In keeping with my goal of learning more about Karen Bass, I started clicking through clips on YouTube.
And I ran across this.
It’s from the 2016 Democratic Convention.
Maybe Joe should pick her as his running mate just so she can get out there and say all these things again. Maybe America will actually listen this time…
Here’s what I think, Joe: You should take off until at LEAST Labor Day. OK?
This is one of those blog posts I’ve meant to write since not long after South Carolina set all that Democratic nomination nonsense straight at the end of February. Remember how stupid stuff was before that? The world was full of people who imagined there were reasons to suppose someone other than Joe Biden would/should be the Democratic nominee, and they wouldn’t shut up about it for, like, most of a year. It was tiresome.
Well, we fixed that, as soon as we got a chance. Finally, even Bernie Sanders got it. I think I heard recently that even Elizabeth Warren had endorsed Joe. So that’s good, I guess.
But now, there’s other stupid stuff going on, despite the fact that nothing is normal, and we’re all dealing with this coronavirus and stuff. Some of us have even had a freaking stroke, and are really not inclined to put up with stuff like this Tweet today:
The last time Biden held a press conference: April 2. (He has done individual interviews, held fundraisers and town halls, and other virtual appearances since then.) https://t.co/azMVpVSFRq
— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurns) April 29, 2020
A bit after sending that, she added … well, you see what she added: “Biden took four questions.”
Really? What is missing from your life that you think Joe Biden should be doing command performances for you on a regular basis?
More stupidness. So I replied with the only relevant question I could think of: “Why did he have a press conference? Dang. Guess I need to write that blog post about how Joe should be on vacation until about, say, Labor Day…”
This is that blog post. Dang…
What is it that you suppose Joe should be saying or doing right the f___ this minute? Huh? Look. Most of us know that deliverance for this country involves, demands, can’t be had without, replacing Donald John Trump with a normal, decent, qualified human being. And as I told you, over and over for months before we in SC got a chance to step in and do something, that there is no one on the planet more normal, decent and qualified than Joe Biden. That’s been the fact since this started.
Either you get that or you don’t. Those who don’t get it yet and need to by Election Day need to get that message THEN, in the context of what’s going on THEN, which is like light years away from NOW, and anything they hear NOW is likely to be long forgotten by then. These are not, in any case, people with long attention spans.
But even if they were, things are going to change, a LOT, between now and then. And however they change, Donald John Trump won’t be any better at being president then than he is now. Which, for people with longer attention spans, is and has always been the point. That point will not change if Joe Biden has a press conference today, or tomorrow, or anytime soon. If it seems to change, I assure you it will change back, long before Election Day.
Folks, think. If you’re capable of it.
Most of us don’t know whether life will have turned around back toward normal — not normal, but toward it — by a month from now. We don’t know. But if it does, it will still only be May. We won’t have a decision yet on whether there will even be a Democratic Convention at that point, much less how the election is going to come out.
There is nothing Joe needs to do, or define, or explain in that time. Nothing. Yeah, he needs to be raising money, but that doesn’t require press conferences.
Then the summer will come. And it will pass, no doubt with a lot of confused weirdness.
Then the fall will come, and the coronavirus will probably come back. We don’t know what that’s going to look like, but it isn’t going to be pretty, and Donald Trump will not have his normal world with a booming stock market breaking records (in a good way, anyway).
He’s going to really start freaking out then. That’s when Joe needs to be drawing the contrast between this and normal. That is what he’s running against, and that’s when he’s running.
Nothing we can do can make Election Day come one day earlier. It sure won’t come earlier by Joe Biden running around acting like this is a normal election year. Although it will at least feel longer that way.
And I don’t want it to feel longer.
There’s a lot more I could say, but this should get a conversation going…
It’s taken a year, and we’ve finally gotten here. The place where we had to end up, if we’re serious about replacing the guy who’s so excited at the fantastic ratings his coronavirus briefings are getting.
It always had to be Joe. So we had to endure all those months of interminable “debates,” with this or that person being the hot new thing for a week or two, reminding me of the games the Republicans played back in 2012. (Seriously, remember when Herman Cain was the “front-runner?”)
Finally, on the last day of February, South Carolina gave the national Democratic electorate a good slap in the face, and it said “Thanks, I needed that,” and from then on has been giving Joe Biden overwhelming support. The other candidates started dropping out and giving their support to the one guy, out of the couple of dozen, who came into this thing with the qualifications for the job. (As I said last April, I was for any candidate who could be found in this picture.)
It was almost like they were all coming out of a trance and looking around them and saying, What were we thinking? It had to be Joe all along, from the moment he announced. Duh…
Except, of course, for Bernie Sanders.
Because Bernie was about Bernie. His campaign wasn’t about coming up with the most qualified nominee, or the one most likely to beat Trump. It was about Bernie, and Bernieism.
And so for a month we’ve had this Phony Campaign, sort of like the Phoney War of 1939-40, during which we pretended there was still a contested nomination. Or we would have, if we hadn’t been too busy staying alive.
