A Look at the New York Times' 2020 Endorsement

Members of the editorial board of the New York Times (FX via Slate)

After much anticipation, the editorial board for the nation's Paper of Record, the New York Times, has unveiled its endorsement for the 2020 Democratic primary—and for reasons best understood to the board members themselves, they've decided to endorse both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. The endorsement has little to offer in terms of helping voters make a well-reasoned decision, and isn't even particularly interesting in its choice of candidates. But I want to take a look at it because of the extremely revealing window it offers into the minds of the intelligentsia that plays such a major role in shaping policy and public opinion in the United States—in manufacturing consent, to use the term adopted by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. And, as we shall shortly see, much of what that window reveals should be extremely disturbing.

The endorsement article starts off okay, noting correctly that we are faced with three visions of the country's future: on the one hand there is the nativist vision offered by Donald Trump; among the Democrats,

an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation. Some in the party view President Trump as an aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible. Then there are those who believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten that they must be replaced.

It then moves on to noting the commonalities among the Democrats, saying that "[w]here they differ most significantly is not the what but the how, in whether they believe the country’s institutions and norms are up to the challenge of the moment" (their emphasis). That seems like a pretty major difference, but all right. After that, we get this brief commentary on the notion of "electability":

Many Democratic voters are concerned first and foremost about who can beat Mr. Trump. But with a crowded field and with traditional polling in tatters, that calculation calls for a hefty dose of humility about anyone’s ability to foretell what voters want.

I guess that is what you would write right before endorsing Elizabeth Warren, given her lousy performance in head-to-head polls with Donald Trump.

After (again, largely accurately) summarizing the problems the country faces, the article offers this bit of preamble before it finally gets to the Big Reveal:

Both the radical and the realist models warrant serious consideration. If there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. If there were ever a time to seek stability, now is it.

Already, we're getting some revealing bits of ideology coming through: the "radical" model is contrasted with the "realist," as if these two things are inherently antonymic: you can't be both realistic and a radical (whatever that means) at the same time. Even more revealing is the idea that Elizabeth Warren represents any sort of radicalism (or that Amy Klobuchar represents "realism" for that matter). What proposals exactly make Warren a radical? Her wealth tax? Her healthcare plan (which she's already generously watered down to appease her more conservative critics)? Her proposal to cancel some (but not all) student debt? In any other developed country, none of these would stand out as particularly radical ideas; indeed, with her vehement commitment to markets and capitalism, Warren might well be seen as center-right. But for the Times editorial board, any deviation from neoliberal orthodoxy, no matter how cautious, is "radical," and their willingness to even consider this radicalism is because they "are rattled by the weakness of the institutions that we trusted to undergird [our] values." Rightly so.

After announcing the endorsement picks, the article moves on to explain its support for Warren. "[S]ome of the most compelling ideas are not emerging from the center, but from the left wing of the Democratic Party," it explains, though "[w]e worry about ideological rigidity and overreach, and we’d certainly push back on specific policy proposals, like nationalizing health insurance or decriminalizing the border." Yes, of course: while a certain dose of "radicalism" might be permissible, the board could never embrace "overreach" such as the end of the bloated and inefficient for-profit health insurance industry, or the reduction of unauthorized border crossings from a criminal to a civil offense. Some things are beyond the pale, after all.

The board then addresses why it isn't endorsing Bernie Sanders. After making sure to mention that he has been "adjacent to the Democratic Party but not a part of it" and briefly touching on his health, the article discusses Sanders' approach to politics:

He boasts that compromise is anathema to him. Only his prescriptions can be the right ones, even though most are overly rigid, untested and divisive. He promises that once in office, a groundswell of support will emerge to push through his agenda. Three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.

Here is the ideology of the New York Times and the intelligentsia it represents in a nutshell. Bernie Sanders is bad because he believes too firmly in the things he says he believes in, and thinks that diluting one's ideas is undesirable (we should note that Sanders supported, for example, the Affordable Care Act, which was a compromise measure to modestly improve the American healthcare system, and has reliably endorsed Democratic presidential nominees well to his right—so it might not be quite correct to say compromise is "anathema" to him). Even worse, those ideas are "rigid, untested and divisive." Yes, ideas like Medicare for All, free college and high taxes on the rich are "divisive" (despite finding strong majority support in polls, depending, in the case of Medicare for All, how the issue is presented), "untested" (despite being similar or identical to existing programs in other economically developed countries) and "rigid" (whatever that means). They are these things, empirical evidence be damned, because they are offensive to the members of the New York Times editorial board.

