sirota. Now I have also come across this tweet from the WAPO so YMMV. I figure it’s still early in the game to be worried about stuff like this but Sirota is sleazy and bears watching.

    Just to be clear folks, Joe Biden's got a decades long track record of contemplating cuts to Social Security. No one needs to rely on a contested 2018 statement to make this case. I wrote about it here: https://t.co/umbKFYoiOC— (((Helaine Olen))) (@helaineolen) January 18, 2020

  13. 13.

    Barbara

    @chris: I think we have all had decades long experience “contemplating” cuts to Social Security — because a lot of knuckleheads have forced us to contemplate such cuts.  Not advocating, not proposing, not even suggesting, but contemplating.

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    I’ve been researching since May 2016 whether Wilmer would’ve been a great forest knitter, or could still be a great forest knitter.  The answer has been and still is yes!

  20. 20.

    Jinchi

    I think it’s become traditional that candidates drop hints that a strong rival would be a great VP. It’s a way of signaling to their supporters that it’s safe to switch teams. It’s not surprising that both Biden and Sanders would try it. Securing her voters would go a long way to winning the race.

    And while I’d love to see Warren as president, I’d rather she stayed Senator Warren than become VP. Particularly to Sanders or Biden, either of whom needs to pick a significantly younger running mate to offset concerns about their own age.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @chris: I read the column. The decades “long track record” consists of a proposal to freeze cost-of-living increases in 1984 (probably a bad idea, but I was in high school, along with a guy I just found out is about to be a grandfather, Born In The USA and Purple Rain had just come out, by which I mean it was a long fucking time ago), and things Biden is “said to have advocated” and “seems” to have supported.

    One of our regular Jacobin subscribers who swears up and down the flagpole they’re not for Bernie this time had a hysterical mini-rant the other day about all the terrible things Biden would do to the social safety net, etc. In true Berner fashion, this person thinks we’re electing an absolute monarch who will rule by fiat

  22. 22.

    Bruuuuce

    @Felanius Kootea: How about 15th assistant to the juniormost aide to the Undersecretary of Labor? He might learn something about labor then, though the London bookies would give long odds against.

  24. 24.

    Jinchi

    @Amir Khalid: It only strengthens Warren’s position as a candidate, at their own guy’s expense.

    They’re trying to give her a “good game” clap on the back before the competition has really begun. I don’t think it will work either.

  25. 25.

    Kay

    and if she would join a “centrist administration.”

    She definitely would. “Fight hard and dream big” doesn’t mean “be an idiot and pout” :)

    She won’t be screaming about “rigging” at the convention, either, I can assure you.

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike J:

     

    A dear friend of mine is a former Canadian Ambassador to Ulaanbaatar. He and his wife loved their four years there, became very involved in Mongolian culture, and have been back on visits as private citizens more than once. It’s not the ends-of-the-earth hardship posting you might imagine. (Of course, Wilmer’s quite capable of making a hardship of it….)

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    @CaseyL:

    Bernie & Co. really and truly are the leftish version of Trump’s malignant tribe.  It’s nauseating and horrifying to behold. 

    Couldn’t have put it better myself.

  28. 28.

    Ohio Mom

    I found this amusing:

    At the end of the clip, Michael Moore shudders at the thought that at a deadlocked convention, the party “could bring in someone who didn’t run as a compromise, (shrug) Sherrod Brown.”

    Does he not know how to the left (and effective) Brown is? That Sherrod wouldn’t be a compromise, that would be a huge gift to the group that is split between Warren and Bernie.

    MM could do a lot, lot worse than Sherrod (who I believe is committed to serving Ohio as a Senator, anyway). Talk about tunnel vision.

  32. 32.

    CaseyL

    @chris:  And here’s what Politifact says about that:

    Politifact looked at the Sanders hit and observed that Biden was sarcastically mocking Paul Ryan, not agreeing with him. The Sanders campaign also omitted what Biden said next: the importance of protecting Social Security.

     

    Sirota et al are lying liars who lie.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: As Billin mentioned earlier, the early-mid ’80s was the time of the Greenspan Commission and all the doom and gloom about Social Security going bankrupt because of short term, and long-term (baby boomer retirement), issues. There were lots and lots of proposals.

