Fraud King Encourages Voter Fraud

Goes to a swing state and encourages people to break the law to keep him in power. Law and Order!

Donald Trump has railed against non-existent voter fraud for years, but until yesterday, we did not have sufficient reason to believe this line of misdirection had anything to do with his usual confession-projection approach to hypocritically attacking others for what he does. Well, that lacking evidence is now produced, and the voter fraud stuff was indeed projection. President Trump apparently wants his supporters to vote twice to own the libs (and keep him in power).

In North Carolina, Trump told his supporters to vote twice, on multiple occasions. In one exchange, he said , “Let them send it in and let them go vote… And if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote [twice].” At another point he said, “Send it in early and then go vote.” Elsewhere he said you can vote after election day, and if they receive it late and you already voted, it should not count. But if they want to count ballots after election day, it may count

The president’s psychobabble is usually hard to follow, but these are stunningly easy to understand. And it makes a lot of sense. His view of law and order is legal immunity for himself and his supporters, and frivolous charges against his perceived opponents (which is most of the world on any given day). It was only a matter of time before the wannabe strongman would encourage his followers to commit the very voter fraud he claimed was ailing American. This fits a larger pattern of authoritarians rising up through democracy, only to undermine the very mechanism that got them power–because what they want is power, not what is good for the nation. Moreover, his inability to criticize the ballot harvesting scam run by GOP operative in North Carolina’s 9th District, in which completed ballots were collected from voters and thrown away if they voted for Democrats, was always tacit approval for the enterprise of winning at all costs and using a partisan shield to defray claims of unethical behavior.

Luckily, the president realized he fucked up and took to Twitter to clarify his stance on felonious voting:

Do go vote twice, but not really, but do it anyway, but just make sure your vote is counted and hold up the line, then vote again? Umm… GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!

First, who the fuck is he quoting? Second, it is very difficult to understand what the hell he is saying between the weird punctuation, grammar, parentheticals, and capitalization. This is not the way a reasonable person communicates, let alone one of the best students at Wharton. And as usual, his ignorance is showing: the reason any voter fraud even occurs is because you are not institutionally inhibited from voting more than once. There is no widely available system to capture whether someone is trying to vote twice, once through the mail and once in person, or at several precincts within a short time frame. A poll worker at a local precinct will not have access to how every voter in that area voted. All they know is someone is eligible to vote. So what actually happens is both of those votes will both count and only be discovered after the fact. Then, that person is prosecuted for the felony of voter fraud.

Perhaps Trump is not so ignorant, and he is essentially trying to get his supporters to commit fraud, get caught, and get sent to jail so that he can stay in power and not go to jail himself. This actually makes some sense, and would fit with Trump’s me-first raison d’être. Nonetheless, it is nice to see the golden maxim of Trump–whatever he attacks others for doing he is currently doing himself or wants to do–applies to the voter fraud topic. As chaotic as Trump is, he is eminently predictable.

Fuck the Left! Biden and DNC Go Full 1990s Third Way

Republican Kasich explicitly said Joe Biden will never cave to the left. Is this the RNC or DNC?

Up until a few weeks ago, it looked like Joe Biden’s campaign to unseat failed president Donald Trump might buck the conventional wisdom and be somewhat inclusive of progressive voices in the party and grassroots activists. This wasn’t based on Biden’s team doing anything, but instead Bernie Sanders’ support of Joe and Joe’s campaigns apparent lack of clear antagonization of the left.

Well, that shit is over now.

