Biden's Farewell

Update 1/20/25: Thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I know today is going to be a dark and stressful one, so my suggestion to survive this day is 1) don't fcking watch and 2) hug your pets/loved ones. Good luck. We're all counting on you.

As most outgoing Presidents are wont to do - since Washington set the tone - President Joe Biden issued a formal Farewell Address to the nation, pointing out his term's successes and making dire warnings about what lays ahead (via Chris Megerian, Zeke Miller, and Colleen Long at AP News):

President Joe Biden used his farewell address to the nation Wednesday to deliver stark warnings about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the country and a “tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on Americans’ rights and the future of democracy.

Speaking from the Oval Office as he prepares to hand over power Monday to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden seized what is likely to be his final opportunity to address the country before he departs the White House to spotlight the accumulation of power and wealth in the U.S. among just a small few.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked...”

Biden’s speech in the Oval Office is the latest in a series of remarks on domestic policy and foreign relations he has delivered that are intended to cement his legacy and reshape Americans’ grim views on his term. Earlier in the day, he heralded a long awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which could end more than a year of bloodshed in the Middle East.

“It’ll take time to feel the full impact of what we’ve done together but the seeds are planted and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” Biden said. It was a tacit acknowledgement that many Americans say they have yet to feel the impact of his trillions of dollars spent on domestic initiatives...

Biden offered his own set of solutions for the problems that he laid out: change the tax code to ensure billionaires “pay their fair share,” eliminate the flow of hidden sources of money into political campaigns, establish 18-year term limits for members of the Supreme Court and ban members of Congress from trading stocks. His policy prescriptions come as his political capital is at its nadir as Biden prepares to exit the national stage, and after he has done little to advance those causes during his four years in power at the White House...

That last sentence aptly defines what could prove to be Biden's legacy: Both the long-term accomplishments he focused on working to rebuild the economy post-COVID and post-trump, and the frustration at letting too many needed reforms go pass. ALL of those things that Biden offered as solutions - especially the needed caps on campaign financing and on judicial overreach and corruption - were things HIS OWN administration could have worked on during the brief window of opportunity 2021 to 2023 when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

To this, I would point to Professor James David Barber's cheat sheet of Presidential Character. Where Biden falls on that spectrum - Passive-Positive - explains a lot about the lack of energy or focus when working on extensive and radical reforms. Passives are the type that don't want to "rock the boat" too hard and shake off any support from the more extreme elements of their own coalitions (and are willing to work with opponents thinking everyone's all in one big happy Starfleet); while the Positive trait of seeing the powers of high office as a good thing for the public can blind such Presidents from the need to stop corruption in government. Such Congeniality wouldn't be a problem in times of normalcy: However, we are in the Age of trump, where lies and greed are the coins of the realm, and Biden exposed himself to attacks he couldn't overcome.

This is why Passive-Positives preside over either administrations of high corruption or low energy. The good news is that Biden's personal incorruptibility - in spite of the MAGA accusations that he's corrupt like his son Hunter - drove him to surround himself with good people who did their jobs. This keeps him from getting grouped with the likes of U.S. Grant (who failed to surround himself with good people) and Warren Harding (who happily surrounded himself with corrupt friends) and Ronald Reagan (who may not have been fully aware of his regime's corruption but allowed it to happen). Biden falls in with the likes of William Taft: Who rose to power during a Progressive reformist wave and served a relatively scandal-free term, but failed to capitalize on more economic reforms and corporate regulations that were needed in that era.

As a side note, this is where Barber's Character chart of creating four major traits falls apart in the specific successes and failures of each presidency. Not all Active-Positive Presidents behave the same way, nor do Passive-Positives or Active-Negatives (there have been too few Passive-Negatives to make that observation). Even within each Character there seems to be two types: With Passive-Positives there's the type that presides over corruption because they don't want to lose friends (Appeasers) or the type that doesn't want to push harder on things that need doing (Slackers) because they feared the risks (something Actives never worry about).

Biden ended up as a Slacker President, trying to focus on big-menu items like job growth and infrastructure but unwilling to press harder on major crises such as trump's lawlessness and foreign wars/interventions such as Ukraine (where Biden's fear of Putin's nuclear retaliation paralyzed our support efforts to Zelensky) and Gaza (even as Biden claims success with a ceasefire, it took too many months and too many innocent Palestinian lives to get here).