But now that’s over, too. About time. Long past time, really.
So let’s all hunker down and stay safe and let this virus thing pass, and then get back on with the campaign to elect a normal, sane, qualified, decent human being as president of the United States….
For a number of reasons, this would be a perfect time to declare a hiatus from campaigning, just as we’re putting off all sorts of aspects of our regular lives.
This would begin with Bernie Sanders dropping out. Then, it won’t even be necessary to hold the remaining primaries (which of course have no constitutional role in the selection of a president). The election can pick back up with Joe Biden being nominated at the convention.
We need to pause, and concentrate on staying alive between now and the summer.
Here are some of the reasons:
Last night’s debate illustrated the point that we’re just going through the motions now. The various things Bernie Sanders brings to the non-contest look increasingly irrelevant in light of what the nation is facing now. Here’s how Frank Bruni described the debate:
…Biden was able to portray Sanders’s grander plans for transforming the American economy as luxuries unaffordable in the face of a scourge, as distractions from the emergency upon us. “People are looking for results, not a revolution,” Biden said….
But there was something strained and strange about Sanders’s repeated pivots from the pandemic to income inequality, from the pandemic to corrupt pharmaceutical executives, from the pandemic to how many millionaires and billionaires have contributed to Biden’s campaign. The world has been transformed; the script remains the same….
This is an illustration of why I don’t believe in campaign promises. You’ve all heard the saying, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.” Bernie is all about his plans, as Elizabeth Warren was. But the job of president is about dealing with things that arise once you’re in office, things you can’t anticipate during the election. That’s why I always choose based on the candidate’s character and experience, not “read my lips” promises.
I think the coronavirus has made a lot of other people think more about this. Citing that same Bruni column, he also said of Sanders:
And he couldn’t claim the kind of experience that Biden repeatedly did, the intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be at the center of crucial national decisions.
Biden smartly understood that his eight years beside the last Democratic president and his foreign-policy seasoning are probably more reassuring to voters now than they were a month or even a week ago. So he marinated in them….
Odd metaphor (marinated?), but yes. That’s what I’m on about. Biden has the relevant experience.
Bernie thinks always in terms of his worldview and his plans. Talk about coronavirus, and he keeps trying to change the subject to his allegations that the system is fixed and billionayuhs are exploiting us all. Which really doesn’t help us deal with the pandemic upon us.
Nevertheless, COVID-19 could skew upcoming primaries in Bernie’s favor, contrary to the actual will of the electorate.
How’s that? Well, as we know, Bernie’s army of young voters have thus far failed to appear, which is why he’s getting pounded by Biden. But think about this: Who is more likely to show up at polling places during the coronavirus crisis? Younger voters, for two reasons:
While the numbers of young people coming out to vote still won’t match Bernie’s grandiose visions, a large enough percentage of older voters may stay home and hand Bernie a victory — even though most of the usual electorate, sitting at home, prefers Biden.
Doubt it? Think about the confusion of the last few days. I don’t know you, but I keep swinging back and forth in my mind about whether this or that activity is still OK to engage in. Of course, if it were just me, I’d turn out, because I’m that much of an obsessive about having my say. But not everyone is.
I suspect if Bernie won any of the new few primaries, the narrative would change. It could reverse, at least to some extent, the perception of Biden’s inevitability. I still don’t think Bernie could win, but he could drag the process out in a way that is destructive to the cause of beating Trump in the fall.
And of course, that’s what’s important.
I can hear some of you snorting, “Brad’s trying to rig things for his guy!” But what I’m actually doing is worrying that the coronavirus could rig the process for Bernie, contrary to the will of the great majority of Democratic voters — the majority that has turned out in such force in the last few contests before the nation started shutting down over the pandemic.
One day — tomorrow — could be enormously destructive to the cause of beating Trump, if the factors I’ve just described come into play in Illinois, Florida, Ohio and Arizona.
Maybe I’m wrong to worry. Maybe Biden will roll to easy victory in those contests tomorrow, and then it will become obvious even to Sanders that he should drop out. (And I think this is what most observers expect to happen. So would I, were I not a born worrier.) And maybe he even will, at that point..
But I confess that at this point, I’m a little concerned about what could happen tomorrow. And how it could fail to reflect the will of Democratic voters as a body, and continue to tear at party unity in a way that benefits Trump…
For close to a year, I’ve been listening regularly to the NYT’s podcast “The Argument,” starring three of the paper’s op-ed writers.
There are two people on the left — David Leonhardt and Michelle Goldberg — and one on the right, Ross Douthat.
That may sound a bit lopsided, and for me it is, but not in the way you think. Week after week, I agree to varying degrees with liberal Leonhardt and conservative Douthat, and get really frustrated and turned off by the views of Michelle Goldberg.
One reason for that is that she’s always dissing my man Joe. It started before he got into the race last year, with her strongly expressing her wish that he NOT get in the race. After that, she continued to be a prominent voice among the nattering nabobs of the left competing to see who could be more dismissive of the former VP.