In the past few weeks, the Biden campaign has taken the following actions that serve as evidence for a swing voter only, persuasion-based campaign strategy, eschewing the left:

• Shutout Bernie’s GOTV team in favor of Republican Ana Navarro’s lucrative contract to win reactionary Cuban voters in FL at the detriment to Latinos in the western U.S.
• Pick median Democrat Kamala Harris as VP, creating a more diverse, but centrist ticket to replicate the great success of Clinton-Kaine in 2016
• Inexplicably limit AOC’s speaking time to a one-minute recording that they can edit/axe
• Elevate former Ohio Governor and Representative John Kasich–the lead author of welfare reform–as a major campaign surrogate with the eventual payoff of a cabinet appointment

By no means is this list exhaustive, but these moves alone suggest Biden’s team thinks unicorn swing voters and disenchanted Republicans are his path to defeating Trump. While that could be true, it is not immediately obvious that the way to attract them is to play up party ID and publicly shit on the left. Maybe swing voters want policy. Maybe these groups are already going to vote against Trump no matter what. Maybe encouraging the youth and minority vote is an investment in the future, even if you don’t need them now. And maybe you do need them know, but your fetishism of conservative-leaning bipartisanship is clouding your judgment. Who knows!?

And for anyone saying Kamala is progressive, you have fallen for her strategic positioning. Her instincts are not with the progressive wing of the party, but when she has felt that taking progressive positions could propel her career, she will adopt them. She’s the west coast Kirsten Gillibrand. There is some virtue in this since that makes her a malleable politician, which is better than a Third Way ideologue like Joe Biden, but that still requires surrounding her with progressives voices that push her in that direction. A liberal voting record in the Senate is not the same as being progressive because of how the legislative agenda works. Party devotees–like Harris–often appear more liberal for Democrats, or conservative for Republicans, simply because they support their parties positions on major wedge issues of the day in a reliable fashion. This is why super progressive members that vote against the Democratic Party appear more conservative, while far-right Republicans that buck the GOP appear more liberal on both cumulative and focus vote measures. Kamala Harris is a mushy corporate Democrat who has been plotting her ascendency to the presidency for over a decade. To do that, she wanted to appear progressive while secretly assuring vested interests that she will do what the party consensus dictates. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did the exact same thing, laying the groundwork for Kamala’s approach.  Sbe’s a competent political actor, but a progressive she is not. And she deserves continued scrutiny about her consistently crummy office morale at every stage in her political career. A boss who fosters the antipathy of their employees is clearly failing at a core task of leadership.

I hope this is all overblown kabuki for now, and that if Biden wants a fusion cabinet, that fusion is not just conservadems and RINOs, but has authentic representation from this nation’s progressives. Robert Reich or Elizabeth Warren at Treasury would go a long distance on this front, especially if Cory Booker will be at HUD and Susan Rice gets State. For a big tent party, the Democratic Party never fails to show how much they hate the left-wing activists that propel them into power year after year.

The Intentional Collapse of the Federal Government

Pandemic federalism: four official and unofficial regional working groups (West Coast; Great Lakes; Chesapeake; Northeast) on the coordinated reopening of the states. The executive branch is AWOL.

Throughout the natural disasters (esp. in Puerto Rico), global pandemic, economic collapse, and now social unrest brought on by police violence, the Trump administration has excised itself from command and control and implicitly reasserted the Articles of Confederation. In this dynamic, all the federal government does is coordinate information between actors, with no formal authority to act on a thing. Coordination is good, but frankly, Trump is not even using his epicenter in power to do that. A central tendency of this administration is to shift blame and decision-making away from the White House, then position themselves to both take credit and deny culpability for things that go wrong. What this reveals is that the turn toward the unitary presidency is not a turn toward a unitary government–Trump, Pompeo and Barr instead want the president to do whatever they want at the national stage without actually governing the people of the United States. On the one hand that may mean the dawning fascist America will not occur through police state clamping down–a good thing–but will instead occur from societal collapse and government failure, leading a vocal minority of people to assert uniform control at the local level. This bottom-up fascism is not likely to occur, especially given the blue states are the economic engines of America. The most likely result is needless destruction until Joe Biden becomes president and reasserts some form of gainful government. While Biden is aligned to the Reaganite austerity regime of the last 40 years, there is a fair chance he will eschew his previous loyalties and realign the country back towards a government of the people and for the people. While time will tell on these last couple of points, what is clear now is local and state leaders only have each other to rely upon. The one saving grace is that every single governor and mayor in America is more competent than President Trump, so while he will continue sniping on Twitter to encourage the race war, at least in his enforcement capacity he won’t make things much worse. The anti-government ideology of Reagan and his followers is culminating in a hollowing out of the state and a divestment of federal actors from the subnational stage. Some may say this is a good thing, but the cost of this movement toward private power-only will lead to an incredible backlash and likely remove Republicans from federal power for a generation. Can’t say I didn’t warn you, Mitch.