To cap it off, we then have the grouping of Sanders together with Donald Trump as just another "over-promising, divisive figure[.]" Yes: because both he and Trump are "divisive" (even though Sanders is more popular, and polls better against Trump, than Warren does), they are the same; it doesn't matter that Trump's "divisiveness" is directed at immigrants and religious minorities while Sanders' is directed at the rich and powerful, or that Trump's "divisiveness" takes the form of deportation, ripping children from the arms of their parents and violations of basic civil rights, while Sanders' takes the form of higher taxes: both forms are morally equivalent and deserve to be condemned in the same breath. And Sanders' promise to help build a popular movement of regular people that can take on the privileged elite is just as ludicrous as Trump's promises to build a wall at the southern border and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. This is the worldview of the insufferable, morally bankrupt, sheltered nerds who sit on the editorial board of the Paper of Record.

It is, indeed, "[g]ood news" for them "that Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic left"—or it would be, if it were true. Currently, she's polling well behind Sanders nationally and in third or fourth place in Iowa, which, it seems, might somewhat damage any claim to be the "standard-bearer for the Democratic left."

The board proceeds to laud Warren as a "gifted storyteller" (if only the stories she told, such as the one about being a Native American, were true, one might add) and claims that "[s]he speaks fluently about foreign policy[.]" An odd claim, given that she was recently humiliated on air by noted idiot Meghan McCain when the latter grilled Warren over her response to the Soleimani assassination. Indeed, it's difficult to think of any impressive moment or accomplishment Warren has had when it comes to foreign policy. Contrast that with Sanders, who helped pass through Congress a resolution that would have ended US support for Saudi Arabia's near-genocidal war in Yemen. Of course, the New York Times is home to Thomas Friedman, who has at times acted practically as a PR representative for the Saudi monarchy, so it's unsurprising the editorial board would not be keen on this sort of foreign policy experience. Instead, they are delighted that Warren speaks about "how to improve NATO relations, something that will be badly needed after Mr. Trump leaves office." Left unanswered is the question of why NATO—a Cold War-era alliance whose stated goal was to deter Soviet aggression—continues to exist decades after the fall of the USSR, especially given its obvious role in increasing dangerous tensions with a nuclear power (Russia). This sort of triviality is not worth the board's time, obviously.

After praising Warren's widely lauded "she has a plan" approach, the board notes:

Carrying out a progressive agenda through new laws will also be very hard for any Democratic president. In that light, voters could consider what a Democratic president might accomplish without new legislation and, in particular, they could focus on the presidency’s wide-ranging powers to shape American society through the creation and enforcement of regulations.

Because the idea of forming a mass popular movement that challenges the normal modes of politics is (to the Times editorial board) just an empty promise, as we have seen, they are left with the most technocratic aspect of the presidency as the way to make important changes. And despite (or, more accurately, because of) Warren's record of capitulating to the forces that oppose a left-wing agenda, and her already-stated plans to appoint business-friendly centrists to her administration, it is she who is qualified to exercise this power, rather than Bernie Sanders.

The board qualifies its endorsement by noting that Warren "has shown some questionable political instincts." No denying that. Those "questionable...instincts" though are not her decision to campaign as a centrist after facing criticism from her right (a decision that coincided with a major dip in her poll numbers), they are that she "sometimes sounds like a candidate who sees a universe of us-versus-thems [sic], who, in the general election, would be going up against a president who has already divided America into his own version of them and us." Again, we get the moral equivalence seen before: promoting division based on race, religion, nationality, etc., as Trump does, is the same as accurately recognizing the defining division in the United States (and the world): that between the exploited and powerless on the one hand and the wealthy, powerful elite on the other.

The article offers us a specific example of what it means: "This has been most obvious in her case for 'Medicare for all,' where she has already had to soften her message, as voters have expressed their lack of support for her plan." This statement is objectively false. Polling released in November of last year found overwhelming support among Democrats for a single-payer plan. It was not "voters," but Warren's opponents and critics in the media who scared her into effective abandoning Medicare for All. To answer the question of what the voters wanted, one can simply look at the polls: over the past few months, as Warren has become increasingly centrist in her rhetoric, her numbers in national polls have declined. At the same time, Bernie Sanders, who unequivocally supports Medicare for All, has seen his standing improve. But the members of the editorial board are not ones to let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

Not shockingly, the board also feels obligated to defend the private health insurance industry, arguing that "[t]hat system, through existing public-private programs like Medicare Advantage, has shown it is not nearly as flawed as [Warren] insists, and it is even lauded by health economists who now advocate a single-payer system." Left out is the fact that administrative costs for Medicare Advantage are "considerably higher," and that "beneficiaries continue to rate traditional Medicare more favorably than Medicare Advantage plans in terms of quality and access, such as overall care and plan rating," in the words of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Surely just an oversight.

Continuing on the same theme:

American capitalism is responsible for its share of sins. But Ms. Warren often casts the net far too wide, placing the blame for a host of maladies from climate change to gun violence at the feet of the business community when the onus is on society as a whole. The country needs a more unifying path. 