It’s not that she hated him. It’s just that she, you know… dismissed him. She was all like, Oh, good old Uncle Joe; he’s a sweet guy and I can put up with him at the family gatherings, but we all know he’s past it, and he has no business getting back in the game — the poor guy’s going to break a hip or something. And he just doesn’t get the world of today…
And as I walk about downtown listening to these podcasts, I’m like, No, YOU don’t get it…
But today, I finally got around to listening to yesterday’s podcast, which was about Joe’s triumphs of the last few days, and finally, she got it! She was awesome in the degree to which she got it, and how well she expressed it. I had to go back and listen again to write down some of the great things she was saying, starting with…
Michelle Goldberg
So much of what we’ve been talking about the last few months, especially in the debates, has been irrelevant.
People… care less about the details of, you know, how we’re going to pay for universal healthcare, or Medicare for all vs. Medicare for all who want it.
There are people who really care about that stuff. But what most people care about is, you know, the house is on fire; how are you going to put it out, not how are you going to rebuild afterwards….
Yes! Absolutely! I’ve been so impatient with all the idiots out there talking about this process in terms of who got off the greatest zingers in last night’s debate, or how Elizabeth “I’ve got a plan for that” Warren was going to pay for those plans, or whatever…
Who cared? I didn’t. Because the house is on fire! Stop talking about rearranging the furniture!
Also, too many people fail to get that the problem isn’t this plan or that plan of Bernie Sanders. The problem is Bernie Sanders, and the way he and too many of his followers conduct themselves. And a moment later, Ms. Goldberg said some awesome things about that:
I don’t think the Sanders movement understands how alienating it is to people who aren’t already on board with it, or maybe to people who are on board with maybe 85 percent or 90 percent of what they believe.
There’s a sort of paranoid style in that movement…
I’ve been around the left long enough to know that the left has always attracted a certain number of people who, um… you know, who are sort of just in it for the reeducation camps, right?…
Left-wing movements kind of succeed or fail to the degree that they can, you know, marginalize or quarantine those figures…
Yes! Absolutely! You get it! Paranoid style!
When she made that crack about the re-education camps, I laughed out loud, right there in the middle of the household goods department in Belk. (On rainy days, I tend to go do my afternoon walk in the nearly empty Richland Mall, rather than walking across the USC campus and around the Statehouse.)
And one of the guys on the show — I think it was Leonhardt — laughed, too. It was so perfect, so dead-on.
You go, Michelle!
But then, later in the show, she said she was going to vote for Bernie instead of Joe.
And suddenly the member of the trio I love to boo was back. I’m just briskly walking into Barnes and Noble shaking my head. I can’t believe it…
It’s alright, I guess. Most of the world came around and backed Joe this past week. Some people just take a little longer. No way to speed it up without, you know, re-education camps…
Warren before quitting, in an image from her Twitter feed.
So Elizabeth Warren has dropped out.
But she has not endorsed anyone.
She says,
Not today. I need some space around this and want to take a little time to think a little more.
REALLY? You have to think about whether you want to back Joe Biden… or a guy who would lead to four more years of Trump, loss of the House, and zero chance of dumping the Senate majority that refused even to consider evidence in the impeachment “trial”?
What is this about? Angling for an offer from one camp or the other?
Speaking of which: There are people out there saying Warren should be Joe’s running mate. The old “balance the ticket” nonsense.
Absolutely not, Joe. Go with Amy Klobuchar.
In case you haven’t noticed, Democrats are rejecting the left wing of the party. Pick a representative of that faction, and you’ll lose large chunks of the coalition that’s assembled behind you these last few days, the coalition that will take you to victory over Trump. They’ll want someone else like you, and that’s Amy Klobuchar. Or some other moderate who didn’t run.
For that matter, the fact that she had to think about whom to support should disqualify her as a running mate, without considering anything else. Amy Klobuchar didn’t have to ponder it.
Anyway, I thought I’d better say that now…
Just kidding (kinda) with the California thing. Think about it: If Bloomberg had just dropped out and endorsed Joe 24 hours sooner, Sanders wouldn’t be winning in La-La Land, either.
This is just a day for celebrating the good, common sense of the American people.
After the insanity of 2016, after a year in which voters kept insisting on attaching themselves to anyone, anyone at all, except the obvious, sensible choice… after a year of “oh, but my ideology!” nonsense… everybody got together and realized that they’d always loved Joe, so, you know, let’s go with Joe.
And not a second too soon. The nation was babbling hysterically. We South Carolinians gave it a good, tough-love slap in the face. And on Super Tuesday, the nation said, “Thanks. We needed that…”
I don’t know about you, but for me, it feels great to see things taking their proper shape around me. Finally. It’s kind of like waking up from a nightmare, realizing it was a dream, and thinking: “Oh, it’s alright then…”
Suddenly, people remember what was obvious — no one else who was running had the ability to connect in a positive way not only with most Democrats, but with independents. And not only them…
Some of you will rain on my parade by saying, “Yeah, but Trump voters… they’re still crazy…”
Maybe. But maybe that won’t matter in November. Haven’t you seen those analyses that say Joe is winning on the strength of support from, not only African-Americans (whom the pundits ignored and dissed until South Carolina), but also white suburbanites? That means he’s winning the people who gave Democrats their 2018 wins in the House — people who are key to beating Trump.