As far as the these Covid-19 regional groups go, they are better than nothing, but will wholly fail at containing the virus. The main reason is states do not have the legal authority to close down their borders, which would violate centuries of legal precedent that states cannot inhibit interstate commerce. So while I applaud the create use of subnational associations to fill the void of national leadership, it will not work in the end. Until President Trump gives a shit about Coronavirus, it is here to stay.

Trump and the Destruction of America

40,000,000 unemployment claims and countless additional dislocated workers. 100,000 dead due because federal leadership was unprepared for a pandemic (and then did not care to mitigate it after it started). Now cities are on fire with widespread looting and property destruction overshadowing peaceful antiracism protests. And the president tweets this:

“Law & Order in Philadelphia, NOW! They are looting stores. Call in our great National Guard like they FINALLY did (thank you President Trump) last night in Minneapolis. Is this what voters want with Sleepy Joe? All Dems!” [5/31/20 at 4:04 EST]

The nation is crumbling from centuries-long and new crises, and the fucking president of the United States is credit-claiming for nothing and partisan sniping instead of trying to fix widespread social discord. This shit is unreal. The icon of the right–a makeup applying, shoe-lift wearing, serial sex assaulting, low self-esteem, fragile ego dotard–has lost operational control of the country and has become a purely symbolic figurehead. The senile and inept man wants to politicize the protests as a culture war or command and control issue, but he will fail at both because this is all happening under his watch. He cannot claim he can fix the problem when the problem is blossoming under his failed leadership.

Frankly, it is hard to imagine any human being performing worse on this unless the point was to see America crumble. Ultimately, is that want Trump wants? Is that what his self-proclaimed patriotic supporters want? Is the goal to destroy social cohesion and the gainful role of government to create a wild wild west where the only protection you have depends on your personal wealth? Well, I guess they get what they want. A great country laid to waste, Trump-Pence 2020.

 

Why Does Trump Oppose a National Coronavirus Testing Regime?

The single most important component of a comprehensive response to a viral pandemic is to identify how widespread the virus is in the public. To execute this directive, nations may have to prioritize developing testing capacity through acquiring swabs, chemical agents, and functioning lab capacity. Any individual or organization that seeks to secure tests in a global pandemic will face high levels of scarcity in one or more of the aforementioned elements of a testing regime, and therefore will have to bid against others in the quest for supplies. This runs up the price for the materials, causes delays, and increases the chance of receiving fraudulent materials from profit-motivated actors. Since only the wealthiest and best connected can thrive in this environment, while most others cannot, the virus will just circulate undetected or partly detected, cycling between populations (including eventually touching the very people that could afford tests, lest they entirely withdraw from society).

To solve the issues of individual level suboptimization, collective structures need to be erected for the good of society. Since localities and states face the same fragmentation as individuals, especially if movement of travel is not restricted between states, the only sensible answer is a nationwide plan to test as many Americans as possible. Ideally, this would extend to all individuals, regardless of symptoms, but the current shortage of materials has limited the testing protocols to ER-level patients, wealthy individuals, or employees of resource-rich organizations. Not testing for asymptomatic carriers means we will never reach the point where we understand how widespread the virus is within society, making national planning around reopening the economy extremely difficult if one cares about public health.

