Tagged: Walker Bragman
The phantom progressives
It must be galling to the progressive community in NYC that Buffalo elected a socialist mayor, while NYC is on the way to electing an ex-cop. Buffalo is, however, the exception to the rule. The current “left” is politically inept. For example, Bernie and his bros spent more time bashing Warren and Buttigieg (who never threatened to win the nomination) than Biden (who never trailed). Only too late did chapo-class journalists realize the danger, and hence the “Dementia Joe” threads (Bragman) and Tara Reade Hoax (Halper & Grim) came into existence.
In the case of the NYC Democratic-mayoral primary, the progs blew up Stringer and Morales, failed to read the room (Defund was a no-go during an incipient “crime wave”), and, in desperation, latched onto an absolute lightweight (Maya Wiley), which has cost AOC a good deal of credibility. Meanwhile, the ex-cop (Adams) coasted to the lead in the 1st choice ranking.
Despite being an ex-cop (and how embarrassing is that for the left?), Adams put together the multicultural/multi-class coalition that progs talk about but never actually achieve, since they were basically appealing to monied types in Park Slope, the UWS, gentrified Williamsburg, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, and the Hamptons.
*
The MyPillock Guy is taking heat for revising the date on which Trump will be “reinstated.” To be fair, it’s almost 2000 years and there’s been no Second Coming yet. Trump’s return will surely take much longer.
Live to tell
What we learned from the Berner campaign this week is that if you want a Social Democratic version of Trump, vote for Bernie.
The Berner campaign is using a Fox News tactic, “swift boating” Biden and Warren via outlets like Jacobin and Intercept, and surrogates like Brie, Sirota, Shure, Day, Grim, and Bragman, who carry the baggage.
When Bern was breaking rocks with Mandela in the 1960s, I wonder if he ever imagined his campaign surrogates would circulate doctored videos during his 2020 campaign?
Classic Trump-like response from the Berner campaign. Double down rather than do the right thing and disown the video.
It is certainly a distraction from Bern’s disastrous debate encounter with Warren and his apologia for racist Trump supporters during an NY Times interview.
As Bern explained to the NY Times, when as President he passes M4A and abolishes ICE and the CIA, the KKK will abolish itself.
The class-centric, base/superstructure model is traditional among all Marxists. They dismiss racism as epiphenomenal, holding that once the proles abolish private property, white supremacists will cease to exist.
Naive.
Is it too much to ask for a Democratic Socialist to run a clean campaign? Or is this Bern’s Leninist streak coming out again (as it did against Clinton in 2016).
*
It’s hard to say “believe women” and then say “except for Elizabeth Warren.” People have to decide if they’ll make this exception in the case of Bern and accept the consequences.
O magnum mysterium
Muppies. Millennial Urban Professionals. The extremely online ones (i.e., writers for Jacobin/Splinternews type outfits) are buying brownstones in Bushwick from their trust funds.
Trump’s biggest feuds of 2019 were with reality and with his crippling paresis.
AOC risks damaging her brand the longer she associates with Bern’s losing campaign. For example, she’ll be held accountable for the misogyny and homophobia exuded by Bern’s online acolytes.
John Kasich say Democrats should avoid hard left candidates. The thing is, Bern and Warren aren’t hard left. They use the rhetoric of class struggle, but they are basically Right deviationists. Bourgeois socialists. Millionaires.
Bern’s online support is more left wing and, frankly, unhinged. But they’ll have no influence on policy.
Interestingly, support for the Vermont revolutionary is low among black voters and voters earning <50k
Bern appeals to the aristocracy of labor and those occupying intermediate class positions. Neither of these groups are particularly revolutionary. Lumpenproles remain with Trump.
Class struggle will continue as it has since 1848: predator capitalists on one side and xenophobic, economistic proles on the other side.
It is no surprise that Michael Moore prefers Trump over Biden. So does Walker Bragman.
Without a theory of needs, woke culture analysis remains superficial (i.e., idealist, bourgeois). It can nag from the sidelines, shame on Twitter, but will have no effect in reality.
White supremacists are as ubiquitous in the military today as heroin was during the Vietnam War era.
Fruitcake has a longer half-life than uranium.
Stardust
Trump saying he’ll “no longer read” Christianity Today is like saying he’ll no longer cheat on his wife(ves).
Christianity Today basically said Trump’s soul is rotten from wallowing in sin.
Hard to disagree.
The Army and Naval academies made a bad decision. But at least we’ll know where to find white nationalists: they’ll wear uniforms.
Is Steve Bannon running these academies?
Officers with bad reputations were “fragged” in the Vietnam era.
Every Marx-inspired crisis theory since 1848 is basically a re-write of The Eighteenth-Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. See the latest New Republic.
There’s no virtue in a small donation. That’s the bizarre populist dogma that has infected the campaign.
Warren is polling at 17% nationally with women and 14% with African Americans. She needs to beef up those numbers or, like Bern, she’ll die in the southern primaries.
Banging on Buttigieg won’t help in this area.
Michael Tracey is famous for knowing the right way to be anti-Trump (e.g., Tulsi Gabbard) as oppose to the wrong way to be anti-Trump (e.g., Nancy Pelosi).
As opposed to Tracey, the revolutionary left are as unhappy with the impeachment as the hardcore MAGAts. Both sides realize it was a massive victory for the Democratic Party Establishment.
Thus the effort to downplay the impeachment or to suggest it was conducted on the wrong basis.
Et cetera 