Still, as I’ve said before, there is still a problem in the country, and it won’t be gone just because Trump loses the election. The fact that so many voted for him in 2016 — something the American electorate would NEVER have done before that — points to something being profoundly wrong out there. The Bernie Bros, who crave revolution, are another indicator of the same thing. The nation has to find a way to heal that disaffection.
But there’s no better way to do that than by lining up behind a decent guy most Americans can find it in themselves to actually like. That’s a good first step.
I hope those of my friends who supported other candidates in this process can forgive my enjoying this moment. I’m not enjoying your candidates’ losing. I’m celebrating their getting behind Joe. I already liked Amy and Pete. Now I like them more. I even like Bloomberg today — in spite of that if-he’d-dropped-out-before-Joe-would-have-won-California thing.
Today, I am hopeful — more so than I’ve been in awhile. We still have a long road ahead of us. Bernie, who as we all know doesn’t play well with others, is not going to quit. But now, there’s a clear path for the candidate who far better reflects what most of the country wants. And I feel good about that…
I find that the most convenient place to find that hyperlocal information, right down to my neighborhood level, is…
The New York Times. I tried finding it at thestate.com, and maybe it’s there (in fact, I feel like it MUST be), but I couldn’t find it.
Anyway, they have an awesome interactive map. And I see that in my neighborhood, my man Joe cleaned up, with a higher percentage of the vote than he got overall in Lexington County.
Here are the numbers for my precinct:
To get your precinct, just go to the link, zoom in on your county, and roll the cursor around until you see your own polling station.
I was really hopeful, but I never would have guessed that, once South Carolina FINALLY got to have its say, things would have gone as wonderfully as this.
The best shot I could get from where I was standing.
Joe CRUSHED it.
South Carolina DELIVERED.
Now, finally, you can see national media — who have seized every opportunity to be as dismissive of Joe as possible — saying that he has emerged as the man to stop Bernie Sanders.
Joe was always the candidate for real Democrats wanting to save their party, and beat Trump. (And he was the candidate for a lot of us independents, too.) People — especially African-American voters — in South Carolina knew that. Today, they told the rest of the country.
And the rest of the country is taking note.
Will it be easy? No. This helps on Super Tuesday, but it’s impossible to predict anything with so many variables. But right now, at this moment, the race has taken on its proper shape, and I am hopeful.
Just a few thoughts before I sign off for the night:
That’s all for now.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited to see what happens next…
The last few days, I’ve been increasingly conscious of just how momentous this primary is today. I’ve felt the weight of it more and more.
I can’t think of a time when South Carolina played such a dramatic role in the selection of a president. Which is a big deal in and of itself. But the possible effects go far, far beyond that, sending ripples through our national politics that could be felt for a generation and more.
In the short term, one of two things will happen, depending completely on what my fellow South Carolinians do:
The second option, of course, will almost certainly lead to the re-election of Donald Trump, possibly with the kind of historic win that he lied about having in 2016.
Oh, it would be possible that enough Americans could die of coronavirus, and enough fortunes be wiped out on Wall Street as a result, for anybody, even Bernie, to beat Trump. But I certainly don’t want to see such a disaster. I don’t know about you.
And if something along those lines did happen, it’s extremely unlikely that Bernie will have a Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate. While voters might reject Trump personally over a pandemic, those moderate-to-conservative voters who elected moderate Democrats in 2018, giving that party its majority, will be sufficiently horrified at the prospect of President Sanders that they’ll vote to switch those districts back into the red.
Even if — and this is impossible — Democrats could keep the House while electing Bernie, and miraculously win the Senate, Bernie won’t be able to get his agenda through Congress. With both chambers being Republican, and the Republican base up in arms (in some cases possibly even literally) because of the defeat of Trump, he’ll get nothing but the back of the legislative branch’s hand. He’ll sit there in the Oval Office with his face getting redder and his arms flailing about, fulminating at how the system is rigged against him.
And he will keep his base as stirred up and angry as Trump keeps his. Because he promised them things, and they actually believed he could deliver. Nothing left to do but hate the billionayuhs even more, because obviously, obviously it will be their fault — in the Bernieverse.
But that wouldn’t be the worst news for the Democratic Party. The worst news is that it would be as dead as the GOP, and from basically the same kind of cause — its capture by someone who is not actually a Democrat, and who has crushed real Democrats on his way to nomination.
And in a way, the situation would be more overt than outsider Trump’s capture of the other party. Trump had always been kind of all over the place about his affiliation until just before the 2016 campaign. Bernie Sanders has made no bones about the fact that he is not a Democrat, and has refused to called one. And since calling himself a Social Democrat would be too tame, too mainstream, he has gone with the label “Democratic Socialist.” More in-your-face. More I-dare-you-to-vote-for-me. That’s Bernie.