Because of Biden's inability to see trump as a genuine and ongoing threat to American democracy and political well-being - and because he feared falling into the accusations of dictatorship if they pursued trump's criminality - he didn't push too hard - and hired a like-minded Attorney General in Merrick Garland who also didn't press the need - to see trump held accountable for his actions on January 6th. That delay cost us dearly: It allowed trump to campaign again and use his gaslighting and denials to escape justice, and return to power with a vengeance (literally).

Biden's administration is going to be less remembered for the accomplishments he did achieve - especially a key infrastructure bill that should improve local manufacturing and job growth for the next 20 years - and more remembered for all the missed opportunities to end global threats like Putin and greedhead threats like Elon Musk. He'll be among the ranks of the recently passed Jimmy Carter: A Good man who didn't exactly do a Great job.

The Passing of a Good Man

His health had been failing for a long time, he'd been in hospice, and his wife Rosalynn had passed away earlier so there wasn't much else for former President Jimmy Carter to hold onto. It still hurts to hear this afternoon that Carter passed away (via Kathy Lohr at NPR): 

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died Sunday at age 100. The Carter Center announced he died in his hometown of Plains, Ga.

Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, but he was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office. Carter was one of the biggest advocates for peace, democracy and international human rights.

James "Jimmy" Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His father was a peanut farmer; his mother, "Miss Lillian," was a nurse. He was the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.

Just saying, my twin brother and I were born in Albany, GA just down the road from Plains. We both grew up considering Jimmy as a neighbor. I digress.

Growing up on the farm, Carter learned the value of hard work and determination. He qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy and became an engineer, working on submarines. But Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father died.

Back in Plains, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and became the first Georgia governor to speak out against racial discrimination.

A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as "Jimmy Who?"

But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. "He would campaign on the street corners and go to radio stations. Nobody knew who he was except that he was running for president."

Carter's friends and family from Georgia, called the Peanut Brigade, traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa and all over the country talking to voters and campaigning for Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.

During the campaign, Carter told audiences, "I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue..."

Carter won in a close election over Gerald Ford in 1976, happening at a moment where the national mood soured over Watergate, the failure of the Vietnam War, and an economy struggling between high inflation or bad interest rates. Carter's own administration grappled with the economic (and spiritual) malaise that worsened his chances at re-election, before getting blindsided by the Iranian Hostage crisis by 1979 that dashed any incumbent hopes for good.

What happened post-Presidency with Jimmy Carter was one of the greatest humanitarian efforts that Americans ever saw:

After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world's poorest countries. In 1982, the president and his wife opened the Carter Center in Atlanta.

In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. "And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying," he said.

In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor some said he had earned a quarter century earlier when he negotiated the Camp David Accords. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children," Carter said...

When I did the year-long summaries of Presidential Character back in 2013, I ended Carter's review rather abruptly without going into the graceful post-Presidential work he committed. I wasn't too sure back then how to properly phrase the many good deeds - the work towards world peace, moderating elections at home and abroad to promote democracy, building homes for families with Habitat For Humanity, fighting disease in Africa like the near-eradication of Guinea Worm - and I was kind of worried even back then if I said anything positive like that I might jinx him to an early death (his health had been failing for some time. Getting into your 90s will do that to you).

The thing about Carter was how genuine were his efforts to do the right thing. He fought against segregation in a Deep South state, he committed to advocacy for human rights over power plays on the international stage, he promoted his Christian faith through good works instead of beating everyone's head with a thick Bible.

Carter never once promoted himself at the expense of other people. He never worked to take millions of dollars for himself, giving instead to his charities. He never crowed about his successes unless it was to celebrate and honor the hundreds if not thousands of fellow volunteers and allies who worked with him.

If there was any person on the planet in the exact opposite of the - you know what, shouldn't even name-drop that orange guy here - it was President Carter.

God Bless the man, who served his post-Presidency in ways that other former Presidents would envy: with hard work, diligence, respect from others, and the love of a grateful nation.

I want to leave you all with a clip from Saturday Night, back in the days of Carter's tenure, with Dan Ackroyd portraying him. This may not have been the real Jimmy Carter but it honestly reflects the man himself: caring for others, well-versed and intelligent, and a huge Allman Brothers fan:

“Right, you did some Orange Sunshine, Peter. Everything is going to be fine, you’re just very high and you’ll probably be that way for about five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B or C complex. If you have a beer, go ahead and drink it. Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, you’re safe, you’ve just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music. Do you have any Allman Brothers?”

All flags to half-mast, America, for the passing of a not-too-great President and the best ex-President we will ever know.

Biden Going Big

As we go past the official "First 100 Days" of a Biden Presidency, the common refrain in the Beltway media is how "Biden is going big" in terms of pushing an aggressive economic agenda rivalling the New Deal for ambition and scope.