Of course: what's needed at a time of record economic inequality isn't to threaten the "business community" but rather to put the "onus" on "society as a whole" and to put the country on a "unifying path." It's no secret whose interests we would be unifying behind, of course.

While "Ms. Warren’s path to the nomination is challenging," the board says, it is "not hard to envision. The four front-runners are bunched together both in national polls and surveys in states holding the first votes, so small shifts in voter sentiment can have an outsize influence this early in the campaign." This claim is particularly odd. In national polls, per RealClearPolitics' average*, Joe Biden is in the lead with 28.4% of the vote while Pete Buttigieg is in fourth (nearly tied with Michael Bloomberg in fifth) at 7.2%. Even if we ignore Buttigieg (who isn't the focus of the New York Times article in any case), Warren has less than 75% of the support Sanders does and barely more than half the support Biden has. While the board is not wrong in its claim that Warren could be the nominee (as I've noted, a possibility that is real and extremely dangerous), it fails to even accurately reflect the existing polling data in this claim—a mistake that, while minor, reflects the concern for factual accuracy consistently displayed in this article.

Moving on to the Klobuchar section of the endorsement, the board begins by laughably singing the praises of "the talents who did throw their hat into the ring and never got more than a passing glance from voters" such as Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet (those two are actually among the examples they cite) and admitting that "[t]hose [moderate] candidates who remain all have a mix of strengths and weaknesses." Not surprisingly, the members of the board "look forward" to Pete Buttigieg's "bright political future" and make sure to note that Michael Bloomberg "was endorsed twice by this page" for mayor of New York City and "would be an effective contrast to the president in a campaign[,]" before offering some criticism of the latter for "his belated and convenient apology for stop-and-frisk policing" and the fact that he "has spent at least $217 million to date to circumvent the hard, uncomfortable work of actual campaigning." To its credit, the board does at least correctly note that Biden's "agenda tinkers at the edges of issues like health care and climate, and he emphasizes returning the country to where things were before the Trump era. But merely restoring the status quo will not get America where it needs to go as a society." Mildly insightful comments such as these are like oases in the intellectual desert that is this article.

But thankfully there is good news: "Amy Klobuchar has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic center." Given her current standing in the polls (around three percent nationally), the word "standard-bearer" is being used here even more loosely than it was the first time around. "Her vision goes beyond the incremental," the board crows. "Given the polarization in Washington and beyond, the best chance to enact many progressive plans could be under a Klobuchar administration." This is genuinely delusional thinking. The Republican Party spent eight years demonizing Obama as a socialist and obstructing his agenda as he bent over backwards to compromise with them. The idea that this wouldn't happen to Klobuchar is ludicrous, and the fact that her stated plans are more modest than Warren's or Sanders' only means they would be watered down all the more before they got through Congress (if they ever did). But the board is convinced that "[h]er lengthy tenure in the Senate and bipartisan credentials would make her a deal maker (a real one) and uniter for the wings of the party—and perhaps the nation."

After summarizing Klobuchar's supposedly impressive domestic agenda (a public option, but no single-payer plan; free community college for all, but not free four-year college), and praising her ability to speak with an "empathy that connects to voters’ lived experiences, especially in the middle of the country" (why is she polling in the low single digits, then?) we get further illustration of what the New York Times editorial board values in foreign policy: that Klobuchar "promises a foreign policy based on leading by example, instead of by threat-via-tweet" and "has sponsored and voted on dozens of national defense measures, including military action in Libya and Syria." It's unsurprising but still disgusting that supporting the military intervention in Libya (which helped reduce the country to a failed state with a flourishing slave trade) and proposing to intervene further in Syria (where the US has already helpfully supplied "moderate" rebels with weapons that fell into the hands of ISIS) is a plus in the minds of the imperialists running the national "newspaper of record."

Klobuchar, the board gushes is "the most productive senator among the Democratic field in terms of bills passed with bipartisan support, according to a recent study for the Center for Effective Lawmaking." We might think that the content of those bills would be relevant, but never mind that. Reading on, we are told:

When she arrived in the Senate in 2007, Ms. Klobuchar was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that proposed comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants, before conservative pundits made it political poison.

Conservative pundits would simply observe a respectful silence if Klobuchar were elected president, we can assume, allowing her to pass her agenda with no trouble. We also learn of Klobuchar's "background as the chief prosecutor in Minnesota’s most populous county"—just who the country needs as president, at a time when the US is already a world leader in incarceration rates.

