Oops! I Did It Again!

My hand, doing the dirty deed

 

I am so totally getting my Bernie Bro on… again!

I’m not a member of any political party; I’m one of those “independents” pollsters, pundits, and politicians are perpetually pontificating upon. During the last presidential primary season four years ago, because I could vote in the primary of either major party, I decided that for the first time in my life I’d cast a vote for a Dem/socialist, and decided to do so for the Bern, Bernie Sanders. I even wrote about it at the time, and that column was published right here:  ( https://theviewfromtheisland.com/2016/06/10/are-unicorns-real/ “Are Unicorns Real? I’m feelin’ the Bern…!” 10 June 16 )

Well, here we are again, for Super-Duper Tuesday (the New and Expanded Super Tuesday), and since my new home in Colorado participates in that event, with Trump having the GOP nod tied up I’ve decided to throw my support to the Bern once again.

You’ve got to hand it to the Bern. At least he’s honest. He doesn’t deny his socialism, in contrast to virtually everyone else in that sorry political party, all of whom constantly bleat that the “progressive” policies they’re constantly trying to shove down our throats are anything — ANYTHING – other than blatant socialism, if not outright communism.

The results of the Super Duper Tuesday event add even more delicious drama to the ongoing soap opera that is the Dem/socialist primary process. Sanders’s seemingly unstoppable momentum ran into a brick wall in the south, while Biden’s previously moribund and all-but-embalmed campaign was resuscitated by his sweep of those same southern states. Liz “Fauxcahontas” Warren only took third place in her own home state of Massachusetts while “Midget Mikey” Bloomberg was only able to win American Samoa. In fact, he’s already “suspended” – read “ended” – his ridiculous effort to buy an election, throwing his support – for whatever that’s worth – to Biden. Warren has also dropped out, though as of my writing this column she hasn’t yet endorsed any other candidate.

Now the real fun starts.

At this point it looks like the ultimate nominee will be either Biden or Sanders. The Democrat Party national convention meets in Milwaukee starting on July 13, and if either Sanders or Biden have secured a majority of the delegates at that point then presumably that person will win the nomination on the first ballot. The process will be complete and the nominee selected.

However, if neither has won a clear majority in the state primary process, either directly through state voting or indirectly via deals struck with other candidates who have agreed to support him by pledging their own delegates, then they’ll have a contested, or “brokered”, convention leading to subsequent ballots. That’s when the knives come out. “Super delegates” – party poohbahs – get to participate in the selection process, and those people are pretty much all “establishment” drones, the very people scared to death of Sanders dragging their electoral hopes down the drain. The same folks who threw the 2016 nomination to Clinton and infuriated the Bernie Bros back then.

I think this is a real possibility, particularly given the preference of that party’s “establishment”.

If this year’s Dem/socialist convention is brokered and Biden wins, particularly if that win is viewed by the Bernie Bros as being a rerun of 2016, the outrage from that faction will be palpable and consequential, costing Biden vital support in the general election in November.

There’s rich irony in the fact that, for a party so immersed in identity politics, their 2020 nominee, whoever wins, is going to be a rich, old, white guy in his late 70s. For the hard-left faction, Biden is too “establishment” and doesn’t check off any of the required “social justice” criteria. For the “establishment” types, Sanders is a scary communist who’ll drag the entire party into political oblivion and irrelevancy. The question then becomes whether or not “orange man bad” is enough motivation to stimulate the angry faction to vote for a candidate they don’t otherwise support.

Come November Trump will be facing either a Marxist who wants to turn the USA into Venezuela, or a doddering geezer who seems to be suffering from the early stages of dementia.

Interesting times… Grab some popcorn and settle back for the show.

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published 3/11/2020 in The Signal)

Are Unicorns Real?

I’m feelin’ the Bern…!

 

Everyone who knows me, or my writings, knows I’m about as conservative as it gets. When I became eligible to vote in 1970, I immediately registered as a Republican. Between then and now, though I’ve on occasion voted for “third-party” candidates, I’ve never voted for a Dem/socialist. In fact, in the entire panoply of Democrat politicians, I’ve only ever been aware of two I’d have considered actually voting for prior to today: Zell Miller and Jim Webb.

Going one step further, when the GOP nominated John McCain as their candidate in 2008, I was so disgusted with that result that I quit the GOP and re-registered as “Decline To State” (DTS), California’s equivalent of “Independent”. I even resigned my Life Membership in the NRA over their decision to endorse McCain. That’s how strongly I feel about actual traditional American conservative values and principles; McCain was certainly NO conservative.

So in light of all of that, what’s happened to make me cast my vote today for “the Bern”, Bernie Sanders, self-avowed socialist candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination?

A unique and unlikely confluence of events.

First, California’s goofy and Byzantine election laws permit DTS voters to simply choose at the polling place whether or not they want to vote in any particular party’s presidential primary, and those laws leave it up to the parties to determine for themselves whether or not they’ll allow DTS voters to vote in their primary. This year, the Democrats have chosen to allow DTSers to do so, and the Republicans have chosen not to do so.

Further, as of now that’s actually pretty irrelevant as to the GOP, since Donald Trump has already won enough primary victories to secure the GOP nod, and his opponents have withdrawn from the race. That’s a done deal. So even if it were possible to vote in the GOP primary, why would I even bother?

My hand doing the formerly unthinkable

However, there’s much to be gained by participating in the Democrat primary!

If the Bern were to somehow, magically, secure the Democrat nomination, that would almost certainly guarantee a November defeat for that repugnant party. And, of course, there’s that “other” candidate, Her Royal Arrogance Hillary Clinton. I so thoroughly despise her that it’s almost impossible to pass up the opportunity to throw a few banana peels in the path of her haughty march to the Dem convention in Philly in July. Maybe one of those banana peels could be a Sanders win in California. How could I possibly pass that up?

And so… I did it. I actually cast a vote for a self-avowed socialist Democrat. It didn’t feel as weird as I thought it would, and the hand I used to cast my vote didn’t fall off my wrist or develop blisters, much to my surprise.

So consider this: if I could cast this vote, is it really out of the realm of possibility to think that someplace on this big planet there is actually a herd of unicorns prancing around?

 

 

 

©Brian Baker 2016

(Also published today in my local newspaper, The Signal: http://www.signalscv.com/section/33/article/153159/)