To Elia Nilsen at Vox.com: 

The Biden administration’s theory of policy so far is to go big. The same goes for its politics.

Taken together, President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and newly introduced $1.8 trillion American Families Plan come out to slightly over $4 trillion in proposed new spending. It’s an enormous investment in American job creation; the last bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed in 2015 clocked in at about $305 billion — about one-thirteenth the size of Biden’s proposed plan. And Obama’s $800 billion stimulus plan of 2009 was about one-fifth of Biden’s plan, not even taking into account the $1.9 trillion in Covid-19 relief that has already been signed into law.

That sheer amount of proposed federal funding is meant to do a lot of things, but the main goal is to get as many jobs to as many people in as many voter constituencies as possible. Under Biden’s plan, infrastructure no longer calls to mind images of white men in hard hats; it includes working mothers, home health aides who care for the nation’s elderly, and workers of color across the nation. Women and people of color were crucial to Biden’s presidential win, and they are also crucial elements in his jobs plan...

To EJ Dionne at the Washington Post (watch out for paywall) Biden is harking back to the Democratic glory days of FDR and LBJ:

President Biden on Wednesday night went big, populist, folksy, hopeful, urgent — and bipartisan and partisan at the same time.

Addressing a pandemic-reduced gathering of lawmakers at the Capitol, Biden proposed a sweeping program of change that would create four more years of free schooling, expand child care and family leave, and attempt to beat back climate change through large infrastructure investments...

Biden welcomed the help of Republicans again and again, but he took clear aim at their favored economic doctrines. “My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” he declared. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out.”

And he took a victory lap on progress against covid-19, proclaiming that widespread vaccinations were offering “a dose of hope.”

This address wasn’t exactly the New Deal or the Great Society, but it was equally ambitious. Biden, reassuringly unradical with his plain, avuncular demeanor, is bidding to create a new common sense rooted in political lessons that Democrats have learned the hard way...

Going big - pushing for ambitious national programs on scale the United States hasn't seen since the 1960s - is more than just pushing back against the economic malaise we find ourselves in thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic: This is basically pushback against the last 40 years of the Far Right's "glorious" Pax Reaganica, where Big Government was "evil", deficits from massive tax cuts starved our public sector into a broken mess, and the rich got richer while the rest of us suffered.

This is Biden playing not only to the national audience - offering them a way out of low wages and little hope - but playing to a liberal and Progressive base eager to change the direction of the nation away from massive inequality the Far Right has been creating.  

The good news for Biden and the Democrats is how well the public is responding to these proposals. Back to Nilsen at Vox:

A range of polling shows that Biden’s expansive view of what counts as infrastructure has fairly broad support among the American public.

A recent NBC News poll found that 59 percent of respondents supported Biden’s American Jobs Plan. A recent Vox and Data for Progress poll found that 68 percent of likely voters support the plan. And a Monmouth University poll released Monday found 68 percent of respondents supported Biden’s infrastructure bill, with another 64 percent supportive of the ideas in Biden’s American Families Plan, which aims to make child care, higher education, and health care more affordable.

As Republicans and Democrats argue over the semantics of what constitutes “infrastructure,” Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray told Vox that Biden’s broad brush does not appear to be turning off voters so far.

For instance, Vox and Data for Progress polling found that a majority of likely voters of all parties supported Biden’s proposal of putting $400 billion into bringing down the costs of long-term care: 88 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 55 percent of Republicans support the idea. And recent polling from Politico and Morning Consult shows that a large majority of Black voters support Biden’s pledge to increase housing options for low-income Americans; 80 percent of Black voters support that measure, and 58 percent “strongly” support it.

In other words, voters seem to care more about things that directly impact their lives than they do about whether these things meet a strict definition of “infrastructure...”

In short: People are back into believing that government can be a positive force in their lives, generating better jobs and better wages and better lives. The "Government is the Problem" meme is dying off, much to the horror of the Far Right clinging to the strands of political power.

But why exactly is this happening?

Isn't Biden supposed to be a Centrist, a post-LBJ pro-business Democrat who wasn't so great on issues of race and women's rights or on liberal issues in general, who tacked to the middle in order to push bipartisan deals through a Congress that is no longer the bipartisan haven he knew?

Well, kind of. This is all due to Biden's Presidential Character of being a Congenial Passive-Positive at the head of a Big Tent political party.