The editorial makes sure to briefly address the elephant in the room, noting that "Reports of how Senator Klobuchar treats her staff give us pause. They raise serious questions about her ability to attract and hire talented people." But we are reassured that "Ms. Klobuchar has acknowledged she’s a tough boss and pledged to do better." Besides, "Bill Clinton and Mr. Trump—not to mention former Vice President Biden—also have reputations for sometimes berating their staffs, and it is rarely mentioned as a political liability." The Times editorial board knows very well that this is an inadequate and misleading description of the allegations against Klobuchar. Their own paper previously reported that Klobuchar "was known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides," according the former aides interviewed, and that "Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning—a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber." While Klobuchar's behavior toward her staff is hardly the most major issue in this election, the board's unwillingness to honestly address it after bringing it up themselves is yet another illustration of their character, or lack thereof.

After mentioning Klobuchar's popularity in Minnesota (a state carried by every Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter), the article informs us that "it’s far too early to count Ms. Klobuchar out—Senator John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee in 2004, was also polling in the single digits at this point in the race." We've practically reached the point of self-parody with this claim. Amy Klobuchar is, again, polling at about three percent nationally and has less support among black voters than even Pete Buttigieg. In Iowa, where John Kerry won the 2004 Democratic caucuses, she's polling in a distant fifth place. Klobuchar's odds of being the Democratic nominee are roughly the same as mine, and if the New York Times editorial board believes otherwise it's only through an extreme act of self-delusion.

To conclude, the board summarizes several major world problems (wildfire in Australia, instability in the Middle East, a "historic flood of migrants" at the southern border) which both of its endorsed candidates are ill-equipped to deal with, before urging the removal of President Trump and addressing how the aftermath of his presidency can be dealt with:

Any hope of restoring unity in the country will require modesty, a willingness to compromise and the support of the many demographics that make up the Democratic coalition—young and old, in red states and blue, black and brown and white. For Senator Klobuchar, that’s acknowledging the depth of the nation’s dysfunction. For Senator Warren, it’s understanding that the country is more diverse than her base.

Once again, we get a paean to "unity"—not justice, not equality, not democracy, but only a vague notion of "unity." The idea that the divisions in the United States might stem from structural inequities that require more than token reform efforts to rectify is left unaddressed. Also unmentioned is the reality that eight years of Barack Obama—whom it seems likely the board would agree possessed "modesty, a willingness to compromise and the support of the many demographics that make up the Democratic coalition"— left the country more divided than it was before he took office. Some might foolishly think that is because the "divisions" in the United States need to be addressed with more than kind words and attempts to compromise with the opponents of social and economic equality, but the members of the editorial board are not among those ignorant peons.

While recognizing that "There will be those dissatisfied that this page is not throwing its weight behind a single candidate, favoring centrists or progressives," the board magnanimously writes that that fight "should be played out in the public arena and in the privacy of the voting booth." Of course, given that the board has passed over and openly disparaged the only candidate who actually represents a fundamental break with the political status quo, it's quite clear which side they're actually on. Unable to disguise their neoliberal approach to politics, the board continues: "That’s the very purpose of primaries, to test-market strategies and ideas that can galvanize and inspire the country." Some would say that the purpose of primaries is for an electorate to choose their party's candidate, and the direction the party should go in; but the editorial wisely reduces voters to the level of passive consumers to be used as a test audience by the candidates as they search for a successful way to brand themselves. The article then closes out on a feminist note that's as vacuous as anything else in it, concluding: "May the best woman win."

While, as previously noted, the New York Times editorial board's endorsement article is more or less useless for voters interested in giving future generations a decent existence, it is highly informative in other ways. The fact that the board opted to endorse one candidate who is much more likely to split the progressive vote and give Biden the nomination if she stays in the race than she is to be the nominee, and another candidate with no realistic shot of winning the race, speaks volumes about where their heads are at. Plainly, they cannot reconcile themselves to Bernie Sanders (no surprise), but they recognize that Joe Biden is too much a relic of a past era to save the Democratic Party from the left-populist insurgency Sanders represents. While the editorial board may very well be secretly hoping he manages to secure the nomination over Sanders, openly throwing their weight behind Biden would be a transparent admission that their primary objective is to protect the status quo from any radical disruptions. Only endorsing Klobuchar would, for obvious reasons, border on farce. Best, then, to also support the faux-progressive who might engage in "divisive" rhetoric occasionally, but would pose little threat even if she were elected.

The one encouraging aspect of the whole affair is how it reeks of desperation on the editorial board's part; the intelligentsia are getting nervous. They should be. If we are lucky, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of their relevance.

ADDENDUM: While the New York Times editorial board's endorsement article was rather dismal, I do feel obligated to mention that its interview process produced an extremely enjoyable exchange in which Binyamin Appelbaum grilled Pete Buttigieg about his time at McKinsey. From this incident as well as some of his other political commentary, I am inclined to believe that if there is one good member of the editorial board it is Appelbaum, in which case he should obviously be exempted from my description of the board members as "insufferable, morally bankrupt, sheltered nerds"—a description which, to be clear, was never intended to necessarily apply to every board member to begin with.

