Okay. I got my wish. Warren has dropped her candidacy. I don't want to lord it over her supporters. Just yesterday, I was ready to end the world and everyone in it for the amounts of apathy and stupidity in their serious consideration of the senile oligarch, Joe Biden. It felt awful, and the people who supported Warren must feel that kind of awful today. You have my sympathies, at least as far as how it's probably making you feel right now.
Warren has a difficult choice now. Maybe. It all depends on her.
I've said it in several threads over the last week, but I don't think I've actually come out and pontificated on it myself in a thread of my own. Over the last year, when it comes to her associations with Hillary Clinton, and some of the gaffes she's made, as well as the attacks on the Sanders campaign... It was very easy for me to come to the conclusion that she was doing what was best for Warren. Not the country. I've accused her several times over of being part of a DNC scam to force a contested democratic primary; and only running a campaign for the presidency in order to split the progressive electorate's vote. I've put it forth that every day she stayed in the race was a further erosion of her credibility and her assertion that she's a progressive herself, and not some poison pill for the oligarchy. And for the moment... I've seen nothing to dissuade me from that opinion. If she wants to persuade the people that's not in fact the case, then her choice is simple.
She needs to endorse Sanders and cede her pledged delegates to him.
That's the smart play. If she wants to keep her credibility and wants a future in congress or a presidential cabinet, or to run again someday and win, she needs to prove her progressive ideals and unify the progressive caucus under Sanders.
Consider the alternative. At one time, way back in the day, she stopped being a professor and ran for congress on the strength of her opposition to the gutting of women's rights when it came to their reproductive freedoms. And the person she launched her career opposing? You guessed it. That non-champion of women and people of color himself, Joe Biden. That well-known lawyer for the oligarchy and the credit companies Warren has so opposed in her time in committee after committee when she was holding Wall Street's feet to the fire during the Obama administration. This context is necessary to understand the situation here. The man the DNC will want her to endorse is the very nemesis she started her career in government to fight. Way back when she was GOP.
We know Biden doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell against the Trump machine. (Against the beast in rutting season, as my favorite comic book character, Spider Jerusalem said about the incumbent near the beginning of Transmetropolitan.) If Joe takes the podium at a debate with The Beast, that feeble minded spray-tan experiment will eviscerate him with a racist word salad so hateful, Joe might think he's back in 1967 again. We know thousands upon thousands of ill-informed angry people will abstain from voting for Joe and hand The Beast the general election. Some REALLY angry people I've seen comments from, assuming they're not paid propagandists for the GOP or some electioneering hostile, said they'd vote for the Beast in protest.
Yes... nothing like blowing your dick off with a combat pistol cos you stubbed your toe.
Anyway.
If Warren can overcome her past to the degree that she actually endorses Diamond Joe, then she's choosing to effectively end her career for no strategic return at all.
The immediate consequence is that her credibility whiffs out in a puff of 1% appeasing tragedy. Every little bit of history fighting Wall Street that she has in her favor will be eclipsed by the decision to endorse a oligarch running on the millions the corporate lobby is funnelling into his campaign coffers. Candidate who has promises no real change will happen, and that the 1% are not the bad guys. If she endorses Biden, then what other conclusion can we come to that she was nothing other than a vote-splitting plant for the Democratic National Committee? If she comes out against the millions who were rooting for her, and commits the pledged delegates she's won thus far with their votes to the antithesis of what they thought they were voting for?
It would underline the cold hard fact that she cannot be trusted. That there would be no lie too big for her to tell, and no amount of people she wouldn't try to swindle for what serves her best.
And let's be clear. After how she's come out against Diamond Joe in the press, and in the debates thus far, Biden's not going to give her the VP slot. He's not giving her a damn thing. They've been opponents for most of her career in one way or another. The DNC will not give her anything either. She's spent most of a year showing their corporate paymasters that she cannot be trusted to fight for the fortunes of billionaires. She will get exactly jack from them.
The DNC will thank her for her service, and then the DNC will show her the door.
Compounding that disastrous decision, she wouldn't be trusted enough by her electorate to ever get a congressional seat again. She'll be branded a flip-flopper and a fake faster than a news cycle can spin. No-one will take any progressive arguments she puts forward seriously ever again. They would all be underscored with the question, "What's in it for her this time? When's she going to walk that back for political expediency?" And when her term is up... that will be the story of her.