You might think that after making such a strong run at the nomination in 2016, and obviously intending to try again, he might have softened a bit on his insistence that he was not a Democrat. But he didn’t; quite the contrary. It’s either Bernie’s way or the highway; he doesn’t bend even to appear to be a team player.
After Trump’s election, decent people who care about the country could at least place some hope in the Democratic Party, which had not yet gone off the rails. Surely the Democrats could find a way to beat this guy, and return our nation to the standards of decency and sanity that we were able to expect with our first 44 presidents.
Knowing the stakes, Joe Biden — a guy who had done his duty for his country for longer, and gone higher in public service, than any other member of the party — stepped forward to offer himself as the vehicle for that national return to sanity. He did so when almost anyone else would have sat back and enjoyed his grandchildren full time.
And if South Carolina comes through for him today, he’ll have a shot at accomplishing the mission. Just a shot, mind you. Nothing is guaranteed, but the alternative is to be resisted with all our might.
The stakes just couldn’t be higher. And it’s all in our hands. We will decide the course of the nation.
Joe Biden swearing in Inez Tenenbaum as chair of the Consumer Products Safety Commission in 2009. That’s Samuel in the middle looking justly proud.
My good friend Samuel Tenenbaum shared with me a link to the radio ad Inez did for Joe.
It helps drive home my point in my previous post, about the folks Democrats have backed in the past pretty much all being for Joe — something I hope Democratic voters take to heart tomorrow.
Here’s the link, and here’s a transcript I just typed up, so blame any errors on me:
This is Inez Tenenbaum, your former state superintendent of education.
When I was chosen to lead the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, the person who swore me into office was Joe Biden.
In the Obama-Biden administration, we worked together to keep our children safe, and Joe Biden was a champion for families all across our country, and South Carolina.
Joe Biden knows South Carolina. When our economy was in crisis, Joe Biden oversaw the Recovery Act, getting hundreds of millions of dollars for South Carolina schools.
For eight years, Joe Biden was loyal to President Obama. He had President Obama’s back, and stood by his side.
Now we have the opportunity to build on President Obama’s legacy, and beat Donald Trump. But that starts with nominating Joe Biden.
South Carolina, you can vote for Joe Biden on Saturday, February the 29th.
See you there!
[I’m Joe Biden, and I approved this message.”]
[Paid for by Biden for President.]
Thanks for taking the time to share those thoughts with us, Inez!
Joe Biden campaigning with us in October 2018.
In some very important ways, the Joe Biden campaign for president in South Carolina is, in my view, a continuation of the James Smith for governor campaign.
It’s not just that James himself is supporting Joe, as Joe supported him. At the recent Biden event at 701 Whaley, I was struck by how many of our key people from the 2018 campaign were continuing the mission by supporting Joe. It’s something I’d been aware of for some time, but hadn’t really thought about for a simple reason — it just seemed the most natural thing in the world.
At the top, you have Kendall Corley — who was our political director in 2018 — heading up Biden’s campaign in South Carolina. And Biden’s state political director is Scott Harriford, who was James’ driver and “body man” in 2018, and held the title of deputy political director. Scott was the first person James hired for the campaign, back in the summer of 2017, and was right there at his side from then through Election Day. (I thought I had an intense, whirlwind experience those last eight days on “the bus,” but Scott had been doing it for way over a year.)
Smith campaign alumni Ashley Medbery Floyd, me, and Noah Barker at a Biden event on Feb. 11.
At the 701 Whaley event I ran into Noah Barker, who assisted me with social media in 2018. Noah, who I think has reached the ripe old age of 19, is now working for the Biden campaign while attending college.
And while she’s not actually working in the Biden operation — she’s helping Jaime Harrison run against Lindsey Graham instead — Ashley Medbery Floyd, our finance directer in 2018, was at the 701 event, too. She and Noah and I marked the occasion with a selfie.
All this is natural because, well, there is such a bond between Joe and James. Their shared values are such that I don’t see how anyone who really believed in James in 2018 — and as his communications director, I certainly did and do — could possibly do anything but support Joe.
One of the things that drove me nuts back during the campaign was the way the political reporters went ape over anything having to do with 2020 presidential candidates coming through the state. They’d call me and ask what we’d be doing together with so-and-so on his or her swing through the state, or what we had to say about it, and it would put me in a bind. We didn’t want to say anything unkind about these national Democrats, but at the same time, we couldn’t have cared less about their visits. They were here for themselves, not for us.
But not Joe. Joe was our guy, and we couldn’t wait to see him. We knew he was coming, and we were really disappointed when he had to postpone his initially planned event because of complications related to the hurricane. But finally, on Oct. 13, he came down to Charleston to do a fund-raiser for us, and it was possibly the best day of my time on the campaign. And I could tell it was a high point for everyone else. (It was such a big deal that upon arriving in Charleston, Campaign Manager Scott Hogan went to a shop on King Street and bought himself a suit, and wore it to the event. You have to know Hogan to get what a big deal that was. He normally dressed like a guy about to go out and mow the lawn.)