______________________________________________________


*The averages I cite here and elsewhere in this post have shifted slightly since I started writing this blog post, but I'm using the older ones since they're more reflective of the polls that were current when the New York Times published their endorsement. The changes that have happened since, it's worth noting, have not done much to improve Warren or Klobuchar's standing in the race.

Elizabeth Warren is the Most Dangerous Democratic Candidate

Senator Elizabeth Warren at the fourth Democratic debate (John Minchillo/AP via The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Despite my very real issues with Warren, I really don't want this to come off as a hit piece of any sort. She is still easily better than almost all of her opponents, and vastly better than the guy who's currently at the top of every national poll. She has also put out some genuinely laudable proposals lately. Certainly, no one should lose sight of that, nor do I want there to be some split in the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

—The Latest Sedition, June 18, 2019

Well, I was wrong—and for whatever it's worth, you can feel free to consider this a hit piece. While Warren's recent bullshit about Sanders supposedly telling her a woman couldn't get elected president—an allegation that she's cynically left as vague as possible and which makes little sense based on Sanders's history—has turned my disenchantment with Warren into a full-blown disgust, that's not my main motivation for writing this piece. No; my newfound animosity toward her might make this more fun, but my change of heart stems from reason, not passion.

I laid out in detail in my last piece why our only hope lies with a radical disruption of the status quo, and explained that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who would (hopefully) represent that disruption. But why couldn't Warren? What makes her so different? For one thing, the fact that she's a completely feckless appeaser who's unable to stand by the principles she claims to represent. She's claimed to support Medicare for All, but put forth a plan for getting there that's so patently stupid it's obvious her support isn't sincere. Big structural change? That's a funny joke when you're already talking about filling your administration with corporate lackeys. Whatever laudable work Warren may have done in terms of bankruptcy reform and consumer protection, it's plain at this point that she lacks any serious commitment to challenging the control the ruling class exercises in the United States.

Even her supporters can't make her sound like anything other than a nerdy technocrat. "She understands how to focus and wield the powers of the regulatory state better than anyone else," Ezra Klein gushes. Wow, isn't that inspiring! She knows how to focus and wield the powers of the regulatory state? Sign me up! I'm sure the candidate who wasn't even able to keep up the pretense of being a social democrat until the Iowa caucuses will be really ruthless in how she exercises those fearsome powers. Climate change and inequality are no match for this Bold Progressive!

To summarize: Warren 1. has no interest in moving away from the top-down, technocratic form of politics that's dominated the Democratic Party for decades and 2. is so weak and unprincipled that she couldn't lead (or even do much to encourage) any popular movement if she wanted to. The idea that one principled politician and their team of experts could solve the world's problems while the rest of us sit at home is an utter fantasy. But even if it weren't, that person isn't Elizabeth Warren because she's already proved to be either a coward or a fake who, either way, capitulates at the first sign of trouble. So, as I indicated last time: electing Warren solves nothing and only paves the way for the rise of another right-wing populist like Trump, but potentially smarter and more competent, therefore more dangerous. Again, this isn't wild speculation: just look at how the Democratic Party fared under Obama, and how his hand-picked successor fared against Trump.

But don't worry too much about that: if Warren does get the nomination, there's a good chance she'd just lose to Trump in the general election. Right now, RealClearPolitics' polling average has her ahead nationally by 0.4%; Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over five times that much, and still lost the electoral college. RCP's average has Trump ahead by one point in Wisconsin, one of the key states that Trump flipped in 2016; in Iowa, his lead is over six points; in Florida, two points. If Trump can carry those states, all the states that Mitt Romney won in 2012, and Ohio (where head-to-head polling is sparse but which he carried by 8% in 2016), he's at 269 electoral votes. If he can also carry Maine's second Congressional district—which he carried by double digits in 2016—that makes 270 votes, which is enough to win the election. That's not even to get into Pennsylvania or Michigan, both of which Trump won in 2016. Warren leads narrowly in those states, though not by as much as Clinton did right before unexpectedly losing both.

All of this is before any general election campaign has even begun, and absolutely nothing about Warren indicates she'd hold up well against Trump. The fact she pretended to be a Native American for a huge portion of her life is an absolute godsend to someone like Trump, who—unlike Warren's fellow Democrats—will not be too polite to repeatedly bring it up. Her utter spinelessness in the face of criticism from her right so far in this campaign bodes poorly for how she would respond to Trump's attacks; and, like most of her fellow Democrats onstage at the last debate, she's announced her support for the proposed trade deal that will undoubtedly be one of the crowning achievements of Trump's first term.