    It looks like all we thought we knew about the Greenspan Commission is actual hokum (from 2011):

    […]

    Yet, although the commission finally agreed on the size of the fiscal problem at hand, it went absolutely nowhere in terms of putting forward a detailed legislative blueprint potentially acceptable to key Democratic and Republican leaders. As a consequence, in early January 1983, a small group of insiders representing Reagan and O’Neill began secret negotiations that finally led to the formulation of a legislative package acceptable to both the president and the speaker. Once these actors approved the deal negotiated behind closed doors in their name, the commission was asked to vote on the recommendations formulated in the absence of the large majority of its members. Most voted in favour of the package. Less than 6 months later, President Reagan signed into law the 1983 amendments that, in retrospect, made so many observers believe that, as a deliberation and consulting body, the commission itself was a ‘success’. According to Ball, this was clearly not the case. ‘Nothing (…) should obscure the fact that the National Commission on Social Security Reform was not an example of a successful commission. The commission itself stalled (…) after reaching agreement on the size of the problem that needed to be addressed. As a commission, that was as far as it got’ (p. 70).

    This short book offers a personal, informative and well-written perspective on the Greenspan Commission and the enactment of the 1983 amendments, which remain, to this date, the last major Social Security reform in the United States. Although it is clear that Ball is biased in favour of the existing system, and some readers may not agree with his vision, the publication of this book is nonetheless extremely timely as Social Security reform may soon re-enter the federal policy agenda. Considering the negative long-term impact of population aging on Social Security financing and the current fiscal challenges facing the federal government, Social Security could become the target of new efforts to improve its long-term financial status. In fact, Social Security reform is one of the key issues addressed by the Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was established by President Obama in February 2010. Ball’s cautionary tale about the effectiveness of bipartisan commissions in formulating successful legislative proposals is a significant and timely contribution to the debate about the politics and future of Social Security in the United States. This is especially true in the current period of extreme partisanship in Washington, which makes the prospect of a consensual, bipartisan deal even slimmer, at least in the short run.

    Hmmm…

    As always in politics, there’s no deal until there’s a deal. Biden talking about a freeze (or whatever) can’t be taken in isolation. What was he hoping to get in return? Similarly, Obama’s “Grand Bargain” wasn’t a sign of his secret desire to gut Social Security, it was an attempt to see what the GOP would give in return. It’s a bargaining tactic, not a sign of their black-as-coal souls…

    What did they vote for? What did they sign? What did their colleagues think at the time? What did Claude Pepper (he of “Keep your vile hands off Social Security” fame) think at the time?

    (Politics, how does it work??!)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    HumboldtBlue

    I just tried to submit a comment.

    And it didn’t appear. This one did, but I also didn’t include any links.

    Fuck it.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @HumboldtBlue: Make sure you click the “Text” tab in the Comment editor if you’re including links.

    (If you don’t see any tabs, “click here to refresh” (just above the toolbar in the editor) before you start typing.)

    HTH.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Mike J: Special Envoy to the Kuiper Belt – no, wait, make that the Oort Cloud. If he wants to come home for holidays, Jane can fucking well pay his way back out of all the cash she sucked out of that college she bankrupted.

    And Sirota, that fucking Stalinist, is in dire need of being hit by an out of control 18-wheeler.

  39. 39.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Uncle Cosmo: Special Envoy to Alpha Centauri.  And if he objects, put him on a mission to bring back Voyager I and II.

    As for the 18-wheeler, one that’s full of trash?

  43. 43.

    lahke

    So, is Cole secretly running @41 Strange?  Because why else would the latter be showing off little birbs? (many efforts to successfully use stupid phone to copy this link have defeated me. Or maybe it’s not the phone that is stupid. Trust me, he said “birb”).

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    I’ve thought for a while that I would love to see Warren as Treasury Secretary. Not only could she do the job, and do it well, the banksters would shit themselves sideways. Win-win!

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    @mrmoshpotato:

    It is Anfield Stadium, on one of the most solemn occasions in the history of Liverpool FC: the 25th anniversary memorial service for the 96 fans who died in the Hillsborough tragedy.

  48. 48.

    Anne Laurie

    @CaseyL: Has anyone else seen the latest explosive shit Sirota took on Twitter? A long, long series of tweets all aimed at accusing Biden of wanting to cut SocSec. It’s a strange tweet thread, in that 60%-odd of it are Sirota tweets; hardly anyone else paying attention. Then some Purity Ratfuckers chime in on how Biden is an evil corporate Dem and only Bernie can save us.

    You may know this already, but… Sirota is Sanders’ “senior advisor / speechwriter.”  While he was interviewing for that position, earlier in 2019, he was *also* writing virulent, fact-challenged articles on other Democratic candidates while posing as an ‘independent, non-aligned journalist’.   Other political operatives said his hiring reflected poorly on the profession, and on Sanders’ judgement, and there were remarks that any other candidate would’ve rescinded the job offer.  (You can imagine how thoughtfully Sirota responded, of course.)

