Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Present us with a Quandary

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders present voters with an interesting quandary for the Democrat primary.

On one hand, Bernie Sanders has been plugging away for close to fifty years, on the inaction of the Democrats (and other liberals) concerning the basic problems faced by the poor and minorities in the USA.  Certainly this country has become a melting-pot for the world; more of a melting-pot than other countries, and more able to deal with the changing profile of the population than many other countries.  (The UK and certain European countries are struggling with the incoming migrants, while the US has dealt with this problem—more or less gracefully— for a century.)  Well, if one of the major characteristics of our population is that it is extremely diverse—this is a fact, not a choice—then we have to face the fact that more than a century of free enterprise has created an economic underclass that is frustrated, and which contains a disproportional number of minorities.  And furthermore, this class is unable to deal with certain basic problems: education, health, pollution, discrimination, and a few others.  Democrats have nibbled away at the edges of these problems, but not addressed them head-on.  Finally, it appears that Bernie has gained enough momentum to actually secure the nomination to be the representative of the Democrat Party.

Elizabeth Warren, in contrast, is a relative newcomer.  She is about a decade younger—which is not saying much—but appears to be in better health.  She is not as abrasive, and more patient (which women of all sorts have found to be a survival characteristic), and has been frustrated in a different way.  She has ideas about how to prevent the large-scale financial system from victimizing the poor, and to prevent people who run the financial establishment from making their millions off the backs of unwary consumers.  Poor consumers simply do not have the resources, the networking, the financial support of friends and family, to fight the depredations of predatory lenders, vicious credit card companies, unscrupulous health services, and laws that are not friendly towards the working poor.  She has been blocked repeatedly by the financial industry (who rightly see her as viewing their easy profit methods with hostility), and hindered by her male colleagues, simply because men are conditioned to elbow out women without thinking.  Bear in mind that single mothers are a rapidly expanding sector of the working poor, which congress is slow to recognize.  While the problem of sexual harassment of women is something that society is reluctantly beginning to face, the daily grinding down of poor women and their families is still something that goes under the radar.

Both of these candidates deserve to have a chance at being the nominee of the Democrat Party, for many of the same reasons, and for slightly different reasons in addition.  And now it comes down to the electability calculus, which is, this year, particularly difficult to work through!

The problem with being one of the Radicals

We all know that the conservatives (and the media) have brought back this label, to describe those in the Democrat Party whom they consider to have extreme views.  Bernie Sanders embraces this label, but insists at the same time that his plans are not too radical.  Only his plan to provide Medicare For All is at all radical; everything else he wants to do is common sense.  As it is, education up to High School (up to secondary level) is free in the US, though of course there’s nothing to prevent a doting parent from paying to send their child to a private school.  Bernie wants to extend free education up to the college level (up to tertiary level).  It makes some sense to provide this at government-supported colleges and universities; there would be trouble if private colleges and universities were required to provide free education.  Of course this will take money and work.  The Upper Middle Class objects to this as requiring too much money (and obviously raising taxes on the rich), but it has the potential for crowding the pool of applicants for good jobs.  With easy access to education, the problem of educational elites has to be addressed.  In addition to increasing the numbers of qualified people applying for any job, there is the small problem that certain types of occupation are shunned by those with higher education, and those of us who are well educated are keeping an eye on this effect as well.  So far none of the candidates are talking very much about it, because it is politically problematic.  Even the very poor hate to be working on levees and roads and sewers and landfills.  (But someone has to.  There, I said it.)

Elizabeth Warren refuses to be labeled a Socialist.  Many of her policies protect the poor, and place a greater tax burden on the most wealthy (i.e. The Rich).  But this has been done in the US for decades.  Making credit-card banks follow laws that prevent them from throwing poor families into bankruptcy is not at all unfair, for instance.  Raising taxes to provide so-called ‘Socialized Medicine’, as is done in Canada and the United Kingdom, by no means comes close to making the US a socialist economy.

Thinking about these issues gives people headaches, especially if they’re unused to thinking about difficult problems regularly.  Well, after the weekend, some issues will become clearer (for instance: should we give Joe Biden a chance?)

After the South Carolina Primary, I predict that Bernie Sanders will still head the candidates at the polls; Elizabeth Warren will probably be either third or fourth, with Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar filling in the gaps.

After Super Tuesday, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will be left in the race.  (Running for president is such a waste of money, time and energy for most candidates; this is why the choices have been so bad for the Democrats for so long.  For Republicans, there’s all those luscious corporate dollars waiting for them.  Democrats, too, have their rich friends, but most people know who they are; and Democrats, unlike Republicans, are mildly embarrassed by their rich friends.  But this election, Democrats are all fired up.  We should be grateful to have so many candidates jumping into the ring, and to have to pick from among so many talented people.  (Make no mistake: when politics returns to the usual boring grind, we will dearly wish to have this set of candidates back.)