Of course, Warren's not the only Democratic candidate who would make a lousy president (most of them would), or who might lose to Trump (any of them could, though Bernie and Biden certain look likelier to win than Warren does). But her faux-progressive veneer makes both results all the more dangerous. If she does win, we could see the same complacency that affected liberals and left-leaning people during the Obama years start to creep back in; high off defeating Trump and electing the country's first woman president—one promising to bring "Big Structural Change"—many progressive-minded people might be content to sit back and relax. There's no reason to think Warren would do much to discourage that either, given her technocratic mindset. What makes her especially dangerous in this respect is that even many people who want the Democrats to shift leftward think Warren is at least ok (I was one of them not that long ago); at least under a Buttigieg or Biden administration, these people would have no illusion that they'd won, and would have every reason to stay active. By the time Warren betrayed her promise to bring that big structural change (and she would betray it), it would probably be too late to do much about it—just as the left couldn't do much about it when Obama turned out to be a guardian of the status quo, not someone bent on overhauling it.

If Warren lost the general election to Trump, that would also carry unique dangers, again because of her (increasingly undeserved) reputation as a progressive. Given much of the media's undisguised hostility to anything that has even a whiff of leftism, we'd be certain to see a never-ending barrage of commentary on how the Democrats blew the election by nominating someone too radical, and that they could have won if only they'd gone with a safe choice like Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar. Unfortunately, many well-meaning voters would readily fall for this, given that centrist candidates are already frequently seen as more "electable" than their left-wing opponents. Just as the example of George McGovern's landslide defeat in 1972 is still dredged up almost 50 years later, Warren's loss to Trump would be used for decades to come as an argument against nominating anyone "too extreme." If Biden or Buttigieg lost to Trump, at least no one could say it was because they were too left-wing. (Obviously, if Sanders lost to Trump, we would see the same arguments as if Warren did—but, again, Sanders looks likelier to win than Warren).

It should be clear, then, that Elizabeth Warren is not an acceptable alternative to Bernie Sanders. She is not even a good "second choice" for leftists. She is the most dangerous candidate in the Democratic primary, and her nomination must be prevented. As obscene as it may seem, if the choice comes down to Warren and Biden somehow (if, God forbid, Bernie has further health problems and has to drop out for instance), leftists should support Biden. If he lost, no one could say it was because he was too progressive, and if he won then at least there would be no illusion that we had achieved anything but a return to the Obama years; plus, it seems likely he wouldn't run for reelection, leaving the Democratic primary open in 2024 (if Warren was elected in 2020 she would, presumably, run for reelection in 2024 and easily secure her party's nomination). The likeliest outcome of a Warren nomination at this point appears to be her defeat in the general election, giving us not only four more disastrous years of Donald Trump but also handing the enemies of any sort of leftist agenda a powerful argument against nominating progressive candidates in the future; this is a far worse outcome than a Biden presidency.

But as long as Bernie Sanders is still in the race, the correct approach is to fully support him to the bitter end, particularly in the face of recycled smears that he and his supporters are a bunch of sexists. "Woke" leftist attempts to accommodate these accusations in the name of "recognizing misogyny on one's own side" are entirely the wrong approach when the accusations are motivated by pure cynicism, as well as by the classist notion that the poor and working class who support Sanders are a bunch of ignorant bigots. The only correct response is to recognize these attacks as the reprehensible smears they are, and even to ask why Warren and her supporters feel the need to dishonestly attack the candidate who would be our first Jewish president (perhaps they're all secretly antisemites themselves—no more ridiculous a claim than their own lies about Sanders and "Bernie bros"). And we should have no concern about "progressive unity" or handing Biden the nomination as we fight back; better the nomination go to an outspoken centrist than to one who pretends to be something they're not.

ADDENDUM: While it's moot now, I want to note that this post was written before Tara Reade came out with her full, and deeply disturbing, allegations against Biden; if these allegations had been public at the time I'd written this post, I would not have argued leftists should support Biden over Warren.

2020 Can't Be About Defeating Trump at All Costs

There is an old joke-response, which remains popular online to this day, for whenever someone asks a how-to question ("How do I tell my boyfriend I've been having an affair?" "How do I use a pressure cooker?" etc.): "Very carefully." While it may have at times seemed it would never come, we have now made it to 2020, the year in which we will have the opportunity to choose the next president of the United States; and, as we are faced with the ongoing crises of climate change, rising authoritarianism around the globe and increasing inequality, the sincere answer to the question "How should we decide who will be the next president?" is the same as the jocular one: "Very carefully." After years of (mis)rule by Donald Trump and the Republicans, there is a widespread impulse to prioritize getting Trump out of office and put everything else on the back burner for now: the idea is that the Democratic primary voters should leave intra-party bickering behind and simply pick the most "electable" Democratic candidate, and then all who are opposed to Trump should line up and support this candidate in the general election. While this impulse is no doubt encouraged and exploited by cynical party insiders and their ilk, it remains completely understandable given the flagrant and explicit incompetence, corruption and downright cruelty of Trump et al. It is also an extremely dangerous and wrongheaded inclination that should be countered wherever it arises.