All this is to say testing is the most essential component of a national planning strategy. While social isolation in ones home and personal protective equipment are more important at the individual level, we are essentially flying blind without a sufficiently comprehensive testing regime. The president can, at the very least, provide the technical means for states to collaborate on a unified strategy, a la the Articles of Confederation, or more presciently invoke national emergency powers, a la the Constitution. While Trump has had conference calls and provided written guidance to states of what they could do, while declaring a national emergency to release funds and flexibility to states and banning Chinese and EU nationals from entering the country (while initially exempting countries that house his golf resorts), he has not fully maximized interjurisdictional coordination nor his emergency powers. So we are essentially operating in some combination of pre-Articles of Confederation and pre-Constitution frameworks in the year 2020. The America First wannabe strong man finally has the opportunity to use emergency powers, and he either does it haphazardly or oddly declines to use them. Good grief, the incompetence…

Additionally, the president has statutory support to use the Defense Production Act of 1950 to compel vital industrial companies to make specific products for mass deployment, like facemasks, swabs, ventilators, protective shields, and chemical reagents, among other essential supplies. But importantly, Trump has only invoked the DPA in name, signing a vague authorization, and one time specifically compelling General Motors to make ventilators. While that is useful, I am sufficiently confident he did this to spite GM for previous issues he has had with the company. While 3M, DuPont, and others are price-gouging and selling products to foreign countries, Trump is still erring toward grievance-led decisionmaking.

All of this summary is prefatory to answer the question: why does Trump oppose a nationwide testing regime, coordinated and supplied by the federal government? In my assessment there are five potential answers, each one explaining part of the equation.

1. Blame: Likely the main reason (and one contemporaneously reported by the media early in the pandemic) is that Trump views the diagnostic measure of testing as threatening to his popularity and reelection prospects. The reasoning: because if people know the true number of infections, they will freak out and blame him. That is mostly correct, so at least he is operating in reality on this, a reality filled with paranoia and fear. Facing consequences for one’s (in)action is an important part of daily life, something most children learn between 5 and 9 years old. Trump, at 73, has not learned this. Nor has he taken his Oath of Office as a public servant seriously. So even if testing would lead to a negative view of him (and it would), knowledge is power, and the public and other governmental officials would better internalize the seriousness of the situation at adhering to mitigation protocols. The correct decision for a leader in this situation is to do everything they can to reduce the harm of a global viral pandemic–nationalize the cost of testing and nationalize the dissemination of tests–but this truth conflicts with Trump’s perceived self-interests. And it may in fact be the case that Trump would receive more approval if he followed the correct path here, as I suspect fearful Americans would appreciate sound governmental leadership.

2. Spooking Others: As a fearful man, Trump may also believe the necessary level of action may spook the stock market and/or piss off conservative business leaders, like the My Pillow guy. He definitely cares about how other people perceive him–he is very poor at getting this correct–but the My Pillow Guy is clearly ride or die with Trump. Any business leaders that supported Trump in December 2019 will support him forever. Period. On the stock market, it will go down with a global meltdown, so his short-sighted, denialist thinking is certainly inferior to long-term vision and virtuous public servant behavior. One additional argument for restricting testing is to defray mass pandemonium from occurring, but that’s a risk irrespective of testing. (Potentially, you could test and act but not publicize results broadly, which is probably occurring in one form or another by different agencies and jurisdictions.)

3. Crisis Profiteering: By maintaining the dog-eat-dog market conditions on testing materials (among other types of materials like protective equipment, food, and cleaning supplies like toilet paper), Trump is ensuring the supply is scare, demand is high, and therefore costs will rise. This is needless and serves no public good other than some businesses profiting while we lose the war. He may want to continue price-gouging for the entire duration of the pandemic, while working with Jared and Ivanka to figure out a new way to bilk the federal government out of money since he cannot house his assistants and the secret service on his properties (Trump will likely reap a big winfall through the PPP program). Maintaining private extortion in service of hierarchy is a standard hypothesis in contemporary American politics and sociology, so this explanation would likely occur in some form or another by every contemporary president. But better national emergency leaders would only accept the grift if it also meant solving the pressing public problem. Here we just increased inequality with no public good.