More to the point, it will have been for nothing. Handing Biden the nomination will not make him president. He will lose to The Beast anyway.
I'm sure it'll be a best-seller when she writes a book. Maybe Hillary Clinton can write a forward for her. "Fading Into Obscurity: Or How I Ran For President and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." A rollercoaster political diatribe about how serving the DNC's paymasters wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And how her loss was everyone's fault but her own. Just like it was for Clinton when she endorsed her over Sanders in 2016.
But...
It doesn't have to be that way.
The smart play, politically, is to endorse Sanders.
After the knives came out for Sanders in the form of outright lies and her trying to paint him as a sexist right before a debate so the moderators could try to toast him for it, I kinda doubt that Bernie's going to make her his VP either.
However, Bernie's a pretty classy guy. He may actually find it in his heart to forgive that and give her nod. But I doubt it. Were they to unify on the same ticket, it'd be an election POWERHOUSE of astounding capability in the remaining primaries. They could shut the Biden campaign down. Strategically, he'd have to see that it's in his political interest to consider it. It's CERTAINLY in her interest to cede her pledged delegates to him on the possibility of giving him an uncontestable plurality in the first round at the convention. They could get a lot done together. But that's if the rift between them hasn't been driven too deep by her shenanigans thus far.
If she endorses Sanders, she gets to keep her credibility. She doesn't sacrifice her reputation as a progressive. Even if she doesn't get the VP slot, it's certainly possible that she'll be extended a cabinet posting in the executive. Perhaps some position wherein she can exercise oversight on corporate corruption in Congress where her talents thus far have proved most useful. Given her background as a professor, she could lead the fight for students victimized by the loan industry as Secretary of Education. And wouldn't THAT be a step up from Betsy DeVos? She could be part of the fight to eliminate student debt and to make higher education free for all. (I used to figure she'd make a great Treasury Secretary, but honestly, I like Robert Reich a lot more for that.)
And all the while she's doing that, she's racking up historic experience for the future. If she gets made Sanders' vice, then her chances for securing the presidency in the future go WAY up. She'd be in the best position possible to prepare the way for her own much more successful run in 2028, where coincidentally she'll be the same age Bernie is now. With solid experience in the legislative AND executive branch. And a solid eight years of having helped Sanders undo the damage of the last four. And if she manages to go all the way over to the progressive side in those eight years, AOC will certainly be old enough for a VP position herself if you want to do an all-woman ticket.
In short, if Warren endorses Sanders, she gets to continue doing good with a clear conscience. She might take a hit to her ego. (And we know she does posess one.) But she can get over that. Probably a lot better than her predecessor did when she ran against Sanders. She can be at the head of the charge against the fascists and terrorists that have been infiltrating and stacking our courts; another big benefit. Getting Bernie into office not only assures he gets to place one to two new SCOTUS seats... they may be able to start the ball rolling on removing a stain like Jeff Kavanaugh through the procedural checks and balances that exist for that very reason. I have to think she'd be A-OK with getting a rapist like Jeff off the SCOTUS and restoring credibility to the courts. She is a policy wonk, after all.
Summing up... all she really has to do is pick her professed progressivism over her ego and the DNC and she can make sure mighty things get done to reverse the damage done by The Beast's administration.
Failing that, she will destroy her career, and possibly the democratic party itself. And that's not mentioning dooming the world to the fascist criminal nightmares of The Beast. And she'll have achieved this dubious feat by repeating the same mistake she made in 2016 that put the beast into office in the first place. By endorsing Sanders' opponent.
If she's a progressive, then this is the easiest decision she'll ever make.
If she's not... well we won't have to deal with her again afterward, will we?
I'm told she's a smart person. Let's hope she's smart enough to do the right thing.
By the way... one question here. Much has been made in the last week over that political PAC that infused her campaign with so much money at the last minute before Super Tuesday. The one that did SO recently, that for whatever legal reason, they don't have to disclose who the money is actually COMING from yet. One that Warren very famously said she wasn't revealing yet until she had to sometime after March. Does she get to keep that money? Does the PAC re-orient for Sanders now since he's the remaining progressive in the race? I suppose that depends on who was funding that PAC, doesn't it? Food for thought.
PS: Here's one Joe probably doesn't like...
