It erupted like a tsunami powered by an unseen ocean floor volcano devastating a seemingly settled political landscape, overturning everything in its path and completely changing everything we thought we knew.
One week ago Joe Biden was the walking dead. All he needed was to be buried and everyone who knew anything said that was going to happen on Super Tuesday. Only it didn’t!
For one thing Jim Clyburn endorsed him. That seemed to change the whole game, giving him the push that allowed him to turn the South Carolina primary into a devastating victory. The other was the awakening of the American public led by black voters, college educated whites and suburban women, to Biden being who they actually wanted leading this country.
More than six months ago I watched Joe Scarborough do half his show on the fact that American’s vote with their hearts, not with their heads and that was what was wrong with the army of Democratic candidates. There was no one that you could fall in love with the way 2008 voters fell in love with Barak Obama. It seems that this week America looked at Joe Biden and decided he was very much what they wanted in the White House. That after three years of chaos, criminal activity, complete dysfunction, dishonesty and disgusting personal behavior they wanted a honest man with many of the human qualities that are completely lacking in the Liar in the White House.
We have been told by the pundits that Americans want to rush forward, not go backward and that is why Bernie Sanders is the man that they want to go against Trump but it seems that is only partially true. Sure they want to progress from the cesspool created by Trump but it seems that they want to do it in a way that first assures a restoration of the calm stability that is a definite retreat from the chaos created by the animal in the White House. For the last three years we have had a mad dog shitting on the floor in the Oval Office. The people in this country are ready to replace that with a respectful, calm, honest, decent human being with all the right instincts. We like Joe. Joe is like the big brother we can trust not to stab us in the back. Joe has the right ideas and because he has the honesty and basic humanity that appeals to most of us, the American public seems to have woken up and rushed to the polls, in some cases, in amazing numbers.
This seems to have nothing to do with Bernie. Bernie is a good man, a man with the right instincts and certainly a man we would vote for if he runs against Trump. Sure he’s a little nuts, sure he’s a bit of a zealot and a good number of his followers act a lot like Trumpets but he’s still a no brainer against Trump.
Of course we’re still a long way from a result and with California still to be counted it looks pretty close but Steve Kornacki is out there telling us how it’s all going to go based on his, so far wildly wrong, perception of how voters vote. Steve is now telling us that based on Super Tuesday, Biden will march through the south like Sherman, scooping up baskets of votes in Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida and fighting Bernie to a draw in Michigan. Based on his history of accuracy leading up to Super Tuesday that should scare the crap out of you if you are a Biden fan.
As I write this Mike Bloomberg has pulled out of the race. I’m not quite sure of these numbers but it appears that each delegate he won cost him about a hundred million bucks. I don’t know what the significance of them all coming from American Samoa is but Tulsi Gabbard got her only delegate from there too. Speaking of Tulsi, what is she doing in the race? Did she lose a bet?
But now that Mike is out he can concentrate his endless wealth on all the big stuff that needs to be done even if he isn’t president Most important right now is to support the down ballot candidates that would mean Bernie or Biden having a real chance of getting stuff done when they shove the Fat Liar out of the White House.
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If there is one big difference among those voting in the Democratic Party right now it is the controversy over the party’s view of America. I watched it blow up on a recent segment of AM Joy when spokesmen for Biden and Bernie duked it out about whether or not this nation should have millionaires.
Now you may think that I’m kidding but I’m not. This is actually a thing in Democratic circles and it may well be the most destructive thing the party faces at this time.
As I watched this dust up between Biden & Bernie lieutenants I was reminded that I had heard it before, both at the last debate and the other night after the debate when Michael Moore professed it during an interview.
I didn’t use Moore as an example when I wrote a piece about it the other day because I hadn’t heard Moore yet. I based the piece I wrote on Bernie’s and Elizabeth Warren’s comments during the debate. I won’t go through what I have already written but I will say that it was based on the differences between American and European class systems and the fact that American economic growth has been vastly more successful due to its acceptance of, and support for, our own entrepreneurial approach.
As I watch Moore and this Bernie buff rave about prohibiting billionaires from existing and calling for the workers to take over industry I am reminded that Karl Marx preached the same thing and we all see the result of his ravings in a crumbling totalitarian Russia. The reason that the United States is far more successful than any nation in the world is that our system has bred and supported entrepreneurs at a far higher rate than any other one in the world. They are what created our devastatingly successful economic systems. That does not mean that American workers have not also been responsible for much of the success of our industry or that they should not share significantly in that success. They should and must if we are to continue to be a successful economic model for the world. And although the entrepreneurial class should be free to engender the success of our model they should not be completely free. They have already shown that a significant portion of their ranks, have abused their freedom when it has been allowed. That’s why we need and have laws. It was quite evident during the Bush and Trump administrations that in many cases unrestrained capitalism ran amok, endangering the lives and safety of workers, and in a desperate scramble for more, the economic stability of the structure itself.
The human race is self-structured in a manner that there are a small but significant number of leaders that direct mankind and a large majority of others who follow. That just seems to be mans DNA and so far, with significant glitches, it has worked. When leadership is good, that is; when the leaders lead with intelligence, consideration and forethought, man prospers. When leadership fails, when a leader like Hitler, Stalin or Trump takes power, chaos follows. But the process remains the same, because human nature remains the same. We will always have leaders and followers. If we don’t, all the systems will collapse. A land with no leaders exists in chaos. A land with too many leaders lives in endless controversy.
So yes, we do need billionaires but also yes, we need significant controls to keep them in line. That’s why our founders created a constitution, giving our political leaders the power to control those aspects of society that lend themselves to how we get to live our lives.
Look, in the best of all possible worlds those who are leading our economic existence understand their responsibility to those who supply the muscle or the brains that move the engine. We’ll call those the good leaders, the ones that create businesses that fill a need without creating problems for the rest of the community; businesses that supply good, safe, well paying jobs, jobs that take into consideration the lives and needs of the workers both in and away from the workplace. These are companies that create safe, useful products that have no negative impact on the community around them.
Then we have bad leaders, those who do exactly the opposite. The good leaders don’t need the business laws and restrictions because they already choose to function within the boundaries that those laws create. The bad leaders are the ones those laws were created to control. They are the ones who would plunder the landscape for their own profit and power. They are the reason we need the kinds of laws that Bush and Trump have tried to dissolve. The good leader understands that he has been successful when profit was made while providing a safe, useful product and a safe functional workplace that accounts for the needs of the workers. The bad leader looks only to profits and power, absolutely requiring controls so as not to endanger everything in the community
Right now we have too many bad leaders, encouraged by bad leadership in Washington but we cannot let that temporary situation influence us and cause us to make bad decisions about how that whole system must be aligned.