4. Laziness: A general hypothesis to explain governmental failures under Trump is laziness and incompetence. Pepper that with fear of blame and Trump’s inaction is a standard response for someone who has failed his way up through his entire life.  However, this explanation is unlikely here since he would have to exert zero actual energy in authorizing a nationwide testing regime. The same people that currently do what he tells them would also have to do 100% of the work on this, but at least they would have his imprimatur. He might rightly think it would go poorly, since his administration cannot do much right, and that could haunt him in the future, going back to explanation 1. In any case, it is much easier for Trump to stand around and do nothing than suddenly figure out how to be forward-looking and capable leader.

5. Ideology: the purportedly non-ideological president (except on migration, race, trade, and kleptocracy) is actually highly ideological in a definitional sense. Ideology is a reflected and projected ordered system to make coherent frequently contradictory ideas to provide for minimal cognitive dissonance in the user. (A political ideology just contextualizes which ideas are included.) By that definition, Trump is actually one of the most ideological presidents in U.S. history. His ideology is predicated on several pillars: views of eugenics and “good breeding,” social Darwinism, and just as a perverse twist, the power of positive thinking. These outlooks pair with his sociopathy developed as a child, malignant narcissism, and kleptocratic wiring to create a hot mess of a human dumpster fire. And that person happens to be in charge of a once-a-century global pandemic. In this view, Trump’s aversion to creating a comprehensive national testing delivery system is because he a) does not think reality can be forced upon him and/or b) does not care if people die. In a more bounded way, Trump may also simply believe that this is not the federal government’s responsibility, as he does outwardly state. But that is a consequence and not cause of his anti-testing decision matrix. It starts because of his denial of reality and belief that he can will anything into existence. He could think “if there are no tests, there are no positive tests. So we’re good.” That may work in a cult of personality, but people losing family members to Coronavirus may see it differently.

Defeatist Trump Commits Mass Manslaughter While Seeking Reelection

“We have it totally under control, it’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control, it’s uh, gonna be just fine.” (1/22/20)

“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, uh, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” (2/26/20)

If “we have between 100,000 and 200,000 [dead Americans], uh, we all together have done a very good job” (2/29/20)

Trump’s sundry issues with truth, accountability, leadership, coherence, effectiveness, reflectiveness, conscientiousness, self-dealing, egomania, and understanding the meaning of life would all suggest the president would be a poor head of government during a pandemic. He does not understand death on a mass scale, borne from his inability to empathize and difficulty understanding orders of magnitude. Trump’s sociopathy is way too strong to expect the gravity of the situation to compel him to behave more competently. Because of his inability to understand causal sequencing, nuance, and scale, Trump will single-handily exacerbate the death toll and infected rates for Covid-19.

And indeed, that is the case: a more competent leader could have mitigated Covid-19 transmission in the U.S., if not prevent its global ascension altogether through a better understanding of international integration strategies. This episode again shows the folly of willing your mindstate into existence by denying reality. The power of positive thinking is one thing, but complete denial of the world you actually live in is mentally inexcusable. Humans are structured by our environments as much as we alter the environment. A real estate developer is the last profession that might understand this. To be a strong decision-maker, you have to first understand what is, not just the vision you have for the future.

But Trump is not a very good decision-maker. Nor does he have the ability to use reason to create society-wide gainful outcomes. He is a product of a cynical, hateful politics that relies on misdirected emotion and empirical ignorance to survive. His magical thinking is negligent and irresponsible. His malignant narcissism is inexcusable. And for all of this, he has direct culpability in Americans needlessly dying. The only reason there is a lockdown is because of Trump’s negligence, and the reason governors have to create a piecemeal state-by-state lockdown is because Trump’s lack of regard for public health meant he could not issue a national lockdown. Then in the midst of a pandemic, he defunds the World Health Organization to shift attention from his incompetence (by further displaying his incompetence). At every step of the way, not only has Trump made the wrong decisions, but he has made the decisions most antithetical to solving the crisis.