As appealing as it would be to believe that simply replacing Donald Trump with any one of the Democratic candidates in the running is enough to solve the problems we face—or at least take a decisive step in the right direction—it's far from clear that this is true; in fact, it plainly isn't. While there can be little question that any of the Democrats would be an overall more competent, honest and humane president than Donald Trump has been, simply being better is far from enough; and when we begin to take other important factors into account, the situation becomes even murkier.

President Donald Trump at the 2019 Conservative Political Action
Conference (Jose Luis Magana, AP via USA Today)

If the Democrat (whoever it ends up being) does defeat Trump this year, they will find themselves in an extremely sensitive and perilous position. They will be forced to confront the aforementioned issues of climate change, authoritarianism and inequality as well the increasingly obvious disconnect between average citizens and their political leadership; at the same time, they will face obstructionism and gridlock that will likely make even moderate reforms legislatively impossible. And, to top it all off, there is every reason to suspect they will have to deal with an economic recession within their first years in office. In a situation like this, there are few paths to success but many paths to failure—and either outcome will have long-term ramifications.

At the same time, the reactionary nativism that has its found its voice in a whole new way during the Trump years will by no means disappear the second a Democrat enters the White House; on the contrary, the GOP appears destined to remain the party of "Trumpism" well after Trump has left office. In fact, he may only be a prelude for what's yet to come. Donald Trump has always been, first and foremost, a billionaire on an ego trip, a creature of id rather than ideology. But whoever picks up the mantle when his time is over might well take Trump's talking points more seriously than he himself ever did. Nor can we expect that they will have the same total lack of decision-making skills and impulse control that has proven to be one of Trump's greatest liabilities. There's no need to rely our imaginations for an image of what a more consistent, shrewder post-Trumpian nationalist might look like: just turn, for instance, to Tucker Carlson, who has become a mainstream exponent of far-right ideology with the intelligence and (apparent) sincerity Trump himself lacks. Even more ominously, he has dabbled in the sort of pseudo-anticapitalist rhetoric that could attract swaths of working class and downwardly mobile voters to a right-wing "populist" candidate. If a Carlson-esque figure (perhaps even Carlson himself—hardly implausible given our current president's history before getting elected) were to emerge and secure the Republican nomination in 2024 or 2028, they might pose a serious challenge to the Democratic candidate. And if this hypothetical demagogue were to become president, they might well do far more lasting damage than Trump has.

Just as Trump will leave his mark on the Republican Party, the next Democratic president could shape their party's direction in long-lasting and important ways. Those changes might impact both the Democratic Party's future electoral success and the policies it enacts when it's in power, both of which could hardly be of greater importance: to allow the Republicans to return to power (assuming they lose it in 2020) could be to move decisively away from any pretense of pluralist liberal democracy and toward some kind of white ethnostate (that is, to return to the not-so-distant past of the United States). This is obviously Trump's vision (insofar as he has any true vision apart from his own glorification) and if he is not able to achieve it, the next Republican president could be. Even to elect a "moderate" Republican president would be to move ever faster toward environmental catastrophe and complete economic oligarchy. On the other hand, even if the Democrats are able to hold power indefinitely, it is a hollow victory if their own policies are ill-equipped to deal with these problems.

In this set of circumstances, no approach guarantees success. Some, however, guarantee failure. Continuing on the road of Clinton-Obama centrism ensures that, even if the Democrats do manage to keep the reactionary right out of power, their approach to the challenges humanity faces will be woefully inadequate and may even make things worse at times. But in one form or another, this is the approach most of the Democratic candidates are offering. However they choose to market it, it becomes clear when they try to paint center-left social democratic policies like single-payer healthcare and a wealth tax as too radical; and attending fundraisers in "wine caves" or with fossil fuel magnates only confirms what should be obvious. Furthermore, it's extremely dubious whether moderate liberalism will be an effective electoral strategy in the long term; after all, it was under Obama that the Democrats lost more combined positions (seats in Congress, state legislatures and governorships) than with any other president. And it was Hillary Clinton, the Democratic establishment's pick, who managed to lose the election to Donald Trump by failing to carry states that no Democratic presidential nominee had lost in decades.