This isn't from my 2019 review of Biden's Character - where I worried Biden's easy-going nature made him vulnerable to Republican treachery - but from my 2020 followup that found Biden was doing a good job of building "the Big Tent" coalition of Democratic Moderates and Progressives. In fact, let's go to the direct quote from Aubrey Immelman about Biden's skills in forging that Big Tent:

Leaders with Biden’s personality profile are likely to exhibit an interpersonal leadership style, characterized by flexibility, compromise, and an emphasis on teamwork. The general tenor of a Biden presidency likely will be conciliatory, which could render a prospective President Biden vulnerable to manipulation by pressure groups and handicap him in negotiations or conflicts with foreign adversaries...

In short: Biden is someone willing to dance with those that brung him (got this from Molly Ivins). But where Immelman - and myself - might view that openness as a vulnerability to manipulation, there IS another way to view it as Biden building his teamwork between the various factions of his own party. To make that Big Tent work and push a broad, Big-Fucking-Deal agenda in a successful fashion.

Biden is pushing a big Progressive/Liberal agenda in the mold of FDR's New Deal because it's what his own Democratic ranks want. He will be more congenial and flexible with them, even as he tries to reach out to obstructionist Republicans, because he is a Democrat and they are Democrats and this is their Big Tent and that's how he'll roll, son. As long as Republicans refuse to barter or deal with Biden in any sane fashion, Biden's agenda won't reflect their interests, doubling down on their obstruction but also their obsolescence as Biden happily bulldozes forward.

Edit: I just found this article on MSNBC by Medhi Hasan and need to include it here as emphasis:

This was definitely how Biden behaved, at times, during the Democratic primaries. He never pretended to be at the head of a transformational movement, a la his former boss, Barack Obama. He didn’t enter office backed by a loyal cult, as his predecessor, Donald Trump, did.

Yet he and his administration have spent these first 100 days embracing the progressive wing of his party, along with labor unions, youth groups, climate campaigners and sundry activists. “Progressives say they’re being included, heard and respected by the Biden White House,” Politico reported in February.

Compare and contrast this outreach with the Obama era, in which White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed people on the “professional left” who “ought to be drug-tested,” and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel denounced liberal activists as "f---ing retarded.”

Biden, on the other hand, proudly invoked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support for the American Rescue Plan in the immediate aftermath of its passage through the Senate. His chief of staff, Ronald Klain, has been dubbed the “left whisperer,” having become “a point of rapid response for many on the left who are angling to get within earshot of the president,” The Daily Beast wrote.

Real access has been matched by real impact. Does anyone really believe the Biden who launched his presidential campaign in 2019 looking for a “middle ground” on climate issues would have committed to cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 without pressure from groups like the Sunrise Movement...?

Here's the thing: Biden is listening. It's what Congenial characters do. And it's how he builds his world around him.

This IS what I wrote before about Biden: He's the Democratic Party answer to Ronald Reagan. Not Reagan the hard-core Conservative, but Reagan the Uniter, Reagan the Big Tent builder. Reagan was able to pull together divided Republican factions into a cohesive whole, dominating the electoral cycle of the 1980s in a way that only a Passive-Positive Congenial figure could. For all the damage Reagan did as President to the liberal foundations of 20th Century America, you have to admit his administration oversaw a massive, active period of policy changes and formation you wouldn't expect from a "passive" leader.

Biden can be the same way as President overseeing a massive wave of policy changes, only in favor of that liberal foundation that can be re-forged for the 21st Century America.

All Biden has to do is break loose the remaining obstructionist logjams - sadly enough, from Democratic Senator Centrists unwilling to see this moment in history for what it can be - and get his American Families Plan working.

This can be a big moment. Biden knows it. He knows it'll be good for his Democrats and it'll be good for his fellow Americans.

Any day now. All he has to do is get a few more Democrats to join this Big Tent moment and let it roll forth.

What If: Think Of the Future Heading Into Bidenworld

(Update 12/27: Many thanks again to Batocchio for promoting this blog through both Crooks&Liars as well as his Vagabond Scholar site, where he hosts the annual Jon Swift Memorial Annual Roundup. Happy New Year to you all!)

I have my concerns about polling, I know the numbers may look good but they're not the actual voting that has to take place on November 3 (and I should be working on my Florida Ballot coverage this weekend because Early Voting is in ONE week).

But damn, the current numbers for Joe Biden beating the tar out of trump (now in double-digits!) are so enticing to look at.

From FiveThirtyEight.com on October 9 2020

And if we go by 538's state-by-state projections, we're looking at this for the November results:

Now 538 is not exact, nobody can predict the future, anything can happen in the next three weeks, etc. But the trends do not favor trump, all the trends are favoring Biden. So we gotta start thinking about what the world is going to look like the day after November 3, 2020.