Anyway, I could go on and on about the way one campaign flows into the other, but I have a point to make here, and it is this: If you voted for James, if you believed in James, you should believe in Joe Biden, and vote for him. I don’t see how you work it out any other way.
James is not authorizing me to say this (I haven’t asked him). I’m saying it myself.
As communications director, I think I have as good a grasp of what the Smith campaign was about as anyone does. It was a campaign for all the people of South Carolina — black, white, old young, male, female, Democratic, Republican and independent. It was a campaign that would Leave No One Behind.
And Joe is running the exact same kind of campaign for the soul of the nation.
One more point, an elaboration on that one: Maybe James Smith isn’t your favorite Democrat. He should be, but maybe he isn’t.
Still, if you are a Democrat, or someone who frequently votes for Democrats, you should take note that pretty much every Democrat you have nominated and/or voted into statewide office in the past 20 years and more is supporting Joe Biden for president. And for good reason.
I’m talking not just James, but Vincent Sheheen, who was your standard-bearer twice.
And Jim Hodges, our state’s last Democratic governor.
And Dick Riley, the last Democratic governor before Hodges. (And speaking of great public servants with that name, the greatest mayor of his generation in the country, Joe Riley.)
And Inez Tenenbaum, the last superintendent of education who was (and still is) a Democrat.
Now, Jim Clyburn — the current highest-ranking Democrat in the state, and one of the most powerful in the country — has joined that list. And it’s a long list. The Post and Courier put most of it together a few weeks ago, before Hodges had come out for Joe.
These are people who embody the heart, the core, of what it means to be a Democrat in South Carolina. No one could be more in touch with what South Carolina Democrats care about.
Still speaking to Democrats and people who sometimes vote for them here (let’s call you DAPWSVFTs for short)… These are all people you have believed in in the past, in whom you have placed your trust. Scoff at endorsements all you like, but I’m telling you these are smart people who know these candidates, who know the country and its needs, who know South Carolina, and they are for Joe. They’re putting their reputations out there in support of him, and you might think that’s a small thing, but it isn’t.
These people know what they’re about, and they’re for Joe. And most of you DAPWSVFTs have indicated your respect and support for these people in the past. These are people who share your values.
So it makes all the sense in the world that you would join them in voting for Joe Biden for POTUS on Saturday.
That’s Smith campaign veteran Kendall Corley whispering in Joe’s ear as he works a crowd on MLK Day in Columbia.
Still from a video posted on Biden’s Twitter feed today.
You think I’m being overly dramatic there? I’m not. This is a dangerous moment for our country, and only thing that will save us from it will be Joe Biden winning on Saturday, and going on to do well on Super Tuesday.
And this is now about much more than me liking Joe Biden. It’s now increasingly about the alternative.
I thought Tom Friedman put it well in his column today (more about that column later; it was a really good piece):
If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that?
That’s all I am thinking about right now…
Me too, Tom. Me too.
So it matters that Clyburn stepped up at long last today and endorsed Joe. By the way, I’m not complaining when I say “at long last.” I really think his endorsement came at the best possible time. If he had given it months ago when everyone else (and I mean everyone else who’s anyone among S.C. Democrats) was endorsing Joe, it would have been forgotten by now. Now, whatever effect it will have is amplified.
Before we get into a big debate about whether endorsements matter, let me just head that off with this observation: If endorsements matter at all, can you imagine anyone’s mattering more than Clyburn’s at this moment? I can’t.
The AP story today claimed that “It had long been expected that Clyburn, the House majority whip, would support Biden.” Really? Then how come I didn’t know it? If you’d made me bet, sure, I would have said Jim would back Joe. But I also would have said we wouldn’t be calling Bernie Sanders a front-runner at this point, and that Donald Trump wouldn’t have been the GOP nominee in 2016.
So I don’t rest easy with conventional wisdom these days. And as an American and a South Carolinian, I’m very grateful to Jim Clyburn for what he has done this day.
There was some suspense over this, at least for me. Just a couple of days ago, The New York Times had a prominently-played story that suggested Clyburn might have a liking for Tom Steyer. It was another one of those stories about Steyer’s efforts to buy the black vote here (something I remain very concerned about). It quoted Clyburn as telling CNN, “I think Steyer is doing an incredible job.” Which is far short of an endorsement, but it still made me nervous.
Anyway, Jim Clyburn has done a fine thing today — for Joe Biden, for the Democratic Party, for South Carolina, and for America. And I appreciate it.
Having shown you my yard signs, I figured I’d show you one of my bumper stickers… especially since I know y’all have been breathless with anticipation ever since I wrote this post.
(Hey, at least y’all took an interest in that one. It got more than 50 comments, and I can’t scare up an audience this week for love or money. Where’d y’all all go?)
As I wondered what to do several months ago, I wrote:
Anyway, now I have to figure out where to put my Biden sticker. My first thought is to put it right in the middle, but then my tailgate will be 2/3 Democratic. Which is not the effect I’m going for. But then, does that matter, since Joe is running in the Democratic Primary? I mean, what do I care what Republicans think in this context? Worrying about being perfectly bipartisan is more about worrying about what people think of ME, isn’t it? And that shouldn’t be a factor.