    Sanders has un-hired other less high-profile aides when their previous histories of racist / sexist / dishonest comments were ‘unearthed’, but he said that nobody could prove that Sirota’s underhanded behavior had damaged other candidates, so he didn’t see any reason not to embrace such an ‘effective & experienced operative.’   That lost Sanders some semi-sympathetic media commentors, because ‘just win, baby’ sounded more like Trump than a potential Trump challenger….

  49. 49.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve thought for a while that I would love to see Warren as Treasury Secretary.

    If Warren’s not gonna be President, she should stay in the Senate, where she could very well end up replicating Teddy Kennedy’s ‘Lion of the Senate’ effectiveness.*

    *without, of course, sharing any of Teddy’s unfortunate personal behavior.

  54. 54.

    Jay

    Stuck in moderation @#52

    cool, wound up deleted in less time than I could note it was in moderation,

    new glitch?

    new feature?

  56. 56.

    Aleta

    Is there a name for this kind of ‘reasoning’ ?

    (It’s a post from a super pro-BS twitter account tonight.)

    Interesting that both Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden are falsely accusing Bernie Sanders of being dishonest.

    It’s almost as if it’s a coordinated attack on Bernie.

    Maybe I could awkwardly describe it as drawing a biased conclusion from an unshakeable wrong assumption — but is there a term for this kind of argument?

    I notice it more  lately.   “All-guns-Yes;  Any-taxes-No”  types seem most inclined to argue this way, so maybe it’s  related to rigidity.

    It’s disturbing from Sanders supporters.

  58. 58.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’ve seen this before and it’s a misconception.

    Out of a 15 member cabinet he only appointed 3 Senators: Clinton, Salazar, and Kerry.   All of their replacements still hold their seats.

    He only appointed 2 sitting Governors: Sebelius and Napolitano.  Both were in the middle of their 2nd terms and term limited.

    There was no harm.

  59. 59.

    J R in WV

    @Ohio Mom:

    That Sherrod wouldn’t be a compromise, that would be a huge gift to the group that is split between Warren and Bernie.

    Yes, and I love Sherrod Brown too. But if he takes a different federal office we lose a senator. This year especially.

  60. 60.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Anne Laurie: That’s a nice thought.  But Teddy passed over a thousand bills in his nearly 50 year career.  That’s just not going to happen today with the republicans filibustering everything and because of Warren’s advanced age.

  61. 61.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    All these desperate, hysterical attacks and lies by Sanders and his camp can only mean his internal polling is in the toilet.

  65. 65.

    sab

    @J R in WV: I live and vote in Ohio, and I can’t think of any Democrat who could be elected to replace Sherrod Brown if he left the Senate. His replacement would be a Republican and almost certainly awful.

  68. 68.

    Aleta

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:  Their latest frantic burrowing in the silt re:  Biden  (paraphrasing:  ‘we didn’t edit the video’ and ‘Politfact never said we edited the video —so Biden is  lying ‘)  also feels like a diversion from 1–what he said to Warren and 2–the lie they put out in their campaign newsletter about what Biden said about Soc. Sec. .

    Here’s what Politfact wrote earlier in January, which Biden was referring to:

    (Politfact)  A Sanders campaign newsletter said, “In 2018, Biden lauded Paul Ryan for proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”

    That stems from a speech Biden gave in 2018 in which he spoke about Ryan. Biden appeared to be mocking Ryan, not praising him.

    The Sanders campaign omitted what Biden said next: the importance of protecting Social Security and Medicare and to change the tax code, which he said benefitted the mega rich. Overall, the point of Biden’s speech was to criticize tax cuts for the rich and call for more help to the middle class.

    The Sanders campaign plucked out part of what Biden said but omitted the full context of his comments.

    We rate this statement False.

  70. 70.

    prostratedragon

    [Sigh]
    And this week in the annals of accidental plagiarism,

    Brazil’s Culture Minister Fired For Using Language Similar To Nazi Joseph Goebbels

    “Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and will be national,” Alvim said, adding that it would be tied to the aspirations of the people, “or else it will be nothing.”

    Playing in the background of the video is music from the opera Lohengrin, composed by Richard Wagner, who is often associated with Nazism. It was also a favorite of Hitler’s.

    “That phrase fell on my desk, I didn’t know it was from Goebbels and I rewrote it,” Alvim told Brazilian news outlet Rádio Gaúcha, adding that it was a “rhetorical coincidence.”

    To cleanse the brain, a Brazilian sings of the persistance of cultural memory:

    “Agoniza mas não morre,” Nelson Sargento

  71. 71.