If Elizabeth Warren survives Super Tuesday, I am inclined to support her.  I wish she would quickly turn to supporting the down-ballot races (that is, Democrat candidates for congressional, senate and state and local representative, which are so important, not least to encourage states to work with the federal government to offer new health care plans, for instance).  In our part of the world, Democrats are not even running for certain congressional slots, and Republicans of limited ability are running unopposed.

That’s all for now!  Nothing more can be said until, well, Wednesday, or Sunday, the earliest.

Relax.  Nothing is achieved by worrying.  Bear in mind that everyone deserves a compassionate thought, though some people may have sucked all the compassion out of us.  Think about all those parents involved in the debacle of faking entrance to exclusive colleges!  And think of the poor, spoiled kids, who now have to endure the taunting of unsympathetic classmates.  (It is the less-qualified classmates who probably do most of the taunting, but that's probably no big consolation.)  As I was telling an old friend recently, the older I get, the more I think of all the terrible things that people do as being forgivable.  For the most part.

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The Iowa Caucus Has Problems

Though the Iowa Caucus has been a great idea, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get great ideas working as they should, in this new improved world of ours!  (Last I heard, someone had created an App for the leaders of the Iowa caucuses to send in their numbers, and either the App did not work as advertised, or the leaders didn't use the App appropriately.  Apps are tricky things.  And furthermore, any and all Apps can be made to report to people and websites of which the users don't know anything about.  I'm not saying that happened in Iowa, but . . . the fewer Apps, the better, if you know what I mean.)

Anyway, its going to be a while before the information from Iowa comes out, but the null hypothesis there is (in other words, what we would believe if new information is not forthcoming) that the top four contenders are running neck and neck: Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg.

Now it is time for us to worry less about what everybody else thinks, which is what most of us have agonized about thus far, and settle what we think. 

Those who simply focused on getting rid of Trump (to put it crudely) have wondered which candidate can get the most votes at the general election.  Well, for those who are afraid that the most radical candidates will alienate moderate voters, listen: a Democratic president cannot simply put things in place without the active participation of Congress.  (Well; he or she might be able to do this, but it will create a stink from both the conservatives and the liberals.)  So the most far out schemes of both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren will be toned down to the sort of plans that Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are likely to try to float anyway.  So let us not worry about our nominee being too radical.

As far as the unaligned moderates out there: we can't do better than choosing someone who is not looking to antagonize the GOP.  None of the Democrat candidates are looking for a fight with the GOP (though, to be honest, we do think that they have betrayed themselves, and the conservative part of the population, by going this route of hostility to migrants, and belligerence to foreign nations.)

Biden: historically, he has been willing to compromise with conservatives (to the extent of talking in conservative language, occasionally).  But I'm afraid that, as some commentators have pointed out, if he is elected, Republicans could try to impeach him simply based on the Ukraine fairy tales that Trump and Giuliani have manufactured.

Warren is against the usual Washington shenanigans, but (she claims) she isn't prejudiced against the GOP as such.  I believe her; the question is whether the moderate rank and file believe her.  She has a few months to make them believe her.  She can be an excellent president, and in fact, I don't believe we can do better than her.

Sanders is becoming increasingly belligerent.  I think he would win if we have a massive Democrat turnout at the polls in November, but he is likely to get the Republicans all fired up as well.  I don't see a lot of healing taking place with Sanders on the ballot.  Now, bear in mind: Sanders is not mad at the GOP as such (or rather, he hasn't been.  After this impeachment, he is likely to be quite angry and disappointed in the conservatives), he is angry against money in politics, and corruption in government, and against the tax laws.  But those who are against money in government (and the tax laws) must also have conservatives among them.  It has only recently been the case that those who call themselves Republicans have been OK with the sorts of shenanigans that they have got into recently: with Russia, and bribery, and spreading false rumors, etc.  It is as if they're saying: we can't beat the Dems legitimately, so let's hand over the elections to Trump and these crooks, and see what we can get.

Yang is really a millennial moderate.  The young folks who have phones surgically planted in their palms see Yang as a hero, and he isn't really bad.  He hasn't alienated the conservatives, and he has retained a large number of liberal Democrats who are not interested in getting hostile with the Alt Right.  He calls himself 'a numbers guy,' and he seems at home with the numerical gymnastics that the economists like to play with: let's cut taxes by this much, and people will spend that much, and the unemployment rate will fall that much, and Wall Street will do that much.  I don't like these sorts of calculations, but if he must be the one who gets the nomination, I guess I can stand four years of him.  He at least knows the language better than Trump.