For starters, it's going to be as chaotic as hell.

We've known for months now that trump will attempt to subvert, block, and deny the vote-counting in key battleground states to throw their Electoral College votes into a bind. He's primarily looking to do that by claiming massive voter fraud through the mail-in ballots, even without evidence that such fraud can happen (hint, it doesn't). 

The point of this would be to convince the state legislatures in those states - especially the ones controlled by Republicans - to nullify the popular vote and substitute their Electors instead. And if they can't do that, have the legislatures deny any Electors at all to where nobody clears the 270 EV needed to win. And when the Democratic Party sues in those states to count the votes, force the lawsuits up to a Supreme Court packed with eager Republican justices willing to throw the election in favor of trump (this is coming from trump himself). And even if that all doesn't work out, as long as they can prevent Biden getting over the 270 hurdle they can force the election to the House of Representatives where the GOP hopes to control enough DELEGATES (each state gets one vote, not each Representative) to give trump the "win" anyway.

The good news is, this isn't all guaranteed to go trump's way. There are not a lot of states in play that trump can obstruct/deny the popular vote against him: right now that would be Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, maybe Wisconsin, Arizona. and/or Pennsylvania. If Georgia's popular vote goes against trump, then throw them into the mix. But that's a lot of states at play, and trump would have to steal all of them to pull his con game off.

trump would have to ensure the state legislatures play the game to his/their advantage. Problem is, not everybody votes a straight party ticket down the entire ballot. Not everyone voting against trump will also vote against the local Republican candidates on the ticket. So if they try to go out of their way to toss anti-trump votes as invalid, the local Representatives run the risk of tossing votes THEY need. So they may not be positioned to do that for trump. Those local Representatives also have to live with the consequences of denying the voters their say. If the state legislature refuses to certify a Biden victory where a clear majority - say Biden wins Georgia with 51 percent to trump's 44, a six-point difference - is in place, there is going to be a lot of outrage and anger. All the police curfews and beat-downs in the world would not be enough to curtail the non-stop protests that would overwhelm the state capitals from that point on.

So trump's game can only work if the votes are too close to call, or within margin of error to where people can't be expected to protest (although the rage will be there, trust me). Which is where the voter turnout is a must for Democrats: And there's a lot of evidence the turnout for 2020 is going to be 8 to 15 percent higher than 2016. And if the turnout is similar to the midterms in 2018, it benefits the Democratic Party, meaning good news for Biden.

So say we get past November 3 with Biden getting clear majority leads in most Blue and battleground states to where trump can't claim victory (he'll try, but nobody but his rabid base will believe him). Say we go through November and December with trump trying all the legal - and illegal - stunts he and his cronies can think of (and some of the illegal things trump could try would throw the country into immediate civil war. My God, people war-gamed this shit so thoroughly there's a Wiki page for it!). We get through all of that and Biden still gets about 52-54 percent of the popular and 352 Electoral Votes, clearly winning the Presidency.

trump and other Republicans and especially a lot in the Far Right media still will never accept it.

That's where the next worry begins: What trump would do to burn everything down as he exits the Oval Office.

If trump and the Republicans can't rule - by minority power - they will certainly try to ruin, from petty acts of sabotage through intentional destruction of documents and evidence to hide any criminal mischief that happened in trump's administration. trump is facing and will face lawsuits and criminal charges the second that Presidential Immunity no longer applies to him, and he and his handlers will try to destroy every piece of evidence they can - however they can get the Justice Department to clean up for him - to avoid a slam dunk case against him.

trump will definitely do everything in his power to ruin the economy however he can, through massive increase of his tariffs that we've already seen cause damage to our own. He could well attempt Executive Orders to gut things like Social Security and Medicare in ways that would take months for a Biden administration to repair.

I even dread some of the worst things trump could do as he gets pushed out the door: Create chaos on the international stage by violating our treaties, shredding diplomatic norms he hasn't yet touched, and probably even trigger a war or two - likely Iran, if you watch what Pompeo is doing - that could tie up Biden for weeks after the inauguration.

(Also: I dunno if anybody else has been talking about it, but one thing trump could do if forced out of office would be to remove the United States from NATO. It would be a boon to trump's idol Putin, it would cause massive foreign policy chaos here at home, and if he pulls it off - depending on the circumstances with the Senate - there might not be a way for Biden to rejoin that alliance)

(Also Also: One of the worst things I can imagine trump doing if he's forced out is literally burning everything down as he leaves. I'm talking arson from the White House to every other government building he could bust out. I have had honest-to-God nightmares since January 2020, the ones I can remember waking up from going "Shit, he WOULD do that wouldn't he, like the mob boss he is...")