    Anya

    @Aleta: I saw this yesterday when Jeet Heer tweeted a Politico article “Biden charges Sanders camp ‘doctored video’ to attack him,” with “What do we call it when someone makes a serious claim which is contradicted by the evidence/ Ideally a short word the can fit in the headline?”  I didn’t click on the politico article because I am not about that life but I have assumed Jeet knew what he was talking about and this is why he was calling Biden a lier. I don’t get it. How does he accuse Biden of lying if the context is clear and Biden was making fun of the granny starver? Is there no one to trust these days?

  75. 75.

    Anya

    @Baud: I don’t know, I follow him and I think he’s totally in the Bernie camp. He’s not unbearable about it but he’s always defending him and calling out anyone who says stuff about him but I never see him call out the Bernie camp.

  77. 77.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Re making deals for another candidate’s delegates: In the 2008 Iowa caucus, Obama and Richardson had a deal whereby if Richardson wasn’t viable, his precinct captains would take his voters to Obama. I didn’t know about it ahead of time, and I’m not sure how many other people did. I did hear Richardson’s voters arguing about it during the caucus.

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    @HumboldtBlue: Your other comment got marked as Spam.  Not sure why because there were only 2 links the I could see, so it wasn’t anything you did.

    I believe there may be occasional youtube links that contain a certain sequence that triggers a comment to be marked as spam.  It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen occasionally.

    Your comment is there now at #33.

  79. 79.

    Anne Laurie

    @Anya: He’s not unbearable about it but he’s always defending him and calling out anyone who says stuff about him but I never see him call out the Bernie camp.

    Don’t look at Jeet’s tweets very often any more, but I get the impression that he’s not so much Bernie-biased as he’s afraid that too many of his ‘professional’ on-line ‘friends’ are deeply in the St. Sanders cult.  When I see his tweets on other peoples’ feeds, he seems to be trying to walk a line between rolling his eyes at the Bernista excesses, while still frantically signalling that BOTH SIDES!!!  …

  80. 80.

    Shalimar

    @Anya: It reads to me like Jeet is calling out Politico for not being willing to use the word “liar” in their headline when that is clearly what Biden is calling Sanders.  Obviously that is not how it reads to most people.

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Jay: Your comment with 8 links threw you into spam, because it’s over the limit of 7 links in a single comment.  Once you’re in spam,   your comments don’t go through without intervention.

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    @Aleta:

    Interesting that both Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden are falsely accusing Bernie Sanders of being dishonest.

    It’s almost as if it’s a coordinated attack on Bernie.

    Wouldn’t the more obvious explanation be that Bernie Sanders is dishonest?

  84. 84.

    Shalimar

    @WaterGirl: No one else knows 100% what Sanders said to Warren behind closed doors, but they are definitely being dishonest about the Biden quote.  So, yeah.  To me, they’re just reinforcing that Warren is more trustworthy.

  85. 85.

    Bruuuuce

    @WaterGirl: Occam’s Razor would suggest so, but how could anyone thing Sanctus Bernardus of the Great White (Flight) North would be anything less than perfect?

  86. 86.

    West of the Cascades

    So on this theory, there’s nothing wrong with Warren’s VP, Kamala Harris, also serving as Attorney General?

  87. 87.

    Kathleen

    @CaseyL: I read on Twitter (don’t have link) that Justice Dems spent money on Facebook ads with the same message about Biden and Social Security. The tweet also posted the Politifact response, which was “False”.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Kathleen: It was a planned attack against Biden.  I outlined it in a thread yesterday.  The Bernie team essentially worked with the Intercept to attack Biden on Social Security.

  89. 89.

    Robmassing

    That hypothetical President Sanders would consider giving Warren powerful positions in his hypothetical administration shows that he . . . thinks highly of her, no?

  90. 90.

    artem1s

    If Biden or Wilmer wants to prove they are willing to put a powerful woman in place as their second?  Why not ask Hillary to serve.  Admit that you could use her experience and that she is the obvious choice to be a heartbeat away from the WH. She already has a 100 day plan in place and the Dem platform is pretty much written. If you are actually willing to choose a qualified person who would be up to speed on day one, then she is a natural choice.

    If they don’t win the nomination, I think Warren and Harris know that staying in the Senate or taking a powerful cabinet position is more desirable than the VP spot. Personally I think Warren should stay in the Senate, but could see her as Commerce or Treasury Sec – or hell, Fed Chair. Harris would be great as AG but I’d rather she be majority/minority leader.  Stacy Abrams is an obvious pick for a high level cabinet position too. But any offers to Warren, Harris, or any of the other candidates is just a cover for eliminating the competition and weak appeals to women voters. This isn’t a Reagan/Bush deal in the making.  This is the MSM trying to keep the horse race going after IA and NH and thru Super Tuesday.

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