But the weirdest part of all of it is not the expected catastrophe. Instead, his flip from it not being a big deal to proudly proclaiming it could kill hundreds of thousands of people was an incredible failure of public leadership. No president in American history has rhetorically offered so many Americans up for the slaughter due to their own negligence. The defeatism in his odd acceptance that people will die (despite his repeated proclamations that it would be not be the case) is truly incredible. He is the weakest president this country has had since James Buchanan, and is obviously worse at dealing with the hand that is dealt. Congratulations, Donnie, you are THE WORST president in U.S. history. While the country burns, another record for the idiot king…

What Biden’s Lead Tells Us About the Democratic Electorate in 2020

As of this moment, Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee with 1,196 delegates to Bernie Sanders’ 883. While Bernie coming back to win is highly unlikely–even if Medicare for All is the most appropriate single policy for the moment in which we live–is is notable Biden is far short of the 1,991 delegates he needs to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

Despite Biden’s pedigree as a party interlocutor in a diverse coalition, he is arguably the weakest candidate to put against Trump. Just as Hillary was made to be a creature of the D.C. swamp who does give a fuck about working people, Biden will face the exact same critique. In fact, he has 20 years additional years on Hillary, having served in Congress since the 1970s. And despite his public persona as scrappy Joe from blue-collar Scranton, PA, he was arguably the biggest booster of the credit card industry during his time in Congress, including his leading role in crafting the notoriously shitty Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Nonetheless, Biden has consistently sat atop the polls in his head-to-head performance against Biden, which paired with the corporate media hype machine has created the perception that Biden is the most electable candidate to displace the narcissist-in-chief.

Whether he is in fact electable is a simple empirical question that is best answered on election day in November. Indeed, he could be a great candidate and lose to the incumbent, or a horrible candidate who can hardly string together three coherent words and still win. But importantly, Biden’s polling lead in the Democratic primary, followed by paltry showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, then triumphant victory in South Carolina and Super Tuesdays 1 and 2 shed light on the state of the Democratic Party–its party elites, governmental actors, and the electorate.

Democratic politics are oddly reactionary and predicated on money

But importantly, it is not about how much money a candidate raises, as one would expect when making the connection between money and viability. If that were the case, Bernie would have the decisive advantage given Biden’s inability to raise money. Instead, money is central to the story here because party elites and campaign professionals need to maintain the corporate bent to the party in order to personally enrich themselves and stay employed. Biden promises to maintain the Third Way Wall Street Move-on Democratic orientation that doles out fancy polling contracts, high-paid campaign consultation fees, and a revolving door of governmental appointments followed by entering the DC think-tank/interest group nexus. While technocracy is not the best thing in the world, that would even be an improvement on the Democratic model of stocking governmental positions. Democrats fill their ranks with ideologically conservative, corporate dealmakers who resent the left more than Republicans–you know, with their pesky principles and all. Think about why Democrats have turned to James Carville, Dick Morris, John Podesta, Rahm Emanuel, and Neera Tanden in election after election, including when they lose. It is not because they have immense policy knowledge or idealistic visions of a better functioning America. It is because they are entrenched political elites with a grip on the party that creates an inertia for new, visionary leadership to rise in the ranks.

Bernie Sanders was an existential threat to these wine fundraiser neoliberal mercenaries and the clingers on they bring with them because as a party outsider he understands their reactionary nature. They provide very little utility to his campaign and would-be administration since they do not believe in his vision and would like sabotage it from within with the misguided notion that Bernie–even if victorious–will in the long-run make the Democratic Party less viable. That charitable explanation might be wrong, however, since they obviously realize he won’t play ball by hiring them in the first place, thus putting their profitable careers in politics in flux.

Ultimately, campaign professionals and lower level elected officials want security in upward mobility–hence the line to work with and endorse longtime conservative Michael Bloomberg–more than they actually want to enact progressive policy to decrease suffering in 21st Century America. Key to this is maintaining a large role for corporate donations and a money-centric politics, which Bernie Sanders’ grassroots volunteerist approach very threatening for the Democratic swamp.

