There are a lot of things that can be said of this week’s primary contests; it’s a pretty complicated story from where I sit. I would have liked to have seen Bernie Sanders do better than four states – Massachusetts would have put a bit more spring into the campaign. If the guy can’t win in Massachusetts, you kind of have to scratch your head a little. Totally love Bernie and I agree with most if not all of his policy proposals, but he needs to get people to the polls if it’s going to go anywhere. He is, of course, a movement candidate, so my hope is that the movement will outlive the candidacy, but more on that later.
Things are more complicated on the right. The Republican races inspire a mixture of joy and dread. The possibility of a Trump presidency is not something I want to contemplate. That said, I couldn’t stifle a chortle of joy to see the institutional G.O.P. leadership get what they so richly deserve. After decades of stoking the most virulent reactionary sentiments imaginable, they are reaping a bitter harvest in Trump. They are watching him win primary after primary, and resolve to stop him at any cost. Then they look at second place and see someone they perhaps despise even more than Trump – Ted Cruz. Best of all, every vessel the neocons chose to carry their message forward has hit a wall, trounced by a man who calls the Iraq war “a big fat mistake”, who says he will protect Social Security, and who sees Planned Parenthood as a valuable asset on some level. Heresy!
The fact that conservatives and most of the mainstream media can’t face is that the core policy positions of the Republican party, from extreme austerity to interventionist militarism, are wildly unpopular with their own base. To shore up their flagging political fortunes they are emphasizing the xenophobic appeal of Trump, his being endorsed by the likes of David Duke and others of that ilk, his calls for exclusion of Muslims, Mexicans, and others. None of that hurts Trump in the south, in particular. But the fact that candidates like Bush, Rubio, Walker, and even Christie have been unable to get any traction speaks to how completely their core governing principles have collapsed under their own weight.
With all of my worries about what lies ahead, that much, my friends, is something to be thankful for.
luv u,
jp
Okay, I did hear some encouraging words from Senator Sanders on war and peace. Not enough, in my opinion, but certainly better than last time. I am glad that he gave some historical perspective to a position that is just as relevant today as it was in the 1950s: the conviction that the United States should not be acting like an empire, overthrowing disobedient regimes whenever we feel like it, bombing wherever we please, always opting early for the sword. Clinton did what she always does – offer a set of proposals that extend the bad policy we are currently implementing. Could Sanders have disagreed more with the underlying premises of her positions? Oh, yes … but you have to pick your fights in a television debate.
Okay, that was a sobering sign, to be sure. Even more infuriating than the sideshow atmospherics was the framing of the questions, delivered for the most part by Anderson Cooper. While the Democratic field is decidedly to the left, at least from a rhetorical perspective, of where they were even eight years ago, the corporate media questioners proceeded through the lens of Reagan’s America. The signal example of this for me was Cooper’s comment to Bernie Sanders about his support for the Sandinista government in Nicargua in the 1980s, as if that was a particularly controversial position in retrospect. (This can be equated with opposition to the Contra terror war against that government being pursued by the Reagan administration at the time – a war so broadly opposed by the American people that Congress had explicitly banned funding for the Contra forces.)