I could put it over the Smith sticker, since the campaign’s over and all, but I won’t do that. My experience last year is something I’m proud of, and I’m going to continue to wear it on my sleeve. Or tailgate.
Anyway, look how shiny and new it still is. It looks good. By contrast, Micah’s sticker has faded considerably…
I saw Micah this morning, and I guess I should have asked him for a fresh one to replace that one. You can’t see the red strip where it says, “Republican.”
You see that I did what I was thinking about back then — put Joe right in the middle.
I think it looks good there…
My two signs, well spaced, to promote the bandwagon effect.
Girding for the primary that is finally about to occur, I went to Biden HQ and picked me up a couple of yard signs, and put them up over the weekend.
And in my Republican neighborhood, I felt very smug and secure in my belief that my message would dominate, because I had not yet seen a single other sign for a primary candidate in the whole subdivision. And we walk about the neighborhood a lot (still maintaining an average of more than 11,000 steps a day).
But then on Sunday, on a whim, I decided to take a different course — I proposed we cut through this little park we have that’s way down at the base of the dam for one of the neighborhood’s two lakes, then climb up the other side of the park to a street we haven’t walked on in years, on the opposite side of the other lake from where we normally walk.
And there, I saw it. An enemy sign. So now, the battle has been joined. I’m using these war metaphors, of course, because this was an Elizabeth Warren sign, and you know how she’s all about fighting. Fight, fight, fight…
But fear not! We’re still in the lead, because I’ve got two signs. I live on a huge lot on a corner, so I put one of them along the main drag in front of the house, and the other facing the side street. They’re far enough apart that even if you’re at an angle where you can see both (above), it’s kind of like they’re in two separate yards next to each other. (Were this Shandon, they’d seem to be at least two yards apart.)
This promotes the bandwagon effect: Dang, it looks like everybody around here’s for Joe! I’d better get on board! Sneaky, huh?
Of course, truth be told, you can’t tell all that much from signs in this neighborhood. Before the 2016 GOP primary, there was one Trump sign in the neighborhood. It was several blocks away, and every time I saw it, I thought something like, I guess there’s one in every neighborhood. (Kind of like what my Republican neighbors are thinking about me about now.)
But Trump won my precinct, so…
Anyway, I can’t control all that. I can just do my bit for Joe, and let the chips fall…
What can a Democratic president accomplish if most of these seats are filled with Republicans?
Bud Ferillo shared this letter from Michael Hollings, son of Fritz. It raises an important point I’ve seen others raise recently, such as Nicholas Kristof (“I Worry About Sanders, and His Coattails“): What can a Democratic president accomplish if he lacks the coattails to elect a Democratic Senate?
It’s Not Complicated.
A segment of the Democratic Party speaks of “revolution.” Obviously, no D agenda will occur unless the D’s regain the U.S. Senate. The nonpartisan Cook Report projects that the Senate D’s could gain 5 or 6 seats while needing only 3. The R’s are defending 23 seats, the D’s 12. Elements of the progressive agenda warrant consideration, but, given the current political disconnect, only a moderate can defeat Trump and also offer coattails to D Senate candidates. Do we really want to endure the next 8 months listening to Trump’s venomous rantings on the evils of socialism as the gateway drug to communism? Even if a Socialist D could conceivably win the presidency, we most likely will lose the Senate plus any opportunity to pursue any progressive agenda. The moderate of the group best qualified to score the “two-for” is not the D who switched twice to run as an R, supporting George Bush for President, then switched to an Indep. to run for the same office then switched back to a D, all the while spending a couple of $100 million to do so ( while masterminding the quota-driven stop and frisk police tactics later declared to be unconstitutional). The moderate with the tenacity, the fight, the temperament and the experience to score the “two-for” of defeating Trump and winning back the U.S. Senate, while advancing progressive ideas is Joe Biden, and Deborah, Chris and I enthusiastically endorse his candidacy. As Fritz would say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going!
Michael Hollings
Columbia, SC
Those are not exactly the same points Kristof raised: Hollings sees the solution as being Joe (as do I). Kristof is thinking more in terms of Klobuchar (who would be my very distant second choice).
But both raise the question: What good would all the plans in the world do, if you can’t help Democrats win the Senate?
I’d rather Joe be Peter than Michael Bolton, but whatever…
I’m at the doctor’s office for my annual physical, so I don’t have time, but wanted to put up a place for y’all to comment if you’re inclined.
joe did fine, which is one of only two things I care about. But as a group, they set back the cause of defeating Trump, which of course is the other thing I care about.
Unpleasant to watch…
A friend of my daughter shared with her the image above…
It’s a good thing I decided against trying to post this video last night before going to bed. I’d have been up half the night.
I’ve been having trouble moving video and images from my phone to this new computer. And of course 18 minutes of HD video make for a HUGE file.