Buttigieg is a moderate.  Electability-wise, we have to consider all those whose view of the White House is that of a distinguished-looking guy in the Oval Office, and a gracious woman standing behind him, ready to help host a few nice parties for bigwigs from Europe.  I only know a few people among my neighbors.  I don't think having Buttigieg in the WH will be a disaster, but I have a feeling that it would be a tough sell.  Heck, a woman president would be a tough sell, but people have done it, and it has worked nicely.  But in these matters, the USA is not a trail blazer; we wait until it has been done in, say, Netherlands, or Russia, before we elect a gay president.

Klobuchar (Amy to her friends) is also an excellent choice, but she can't do it alone; she needs to be backed up with a strong army of administrative supporters, but I'm sure she can get one together.  She isn't committed to any of these Health Reform plans that have got some people all upset, but neither is she very hostile to any of them.  Honestly, a Health Reform plan must come from some sort of committee; I don't think it needs to be a detailed Take It Or Leave It plan.  A president needs to have the will to make it palatable, and not likely to be repealed by the GOP if they win the next election.  (The difficulty the GOP has had with repealing Obamacare simply goes to show how well the latter was put together.)

Bloomberg.  I hope he doesn't win the nomination.  If he does, it will go to show that only someone who can mobilize big, old-fashioned pots of money can win this election.  Maybe Trump has set us back a decade or two, and the idea of Big Money Can Win has captured the electorate, but I fervently hope not.  The same goes for Tom Steyer.  They both have excellent ideas, but they're sort of a tough sell; many people are tired of the bi-coastal power wielders to let them keep the leadership of the nation.  All the other candidates except Buttigieg and Klobuchar are bi-coastal types, but these two billionaires are obnoxiously bi-coastal.

So that's my take on the acceptability vs. electability conundrum we're faced with.  Of course, these issues will be decided one state at a time first.  But unless we stand by whoever the Party picks, no matter how lame, we're screwed.

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How the Iowa Caucus Works (AFAICT)

I had misunderstood how the Iowa Caucus(es) worked, and it is quite possible that I haven't got all the details right, but here's what I understand.

On the designated day, across Iowa in numerous neighborhood gathering places (analogous to voting precincts, but possibly smaller), Iowa Democrats gather, to do the following, called caucusing:

Various places in the room are set out for each candidate.  (This year, for instance, there will be an area for Bernie Sanders, and area for Joe Biden, and so on, down the line.)  Each Iowa Democrat voter goes to stand at the space set aside for the candidate that he or she prefers.  There is also a space for those who are still undecided.

Thirty minutes are permitted for those in each little group to persuade those in the other groups to join them (for instance, the Pete Buttigieg group could be trying to persuade the undecided voters to join them.)

Now, if I understand this correctly, any voters who are in any group that contains less than 15% of those in the room are required to abandon that candidate, and join the group of another candidate.  In other words, the least favored candidates are removed from consideration.  (This is similar to, but not the same as, the method used to select a new Pope from within the college of cardinals, in Rome.  In that situation, all the cardinals are considered in the first round, so that the process is self-nominating.)

Obviously 15% is an arbitrary cutoff level, but has probably been selected for the sake of efficiency.

Once the 'low-scoring' candidates have been eliminated in the first round, it could still be that one or more of the remaining groups does not have the requisite 15% to survive, in which case, it must be dissolved, and its members redistributed.  This process is continued until every candidate has at least 15% of the vote, and an elected person records the result, to be sent on to the district, which is next higher up in the hierarchy of polling regions.  Each group elects delegates to actually represent them, as I understand it, in the caucuses that follow--District Caucuses, presumably--until the State Convention meets, at which time the delegates choose a candidate somehow; I had lost patience with the whole business by the time I was reading about the State Convention. 

However, please note, that the raw "votes" of the first round are reported to the media, and the aggregated votes are publicized, despite the fact that the State Convention might produce a different candidate rather than the one who wins the most total votes in that first round.

(Despite my having said that I had gotten impatient with the process, I should not be misunderstood as being unimpressed with the process.  In a race where there are numerous candidates, such as we have this year, this process is probably the most fair, and the various opportunities for convinced voters to persuade other voters to their way of thinking is an imaginative means of explaining why a particular candidate might be a better choice, or at least a good fallback.)