The reactionary nature of Democratic elites is now visible in the electorate

Talking to young folks, people of color, workers, and academics, I have been repeatedly shocked by how many people have begrudgingly voted for Biden over Bernie. Some of these people supported Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. While coalescing around a moderate makes sense for moderate voters, many of these folks are avowed progressive–or think of themselves as such. As it turns out, they voted for Biden because he was safe, while Bernie was risky. They know what to expect of Joe, while Bernie might seize wealth or run the economy into the ground. Even if they want universal health care, they think Bernie’s plans are too ambitious. And while Biden has documented cases of behaving creepy, Bernie is asshole, the sexist, the curmudgeon.

What this has revealed to me is Democratic identifiers are by and large opposed to radical progressive change, just as Schumer and Pelosi are in Congress. This is revelatory because I had always thought the Democratic electorate was more in favor of radical egalitarian change than the Democratic elites that rightfully worry about electability, and wrongly believe in corporate aristocracy.

The victory of symbolic politics over policy

Biden’s victory is not about the policies he espouses, since there aren’t really any of them to speak of. Instead, it is the product of a post-materialist politics in which identity and symbolism matter more than material conditions. While I am actually quite receptive to oppressed groups making claims for equity in a highly predatory and violent society, that is not what this current use of identity and symbols is used to generate. Instead, identity has become something that corporate Democrats and machine politicians alike can leverage to entrench their existing power. This works by playing up one’s identity as what legitimates their central role in politics. For example, the Chicago machine has taken to putting forth young Latina candidates to various offices in a play against progressive white males. This strategy works when local offices receive very little attention and voters use proxies, like names, ethnicity, and gender, in place of understanding proximity between the candidate the voter on issues of interest.

To my surprise, this highly insulting form of kabuke actually work really well even on high publicity races. Joe Biden has immensely benefited from two forms of symbolic politics that have little bearing on actual material conditions of the of the voters. First, by virtue of running as the closest thing to an Obama-endorsed candidate, he effectively co-opts Obama’s Blackness for his own electoral fortunes. And to my surprise, this actually worked, as he has dominated the Black electorate. An appealing alternative is Biden also benefits from the low expectations of Black supporters, actually appreciated his lack of overpromising, while Bernie is seen as suspicious. Nevermind that Biden actually did grave harm by criminalizing Blackness in the 1990s–he was Obama’s VP!

The second form of symbolic politics that really appealed to the talking heads on The View is that Joe Biden is a well-known Democrat, while Bernie is an independent who caucuses with Democrats in Congress. Nominal labels are helpful heuristics in a situation where a voter may have zero other information, but paid pundits obviously know Bernie Sanders is to the ideological left of Joe Biden, which actually makes him embody the symbolism of the party even more. Certainly Bernie’s politics are closer to FDR’s that those of Biden’s. And yet, this fixation on labels misconstrues the candidates themselves, with supposed liberals supporting one of the most Republican Democrats of the last half-century, while resenting, antagonizing, and demonizing a historically consistent progressive.

Strategic voting can be as misguided as any other form of vote choice

Since defeating Trump is the highest priority of Democratic voters, naturally they would choose who they perceive is best suited to accomplish that goal. On paper, that appears to be Joe Biden. Indeed, the notion that Biden is simply more electable than Bernie has contributed to many voters favoring his candidacy. This relies on the median voter theorem, in which winning moderate Republicans is the key to victory. In contrast, Sanders has campaigned on a mobilization-based strategy that looks to new and disenchanted progressive voters. In truth, Biden’s theory of the case has proven more accurate too date, as Bernie’s reliance on increasing turnout in the youth vote has by an large not taken place, while suburban Biden supporters have come out in droves. This has very little to do with the promise of transformative change, but instead a return to normalcy. For a lot of well off suburbanites, that is a wonderful thing. They will no longer have to clutch their pearls at the atrocity exhibition of Donald Trump. But for the people hurting in this country, a return to normalcy just means a continuation of Third Way and GOP hollowing out of America to their corporate overlords. This is all assuming Biden wins, which is anything but a foregone conclusion. The dude can die at any minute…