And none of that is covering the most likely response to a Biden victory: the likelihood trump will call on his White Supremacist foot soldiers to "Stand Up" and go on bloody warpaths. Those wingnuts are triggered and ready to roll, some of them are already jumping the gun.

Still, with all the chaos we're facing, we need to consider the possibility Biden will win the Presidency. What will he face as he takes the Oath of Office in 2021?

We already know the crises facing this nation: A pandemic that needs curtailing and curing; A healthcare system still in need of upgrade and protection from Far Right lawsuits trying to gut what we already have; A growing climate change disaster in need of immediate attention; Massive federal budget deficits based mostly on reckless Republican tax cuts for the super-rich; Genuine infrastructure projects; The need for better wages for part-time and full-time workers; A housing crisis alongside a returning banking crisis that threatens to echo the damage done in 2007-08. There's a lot of shit to handle.

And any response from Biden to all that depends on if Democrats have control of BOTH Houses of Congress. The U.S. House is currently Democratic - and there is no sign, even WITH trump's threats to cheat, that the Republicans can claim the House - but the Senate is currently Republican and under the control of "Moscow" Mitch McConnell. Currently, the odds favor the Democrats flipping about five states - Maine, Colorado, Arizona, maybe Iowa, maybe Montana - while the Republicans have a shot at one - maybe Alabama - meaning the Democrats could win the Senate 51-49 (there could be Democratic wins in South Carolina (!), Texas (!), maybe one seat in Georgia (!), and maybe Mississippi (!!!), so there's a lot at play here).

However, if the Republicans retain control of the Senate (and McConnell stays as Majority Leader), you can forget about anything Biden could try to implement. McConnell is a master obstructionist, having denied Obama most of Obama's agenda in order to keep Republican minority rule intact from 2009 onward. McConnell will be in position to block any attempts to repair the damage trump has done to the political landscape, and McConnell will definitely do everything in his power to stop Biden from realigning the judicial system that McConnell has spent the last four years filling with Federalist Society, Far Right judges.

Remember how McConnell denied Obama the right to nominate Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Scalia's death claiming it was an election year (and please note the hypocrisy when Mitch rushed to fill the vacancy for Ginsburg's seat while the seat was still warm)? If he's still Majority Leader in 2021, we can expect McConnell to deny Biden his right to nominate ANYONE to any Senate-approved position (please note, the GOP threatened to do that to Hillary). McConnell could prevent Biden from filling Cabinet positions needed to oversee rebuilding of agencies either raided by trump and his cronies or agencies left to rot by those cronies' mismanagement. It would fulfill the Republican dogma of "Government is BAD" by keeping the Executive branch understaffed, unmanaged, unable to serve the public trust.

One can hope that Biden - with the zeal of bipartisanship he carries with him - could appeal to his colleagues in the Senate to allow him at least the right to staff the Executive Branch as he needs. But Biden needs to remember he has to give his own Democratic Party the chance to fill those roles to ensure a Progressive-leaning agenda in the first place (If Biden caves to McConnell and fills too many administrative and judicial positions with Republican-leaning centrists, the Democrats will implode).

A better future path to Bidenworld would require not only Biden winning the Electoral College, but also entering into 2021 with a Democratic majority in Congress (with the likelihood any McConnell/GOP attempt to gridlock the Senate with Cloture/Filibustering negated with removal of the Filibuster rules).

That would usher in a quick period of action: Democrats taking care of the immediate crises - fixing the nation's pandemic response and overseeing a healthy win against COVID-19 - and setting up the agendas they have to get the economy regaining jobs at better wages, fighting climate change, et al.

The thing about a Biden Presidency all depends on how his Passive-Positive Congenial nature will engage with the needs of the Democratic Party as well as the needs of the United States. One of the boons of Passive-Positives is the open way they approach their job: Appeals to friendship, appeals to shared values, an overall appeal to our better angels. In a way, Pass-Positives are great at building and maintaining "The Big Tent" where a multitude of party factions can gel and get along.