The Republican Caucuses

Evidently the Republican Party of Iowa has its own, different rules.  They appear to me to be less reliable, and less successful at delivering, historically at least, a candidate who goes on to win the nomination.  Their process, which has changed over the years (as has the Democratic procedure, to be fair,) is available for your edification in Wikipedia.  And while you're at it, shoot the Wikipedia fellows a contribution, if that fits in with your plans.

The Debate

The question has come up: now that all the non-white candidates have been almost completely eliminated, as well as many of the female candidates, should Democrats select a woman candidate, since the minorities have failed to poll up to the bar set by the DNC?

Here's my thinking.

There are two objectives.

Bringing diversity into Presidential elections.

Electing a suitable president.

Of these, it seems to me that the nominee should be one who will move forward the desperately important Democrat agenda, following the devastation of the ultra-conservative four years that have gone by.  Making a statement about diversity takes second place.  This is not to say that it isn't possible to do both.  Select a president who can stand up to the nonsense of the ultra-Right, and inspire voters to go to the polls, and elect Democrat congressmen and congresswomen and senators; and if it is a woman, so much the better.

Electability rears its ugly head.  This is why the Iowa Caucuses are so important.  They subsume the problem of electability, and deliver a candidate with electability baked-in, as it were.

Still, there's no getting around the problem that Iowa has been a state with very little diversity, and one wonders whether they are competent to be the proxies for the nation in its needs for diversity of all kinds, including biodiversity, and ecological diversity.  Do they even understand the problems of the Farming Industry, and the Manufacturing Industry, though one would expect that they are placed well enough to understand those?

But as Democrats across the country walk about in bewilderment, trying and usually failing to allow their prejudices to select a candidate, given that none of the candidates are TV celebrities, to make things easier for us, it is good to get a head start with those brave idealists in Iowa!

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The New Bafflement

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In a recent piece, the former Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair (who has the distinction of having supported George W. Bush's misadventures in Iraq) says that he is baffled by the rise of Bernie Sanders in the US, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain.

In the politics of recent times, i.e. the 19th and 20th centuries, there have been two factors that would-be national elected leaders had to take into account:

What does the country need the next elected head-of-state to do?
The related question: "Am I willing to do this?" is sort of secondary.  This approach to politics is cynical in its very nature; the question is whether one can come across as less cynical than the other a$$holes.

What should I say I am in favor of, to get the largest possible number of people to support me?
This is the "electability" question that Tony Blair is raising: if either Corbyn (in Britain) or Sanders (in the USA) were to be elected, who will stand with them to push forward their agenda?  As you can see, on the face of it, this question is even more subtly cynical, since it brings up the issue of whether one is lying in order to get support.  Then, the other interesting question is this.
Before the election, every voter must ask herself: does this fellow have a chance of getting any other votes than those of a few space cadets like myself? If the answer is yes, then we consider that the candidate concerned is electable. If the answer is no, then very few will be voting for him, despite how much you may like him, and we would regard him as in-electable.
If everyone was more concerned about electability than about the attitudes, principles and character of the candidate, then it becomes an exercise in guesswork: we're merely trying to guess which candidate is likely to get the most votes, even if he's not the one we want.

This election seems unusual in that we're willing to play for high stakes.  The stakes are: if we go with continuity ("More of same"), then the banks and Big Business will get richer, and we will get poorer, and we'll be working harder for less to show for it.  Many of my friends (but not all, to be fair,) are willing to gamble on a candidate who wants to make a major change in how politics is conducted in the US, and that candidate seems to be Bernie Sanders, though for the life of me I can't see that team behind him enabling him to achieve his goals if he were to get into office.  We don't know any of these people.  (But then, we didn't know the Obama team, nor the Clinton team before they came into office either.)

Meanwhile, there are some people of limited intelligence, it seems to me, that seem to think that what we need most is someone in the White House who will make rude remarks about foreign countries and religions other than Christianity, be willing to escalate wars in all theatres, take a belligerent posture, and help Big Business get richer than ever.  There are yet others who want to take a harsh attitude towards people of foreign origin, be hostile towards Cuba and Mexico, in order to prevent trade (and probably smuggling) across the border into the US.

The more successful the US is in its economy, its politics, the more hospitable its society, the more immigration we're going to see.  The only way to stem the tide of immigration is to become such a hell-hole that no one wants to come here.  Staunching the flow of immigrants is a finger-in-the-dike approach that wastes all our energies.  No doubt we must ensure that those who come into the US will help the society and the economy rather than be a drag on it, but that's not a good platform with which to run for the presidency.  Nor is militarism, hostility to LGBT rights, and hostility towards health care legislation, and hostility towards education.

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