Having, as Matt Taibbi says, delivered Trump "a juic[y] campaign issue, and an eas[y] way to argue that 'elites' don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters," the Democrats capped off 2020 with a primary campaign in which their establishment candidates, abetted by their allied media, trashed the most popular, and, in the context, inarguably necessary, reform imaginable: Medicare-for-all, which most of them had previously pretended to champion. To ward off the softest of social-democratic reforms represented by Bernie Sanders, they coalesced around the guy who had been all but counted out because he couldn't come in better than fourth in the early primaries--also because he couldn't distinguish his wife from his sister, couldn't keep his nose out of women's hair or his hands off little girls' chests, and couldn't stop lying about his record on advocating the Iraq War, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and getting arrested on his way to meet Nelson Mandela.
To make sure the pandering, opportunism, and general phoniness of Democratic neoliberal identity politics was unmistakable, the party paired him up with a woman of color who had trashed him during the primaries on pretend "bedrock principles" that she later laughed off ("It was a debate!"), who couldn't win a single delegate for herself, and who had turned from for to against Medicare-for-All on the dimes the oligarchy, "rejoicing" at her pick, threw at her. Hey, it's a fwee country.
Fortunately for the Democrats, there was this whole Covid-19 pandemic thing. It accelerated the inevitable denouement of Bernie Sanders' campaign, with his submission to the "coalescing" ploy orchestrated by Obama and the Clintonites. It also glaringly highlighted the dangers of Trump's narcissism and incompetence, as he, with nary a pause in his Twitter braggadocio, utterly failed to manage either the health crisis or the devastating economic crisis that blossomed in its wake, with tens of millions thrown out of work, off their health insurance, and out of their homes.
Of course, what was not glaringly highlighted, though exceedingly obvious, was the disgraceful lack of a real public healthcare system or of a socio-economic order that isn't contemptuous of people's needs, which made it near impossible for anyone to manage such a crisis. Everyone was flailing around, and many Democrats (e.g., Cuomo) did as bad or worse. Having ruled out the obvious and effective--Medicare-for-all, job, income, and housing guarantees, etc.--the Democrats had nothing better to offer. But Trump was in charge nationally and certainly deserved criticism, and it was easy for the Democratic-allied media to again make it all about him.
Covering Losses
This was the succession of ludicrous political choices and abject failures that led to the political apotheosis of the year: Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, by a mere 42,000 votes in three states.
Oh, yes, a very narrow victory: ~10-12K in GA and AZ, 22K in WI For some reason Democrats and their allied media do not highlight this, the way they raged about the "illegitimate" twice-as-many-votes difference that accounted for Hillary's defeat in 2016.
But that 42K is the farcical standard as decreed by our sacred founding fathers' democracy that all our brave soldiers died for, yada, yada--faith in which, according to the Democrats, we must not undermine by challenging the result.
This year, at least.
Before saying a word about January 6, 2021, I would suggest that people take a breath to understand the history and political relevance of the crucial issue that was the professed cause of the demonstration that day, and that has been obviously haunting our "democracy" for twenty years at least.
In 2004, Democrats, activists, and civil rights groups raised concerns "about various aspects of the voting process, including whether voting had been made accessible to all those entitled to vote, whether ineligible voters were registered, whether voters were registered multiple times, and whether the votes cast had been correctly counted." As the great Warner Wolf used to say, Let's go to the videotape, to take a look at January 6, 2005, and the certification of a presidential election in which George W. Bush got three million more votes than John Kerry, but would have lost without Ohio's 20 electoral votes:
Alleging widespread "irregularities" on Election Day, a group of Democrats in Congress [led by Barbara Boxer] objected Thursday to the counting of Ohio's 20 electoral votes, delaying the official certification of the 2004 presidential election results.
"How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people ... to simply get over it and move on?
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