What is the alternative? The only viable one is to build a nationwide (and, indeed, international) popular movement that unites the working class and the economically displaced of all races, ethnicities, sexualities etc. behind the causes of socioeconomic and environmental justice as well as mutual solidarity; specifically, behind policies such as universal single-payer healthcare, a global Green New Deal, an end to neo-imperialism and exploitation of the Third World, as well rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people, refugees, people of color and all other vulnerable groups. If successful, such a movement could help enact important changes on the state and local level and even open up a future path for reform at a federal level by electing progressive and socialist politicians in the mold of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to Congress. Additionally, this movement could offer the socially, economically and/or politically alienated a sense that they are part of "something bigger," removing the danger that they simply become (or remain) disengaged, or—worse—fall to prey to the allure of the right-wing (ethno)nationalist project in their search for something that offers them a feeling of belonging. Building such a movement would be no small task, and victory is far from assured; but if we want to protect (and expand) the greatest achievements of human civilization, then—to reappropriate a favorite catchphrase of Margaret Thatcher's—there is no alternative.

Obviously, this left-populist project would require far more than simply electing the right person president in November. But that hardly means the choice is unimportant: by making use of the "bully pulpit," a president could play a key role in encouraging this sort of mass movement, and even with Congress mired in gridlock the president has an enormous amount of power in some areas (foreign policy, for instance). Plus, as noted, the president can shape the direction their party takes in major ways—in this case, whether the Democratic Party would embrace and feed the nascent left-wing movement that already exists and take up that movement's cause as its own, or whether it would remain aloof, even hostile, to the movement and its goals.

The only candidate (at least of those with any realistic shot at winning the Democratic primary) who truly supports the sort of movement I've talked about, and the dramatic changes in both policy and the form of politics itself that such a movement could bring, is, of course, Bernie Sanders. With her completely feckless capitulations, Elizabeth Warren has made it clear that she is not truly committed even to social democratic goals like Medicare for All, let alone to a mass popular movement that could really take the reins and actively shape policy on its own terms; insofar as she supports any mobilization, it is only so the mobilized could bang at the gates of power loudly enough to remind those inside that they (the disempowered) exist and have needs. Warren sincerely supports a kinder and gentler form of the liberal-technocratic form of politics that has prevailed in the Democratic Party for decades now; that the power elite, to use the term coined by sociologist C. Wright Mills, should be more considerate of those affected by its decisions. Sanders, on the other, supports the dismantling of said power elite by changing the politico-economic system from one where a small minority makes the big decisions (with or without the input of "the masses") to one where the masses themselves are organized, informed and engaged—and have the final say over the policies that impact their lives.

The problem with Warren's vision is that the power elite can never truly be "kind" and "gentle" in its role as policymakers: no matter how decent a CEO may be personally, their job is still to make the company profitable even at the expense of its workers, the environment, etc. It is far more utopian to think that our de facto oligarchy could ever become truly benevolent than to think that the citizenry themselves could become informed and active participants in the political system. To even achieve some sort of power-sharing arrangement, as exists in some European social democracies for instance, would at this point require more popular unrest and disruption of the status quo than Warren is likely to encourage or support. Compromises, after all, require that the ruling class fear for its ability to continue ruling effectively—and Warren's readiness to all but abandon Medicare for All has surely shown them she is a paper tiger.

Sanders' liberal critics are certainly right when they say his agenda will be all but impossible to get through Congress, at least in the short term—though they are wrong if they believe his opponents are more likely to "get things done" just because their demands are watered down to begin with. But the primary importance of a Sanders presidency has nothing to do with what he could get enacted legislatively: rather, its significance would be as a disruption of the prevailing political order, opening up the potential for economic and political power to be shifted away from a small minority through popular struggle at the local, state and national level (a struggle that Sanders could serve as a sort of spiritual leader and spokesman for—or at least could keep alive by refusing to permit the feel-good complacency of the Obama era to creep back in).

The difference between Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field, then, is not just one of degree, but of kind. The change that a Bernie Sanders presidency would (ideally) represent offers a path out of the current global nightmare—a long and arduous path, to be certain, but a path nonetheless. Continuing with the liberal-technocratic politics the Democrats have embraced over the past decades can only result in one of two possible outcomes: either electoral success at the expense of a failure to adequately deal with climate change, inequality and our other crises; or electoral failure, bringing to power an extremist right wing that may, at that point, be led by someone more sincere and competent, and therefore more dangerous, than Donald Trump. Both of these options are catastrophic.

We can see, then, that it is inadequate to making defeating Donald Trump the sole—or even primary—priority for the year. The main priority must be to nominate Bernie Sanders—not out of commitment to him as a person, or even because his platform is so great, but because he is the only candidate who meets the bare minimum: specifically, that he fully rejects the utterly defective status quo and offers at least the possibility of transforming the basic structure of our politico-economic system. If the choice in the general election is between four more years of Donald Trump or four years of a liberal-technocratic Democrat like Biden, Buttigieg or, yes, even Elizabeth Warren, then we will already be choosing only between two disasters. We can't allow it to come to that.