Today, downtown Seattle is a
virtual ghost town, and even the few coffee and sandwich shops that are open
only offer food and drinks “to go.” In China, where this coronavirus business
is said to have all started, the foreign ministry is blaming the U.S. military
for bringing the virus to Wuhan as some sort of dastardly plot; if you wonder
how anyone could be dumb enough to believe that in China, remember that people
that dumb elected Donald Trump as president.
Meanwhile, there is quite a bit
of “debate” about who won last night’s Democratic debate. The Washington Post
seemed to think that Joe Biden did, while others were “surprised” about the
“civility” of the debate that hurt Bernie Sanders more because Biden wasn’t
reduced to mental confusion and obvious gaffes. Another claimed that Sanders “won”
an “awful debate,” and at the Guardian
feminist Jill Filipovic sneered at the “two old men” who “failed us.” The big “news” of the evening was that Biden
promised to pick a woman as a running mate, with Kamala Harris and Amy
Klobuchar as the early favorites; apparently Elizabeth Warren is seen as too “risky.”
Biden needs not to repeat Hillary Clinton’s mistake, which was not picking as a
running mate someone who appeals to Sanders’ supporters—although it shouldn’t
be Warren, since there is a lot of bad blood being felt by Sanders supporters
who feel that she is a fake “progressive” who gleefully stabbed Sanders in the
back to buoy a floundering campaign. Personally, I see Biden’s pronouncement as
little more than self-serving grandstanding; we shall see.
Anyways, this was my takeaway from the debate, which
started out civilly, then grew more contentious, with Biden behaving as if
Sanders was just supposed to accept the inevitable and this all was just
supposed to be an exchange of ideas instead of a serious debate of who was more
qualified to be president. Biden looked a little “sick” to me as the candidates
were asked about how they would handle the coronavirus outbreak; I thought
Sanders came out of it better, pointing out that Biden’s claim that universal
healthcare wasn’t “working” to control the virus in Italy would have more
credibility if privatized U.S. healthcare was actually “working” too, which
has failed at least 70 million Americans with little or no coverage.
Biden again and again seemed to have
suffered from what many people accused Barack Obama of doing: “leading from
behind,” backtracking on some previous positions. But although he at first seemed
to agree with some of Sanders positions, such as on climate change, once
Sanders went on the offensive concerning Biden’s past positions, Biden became
ornery and in the end, appeared to indicate that he really didn’t support any
of Sanders positions, out of pique. When asked what he would do to court the
support of Sanders’s supporters, he seemed miffed at the question, like an
angry child stalking off taking all of his toys away.
The biggest difference between
the two candidates that I saw was that Biden repeatedly claimed that voters
were more interested in the “results,” not “revolution.” Voters were more
interested in the “now,” he kept harping on. On the other hand, Sanders
insisted that systemic change needed to happen now before it was too late; the
coronavirus issue was typical of how the U.S. treats a “crisis”—at first in
denial, then grudging acceptance, putting a bandage over the problem, and then
moving on without doing anything to insure it didn’t happen again. The
candidates talked about how each would work to insure that no one would suffer
from enormous medical bills if they came down with the virus, but it was
Sanders who looked at the “big picture,” noting that this country faced a
health care crisis much bigger than just the disease of the month, with people
fearing to go seek medical care due to cost until they are too sick for cost to
matter. Our health care system is broken now, and ultimately, the only way to
fix it is some form of universal health care; Medicare For All or however you
want to style it is either coming whether people “like” it or not, or this
country’s health care system will be the sole province of the rich, the kind
who can afford to pay all their medical expenses out of pocket. It is not a
question of if, but when.
It is also a question of when,
not if, when it comes to climate change and the need for a “green revolution.”
Biden again seemed to support band aid solutions, while Sanders called for “radical”
programs. It was the same thing all night long; Biden didn’t want to change the
“fundamentals” of the country, didn’t want to “frighten” people with change
that is real and substantial. He didn’t want a “billionaire’s tax,” just a
rollback of Trump’s tax law. He wanted to do “first things first” before doing
anything “different,” but as Sanders pointed out again and again, this country has
been doing things that way every day, every month, every year, and the country’s
systemic problems haven’t gotten any better. We are living on borrowed time,
and the window to act is rapidly narrowing. Sanders pointed out that Biden and
those pushing for him seem to have little notion of the reality that most
Americans live in. He accused Biden, rightly, of being opportunistic in “rethinking”
some of his past positions, and whether we should trust him to do the right
thing if he is elected.
Sanders appeared to be at his
weakest concerning the matter of past “support” of societal improvements in
Castro’s Cuba and by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, although he should have made
mention of the factors that led to the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua. Biden
suggested that his foreign policy acumen was superior to Sanders, but Sanders
was correct when he states that Saudi Arabia is no friend of the U.S.—most of the
9-11 terrorists were Saudis, many of the weapons sold to the Saudis have
ended-up in the hands of terrorists, and today, Saudi Arabia’s raising of oil
supplies is apparently meant to harm American oil producers as much as it is to
harm Russian interests.
For those who expected Sanders to
simply exchange an opposing view to “help” Biden see where his weaknesses were
against Trump misjudged their man. What I saw was one man (Biden) who wanted to
take the easy route by patching a bald tire, while Sanders wanted to discard
that tire and put a new one on, one that could handle the tough roads ahead. Unfortunately,
my reading of how many political commentators “read” the debate failed
miserably in seeing that this is what is at stake in this election, just as
much as it is in getting rid of that pestilence called Trump.
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