The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Freedland does his best to election meddle Archived Message

    Posted by Raskolnikov on March 7, 2020, 7:16 am

    https://www.dumptheguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/06/coronavirus-joe-biden-epidemic-washington-obama

    In a major case of trying to put lipstick on a pig, Johhny tries to claim Biden's strong point will be his Washington insider status now that Corona virus is here.

    Joe Biden is a candidate whose performance on the stump ranges from badly flawed to awful. He is a meandering, unfocused speaker, often unable to complete a sentence, let alone a thought, with a record in office that is decidedly patchy, marred by several past positions he struggles to defend. And yet Biden is now the frontrunner for his party’s nomination to take on Donald Trump. What’s more, the current mood, and specifically the threat of coronavirus, might just turn his defining weakness into a strength – and give him a serious shot at the White House.

    I saw his limitations for myself last month in Hudson, New Hampshire, as he paced around a high school gymnasium delivering a rambling monologue that suggested a politician well past his prime. Stronger on autobiography than policy, he strung together childhood memories, mottos taught him by his father and a kind of perplexed outrage that Trump’s America was not a country he recognised any more: “What’s this all about?” he asked, as if befuddled. “What do we stand for?” In New Hampshire, he finished fifth.

    Yet in the last seven days Biden has staged what is surely the most remarkable turnaround in modern US political history, a massive win in South Carolina setting off a chain reaction that brought victories across the south and midwest on Super Tuesday. Only Bernie Sanders now stands between Joe Biden and the nomination, with the map of upcoming primary contests tilted in the latter’s favour.

    Then he tries to cram the most credulous, or just dishonest, statements into one paragraph that he can.

    Sanders likes to say it was the “political and corporate establishment” that handed victory to Biden, but that’s a stretch. For one thing, the Biden campaign was all but broke going into Super Tuesday, outspent by Sanders by a ratio of seven-to-one (and outspent by Mike Bloomberg by 100-to-1). Biden had only a skeletal presence on the ground, dwarfed by Sanders’ vast grassroots operation. Besides, it was not the establishment that turned out for Biden, but African-American voters – the most consistently faithful group within the Democratic coalition – who backed him over Sanders by huge, crushing margins. Along with suburban women, it was black America, not corporate America, that made the difference.

    No, you're right Jonathon. Nothing to do with every other candidate, every political mouthpiece, every media outlet supporting him and bashing Sanders. Nothing to do with Obama making calls behind the scenes trying to get endorsements. Nothing to do with all of that, it was African-Americans and suburban women. Handy that it was those two identity groups and not a load of rich white men, eh? Seriously though, this is just bollocks, Freedland.

    Also, so far as I've seen, with the exception of Greg Palast although he's talking mostly about cases previous to this, nobody is talking about the ridiculous nature of the Super Tuesday results. Biden was polling in fourth at 9% in Massachusetts and two days later he wins at 34% or whatever it was? People on the ground have said they didn't encounter anywhere near that level of support in all their canvassing. Bided had almost nobody on the ground in a lot of these states, not very many ads, his rallies were anaemic but then the results come in like they did. I predicted "surprise" results in my last post but these were beyond that and stink to high heaven.

    I also predicted way back that the DNC would love a Biden/Harris ticket and they still might end up trying to shove that down the public's throat after the convention. Biden for them is a win/win. If he loses, great. They keep the donors and keep pretending to be the "resistance" and keep taking the backhanders and mouthing platitudes. If he managed to win, and surely he will be annihilated by Trump but if, then they could get rid of him in six months on health grounds and their hand-picked VP gets to take over without ever having to have those dreadful "people" involved in that voting thing.

    Message Thread: