He achieved the exact opposite.
... We now have a tremendous opportunity because America has been awakened to realize how bad things are. To take the next step forward, we have a great, great opportunity...
... to give the marginalized, the demonized, the isolated, the oppressed, a full share of the American Dream... to root out systemic racism...
Please continue to give HOPE, HOPE, HOPE. Thank you. -- Joe Biden
From Teri Kanefield's blog today,
Some background: Oligarchy isn’t new in the US. In fact, this is our third slide into oligarchy. [...]
When the South lost, the North quickly moved to strengthen industry and infrastructure. There were almost no federal regulations limiting industrialists, so many cheated. They manipulated markets and fixed prices. There were no labor protections, no social security, no 40 hour work week. [...]
This brings us to the second oligarchy, the age of robber barons. The rich were rich. The poor had no hope of advancement. [...]
These groups aligned to dismantle the federal government:
- Industries that wanted to get rid of regulations and taxes
- White supremacists
- and Evangelicals who wanted the church to govern, not the state. [...]
We’re now tipping toward a third oligarchy which (if we get there) will be best described as a Post-Communist Mafia State.
A mafia state is when a few wealthy people control the government and essentially own and control the nation’s industries.
This brings us to Putin, a creator of the modern mafia state.
White supremacists love Putin. [...]
Each oligarchy we’ve been through has been outwardly different, but each was fueled by racism.
According to political psychologists some people will never live comfortably in a liberal democracy. They’ll hate it. They’ll fight it.
Democracy is chaotic and messy. Autocracy is streamlined and efficient (none of those checks and balances to slow things down).As I alluded to in my previous post, this has been a tough week for me. One reason: the best presidential candidate (IMNSHO) dropped out of the race.
That leaves Tulsi Gabbard (oh, PUH-leeze), Bernie Sanders (my 2016 favorite candidate), and Joe Biden.
Technically, the race between Bernie and Joe is still up in the air. However, essentially and practically, I believe it's over.
Unless Bernie comes up with a nobly unifying message, Joe Biden will be the nominee.
The video at the top of this post is the primary reason. Secondarily, the reason is because while Bernie and his supporters weren't looking, Liz Warren effected the revolution. Perhaps the only revolution that matters at this moment.
Liz Warren, as HuffPost declared a few days ago, has (fundamentally) changed the Democratic Party.
The two most influential scholars of economic inequality in the past 50 years are a French economist named Thomas Piketty and a former Harvard law professor named Elizabeth Warren. Piketty’s work revolutionized the way we think about capitalism; Warren’s research transformed the way we think about the economic pressures facing middle-class families. Her bankruptcy scholarship from the 1980s through the 2000s didn’t just resonate with those reading law reviews and economic journals. It took Washington. Chuck Schumer was stunned to read Warren’s work indicating that middle class incomes were actually declining during what had seemed like boom years at the turn of the millennium. She had discovered, he said, “the greatest crisis in America.” [...]
Warren was different. She showed up in D.C. in 2009 as the chair of a panel overseeing the bank bailouts. The panel was essentially toothless ― something created to mollify critics without limiting the Treasury Department’s ability to do what it wanted with the $700 billion Congress had allotted the financial rescue. Warren could have easily secured a place for herself in Democratic Party politics by playing nice and not looking too hard at the people in power.
Instead, she converted the oversight committee into a bracing exposé of abuse and incompetence, enraging the Obama administration and educating the public. [...]
On Thursday, Warren formally withdrew from the primary, after a disappointing showing in early states. But like her career prior to Washington, the significance of Warren’s campaign can’t really be measured quantitatively. Warren has changed the way we think about our politics in ways many Americans don’t even realize. The horizon of possibilities is wider and a bit brighter as a result of her run, and ideas that once seemed like hippie pipe dreams are now the serious subject of policy discussion. Even self-proclaimed moderates and centrists now define themselves on her terms ― they are moderate because they don’t want to do what Elizabeth Warren has proposed.Liz Warren may not be President #46. But if she's not sworn in as Vice-President on January 20, 2021, she may be the next Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. In the alternative, there's already a movement, which might just get major traction, calling for Warren to become the next Majority Leader of the Senate.
The possibilities are legion. They ALL include Elizabeth Warren playing a major role to usher in the next wave of PROGRESS that Biden called forth in this latest ad.
By the way, for all the criticism Joe Biden has faced and will face, there's a fundamental difference between Joe and Hillary. Widely believed to be inauthentic in 2016, Hillary came damn close to becoming president.
Joe Biden has his foibles. But he is genuine and authentic. His policy mistakes through the years can easily be cataloged. But his concern for Main Street America cannot be reasonably questioned.
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