Whether this means the Passive-Positive temperament will lead to effective leadership choices depends on how Biden handles the immediacy of the crises confronting him. One thing he has already done is absorb the agendas and plans of other Democratic figures - Warren's bold ideas, Harris' incentive to work hard towards reforms - that can well carry into his administration. Much in the way that Reagan entered his Presidency to fulfill some of the ambitions of the Goldwater/Far Right conservatism of the Republican Party (Reagan's malleable leadership ended up curtailing some of that Far Right agenda, you'd be amazed how many Far Right pundits curse Reagan's name today), Biden could enter his administration seeking to fulfill some of the ambitions of the Far Left progressivism (especially on climate change and employment/wages). 

There's still a lot of factors at play. There's still too much risk out there regarding trump's efforts to sabotage the election this November.

We can war-game out 2020 as much as we want. But what we really need to do is commit to the one act we CAN commit: VOTE. We need to vote and vote Democratic across the board, we need to get the vote out for the 2020 Blue Wave. We need to send trump out the door and into a New York State criminal docket. We need to vote for every Democratic candidate for the Senate to kick McConnell out of power and into the deepest pit of Hell he deserves.

Vote for your lives, America, this 2020. And for the LOVE OF GOD, VOTE BIDEN. For the LOVE OF YOUR FAMILIES AND GRANDPARENTS AND CHILDREN, Don't vote for trump or McConnell or for any Republican misrule.

Documenting The Character of Joe Biden for the Presidency In 2020

I know I pimp heavily the work of James David Barber's Presidential Character, and I've already made my analysis of Joe Biden's traits heading into the 2020 general election.

But I wanna confirm my reading of Biden's habits and potential performance as President, so I went looking for research from other observers. It's always good for the soul to find out other people see the same things you see...

Anywho, here's some links to what I found that matches my conclusion of Biden being Passive-Positive.

From "The Political Personality of Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden," by Aubrey Immelman in a working paper for College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University via Digital Commons:

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals. Biden’s primary personality pattern was found to be Outgoing/gregarious, complemented by a secondary Accommodating/cooperative pattern and subsidiary Ambitious/confident features.

The prominence of the Outgoing pattern, in conjunction with a distinctive Accommodating pattern in his overall personality configuration, is indicative of the conciliatory extravert subtype. This personality composite provides the personological substrate for a strong affiliation motive. These individuals are driven to seek approval; they want others to like them and view them as a friend or ally. To achieve that motivational goal, they often compliment, praise, or flatter others, presenting an image of goodwill. When disagreements occur, they attempt to smooth things over, sometimes at the cost of conceding.

Leaders with Biden’s personality profile are likely to exhibit an interpersonal leadership style, characterized by flexibility, compromise, and an emphasis on teamwork. The general tenor of a Biden presidency likely will be conciliatory, which could render a prospective President Biden vulnerable to manipulation by pressure groups and handicap him in negotiations or conflicts with foreign adversaries...

In terms of presidential temperament, Joe Biden seems most similar to Barber’s (1972/1992) passive–positive presidential character — leaders such as William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, and Ronald Reagan, characterized by an ingratiating personality, optimism, and a desire to please. These affiliation-motivated presidents are low on the need for power and do not invest much energy in the office of the presidency but nonetheless like the job...

Here's something from a source I normally don't quote from (the American Conservative) in a June 2020 article by Robert W. Merry:

...but Biden’s ability to work with senatorial colleagues was a hallmark of his image over the decades of his congressional tenure. The highly regarded Congressional Quarterly book of political profiles, Politics in America, praised Biden for his ability to work with North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms when Helms was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and Biden was its ranking member. Said the book: “Biden’s ability to maintain lines of communication with all groups often has made him, rather than Helms, the key vote on Foreign Relations.”

This can be viewed as evidence of a Positive trait, based on the Barber scale. Even after 30 years in the Senate, said Politics in America, “he still exhibits the intelligence, drive and passion of his youth.” The key word here, in terms of presidential character, is “passion.” Positives demonstrate a zest for the job and an openness to people, even those in the opposition who represent impediments to success that must be dealt with through persuasion, cajolery, back-slapping, and old-fashioned horse-trading. Positives love that game; so does Biden.

On the Active/Passive scale, Biden seems to tilt toward passivity... Thus does it appear that Biden represents a likely Passive/Positive president. Recall, Barber sees presidents in this category as wanting to be loved and thus ingratiating—and easily manipulated. That indeed is one of the knocks on Biden by conservatives—that he is being manipulated in his campaign, and would continue to be as president, by his party’s emergent leftist radicals...

Merry might need to recognize that the fears of Biden being manipulated by the Far Left Progressives is mirrored by the Progressives' fear that Biden will be manipulated by the Moderates and Centrists that Merry would view as advocates to his issues. Ah well, can't please everyone.