So after a process that involved a phone, two laptops, and a flash drive that I had to empty in order to use, I can finally show you the speech.
Enjoy, and be edified…
A panoramic view of the room just before Joe came out.
This blew me away.
Being a fair-minded guy, I wanted to stress that not everyone in the working media lacks perspective. You know that one headline from this morning that I cited and dissected in my previous post? I was going to confess it was a bit of an outlier, and that for every guy like that one, there’s a sensible soul such as Frank Bruni, whose column this morning made the same point I did:
Yes, Bernie Sanders won the state’s primary on Tuesday night. And that victory, coming on the heels of his functional tie with Pete Buttigieg in the dysfunctional Iowa caucuses last week, makes him the indisputable front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
But look at how closely behind him Buttigieg finished, despite furious attacks from Sanders and other rivals over recent days. Look at the sudden surge of Amy Klobuchar, whose strong third-place finish demonstrates not only how unsettled the contest is but also how many Democrats crave a moderate — or female — alternative to Sanders.
Note that while Sanders is hugely well known in New Hampshire and beat Hillary Clinton by 22 points in its Democratic primary in 2016, he squeaked by Buttigieg this time around, as many people who voted for him four years ago obviously didn’t do so on Tuesday night.
And so forth. The real story being the inability of moderates thus far to settle on ONE candidate.
But before adding that, I decided to check my email, and saw an enewsletter from that same, sensible Frank Bruni, and the headline was “What in God’s name happened to Joe Biden?”
OK, fine. Yes, it would have been better had Joe been on the top of the stack of moderates rather than the bottom in New Hampshire, but still — I’m still in a good mood from Joe’s rally at 701 Whaley last night.
And then I saw the picture that ran with the eblast, and my jaw dropped.
I was there. I saw Joe and how he conducted himself. He was as upbeat and ebullient as ever. In fact, if I can ever get the freaking thing to upload to YouTube, I’ll show you every second that he was at the podium, and challenge you to find the split-second reflected in that photo above, in which he seems to be delivering a concession speech with a crushed spirit.
Until I can get that up and running (and finally, here it is), here are some representative images:
Tonight, @JoeBiden did a great job in front of of a fired-up, enthusiastic crowd. This race starts NOW… pic.twitter.com/Fpi7bHl7IE
— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) February 12, 2020
You can almost always get a picture like that NYT one. You can play a fun game if you use the “burst” function on your phone (akin to the motordrive of old film cameras), and you’ll see all sorts of expressions flash across a person’s face, some of them quite comical and many of them highly misleading as to the person’s emotional state at the time.
But this one is a prize-winner. And I’m shocked that it was used by the NYT, even in an email…
THIS is a representative image illustrating Joe’s mood at the event.
My NYT app this morning.
One can sometimes see why there are so many people in this country who can’t stand the news media.
I can get pretty peeved with them myself these days.
There are two phenomena that particularly irritating. Or maybe they’re just one:
The last two weeks, it has been astounding the degree to which the media — both straight news and opinion — have been trapped in what’s happening right this second. It has always been thus, but the pace of reporting and the orientation toward social media has made the problem far, far worse.
Instead of a considered, consistent narrative over time, the picture we get of what’s happening is so immediate, it has no value beyond a few moments:
Meanwhile, Biden was having a very nice rally here in Columbia before an enthusiastic crowd. And as a Biden support, I would prefer that he had done better among those uber-white people in Iowa and New Hampshire, but as far as I’m concerned, the race is just getting started.
Of course, when Joe wins here, we’ll be seeing:
And so forth.
And then, Super Tuesday will roll around, and South Carolina will be forgotten and it will be all about Bloomberg or something.
That’s the goldfish part.
The other thing is that so many people out there seem incapable of seeing what happens in this brief moments within any sort of larger context.
My favorite example of that today is a headline that trumpets, “Bernie Sanders Has Already Won,” followed by the subhead, “Whether he captures the White House or not, he has transformed the Democratic Party.”
Uh… no, he hasn’t. First, he didn’t do nearly as well as he did four years ago. I think it’s early to completely dismiss him, but if you go by that one bit of info, his time may have passed.
Second, and most importantly, if we’re going to draw conclusions based on something as thin as the New Hampshire vote, consider: The three candidates appealing to the moderates who utterly reject Bernie’s revolution got a total of 52.6 percent of the vote, compared to Bernie’s 25.7 percent.
They crushed him. They demolished him. They utterly rejected him. Even if you give him Elizabeth Warren’s 9 percent on the assumption that her voters might switch to Bernie, he got massacred.
The real story here is that the moderates just can’t make up their minds. If and when they do, we won’t be hearing any more about the triumph of Bernie.
I — and a lot of voters here in South Carolina — still believe that they would be wisest to line up behind Biden because he’s the one most likely to beat Trump. And nothing is more important than that.
They just haven’t wanted to accept that yet. I get it. I like Pete and Amy, too. But I’m going with the guy most likely to win. And I still remain hopeful that other moderates — sensible folk that they are — will reach that conclusion, too.