P.S. Merry, I can explain to you why Barber graded Reagan as a Passive-Positive, drop me a message we'll talk aboot it.

To round out to a nice third entry, here's an Atlantic article from Franklin Foer about Biden's campaign struggles and rebounds:

In the face of upheaval, he’s given reason to hope that the traits that were his supposed weaknesses could prove to be his great strengths. If one of the ultimate purposes of protest is to push politicians, he’s shown himself a politician willing to be pushed. His tendency to channel the zeitgeist has supplied him with the potential to meet a very difficult moment...

More than other figures in the Democratic Party, Biden can speak warmly about the protesters without risking political backlash. With his gaffes, which sometimes veer toward the politically incorrect, he’s hardly an easily caricatured avatar of wokeness. His penchant for cringeworthy remarks, and his old-time mannerisms, help cushion whatever anxiety some white voters might have about his tough criticisms of police and blunt condemnations of systemic racism...

The challenge for the Biden candidacy is to bridge an alliance with a resurgent left. Biden, a creature of the Senate, has to convince young people rushing to the barricades that he’s worth a trip to the polls. And the challenge for the left is to accept that Biden is its greatest chance of achieving its long-held dreams. What he’s demonstrated over the past week is a willingness to play the role of tribune, to let the moment carry him to a new place...

What Foer speaks to is the conciliatory nature of a Passive-Positive, a sizable amount of humility and self-deprecation (traits sometimes shared with Active-Positives) mixed with the awareness of the moment and the ability to attune to the needs of others (in this case, the needs of Americans both Left Center and Right battered by four years of trumpian abuse).

In terms of our nation's need for a Passive-Positive figure, in many respects this makes Biden the perfect antithesis to donald trump, a pure Active-Negative and thus polar opposite in nature to Biden's Congenial traits (referring back to Merry's article, even Merry notes the unhappy, grasping and raging traits of trump puts him squarely in the A-N chart).

This is where we are at: The choice is between a benevolent, congenial Biden and a rage-filled, destructive trump.

It shouldn't be that hard a choice, America. For the LOVE OF GOD, vote Biden.

Disrespect Is Everywhere In the World of trump

Over this weekend, no other report about trump has been as damning as Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the Atlantic about trump's consistent disrespect for the men and women of the armed forces. I could quote bits and pieces from it, but you SHOULD go and read the article in full. If I should quote any passage, it's this:

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

We need to remind ourselves that this report of trump's incomprehensibility is actually old news. trump has been disdainful of military service and the people who signed up for it even years before he started campaigning for the Presidency. he's been caught bragging about getting out of the 1960s draft and comparing service in Vietnam to his trying to avoid STDs in the 1980s.

Goldberg's article rehashes the reality of trump's failed trip to honor the fallen of World War I back in 2018. trump's people denied the reports then, but it comes up again with sources confirming trump labeled the Belleau Wood Marines as "losers" and "suckers".

It's been documented that trump views the world as "winners" and "suckers" and that he himself should never be seen as a sucker. The implication there being: the rest of us should be suckers, to his con games.

It's been documented that trump wants everyone else to respect him - and be loyal to the point of sacrifice - but cannot in any way show respect to any of the people who work for him. To any of the people he views as beneath himself. You know, the people he views as suckers.

The warnings are there, have always been there, big red flags getting waved with giant easy-to-read letters printed on the banners screaming "TRUMP IS A SELFISH UNTHINKING MONSTER".

trump keeps showing us his character, a character wallowing in greed and cruelty and vulgar lusts.

None of this is surprising anymore. It just keeps hurting. And hurting. And the pain is not going to stop until trump is gone, gone from power and gone from public view.

Gods help us. We need a Blue Wave this November to wash all trumpian sins away.

The trumpian Failure at Presidential Accountability

(update 3/16/20: dammit as always when I least expect it, Batocchio adds me as a link to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sigh. I DID NOT HAVE CAKE OR PIE READY... nevermind, just hope you enjoy the site, please leave valid and life-affirming comments, and learn the Vulcan greeting salute because handshakes are no longer safe)

Still dealing with a number of real-life issues - things are changing at work, not to mention how my work at a public library is going to get affected by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic - to where the best I can blog about right now is WHAT THE EVERLOVING F-CK DID trump SAY NOW???

This past week we witnessed trump's White House try to control the messaging on the likely spread of COVID-19 while doing little to nothing about pressing for more testing kits and isolation policies to reduce the risk of that spread. He performed a televised speech to allay fears... during which he ad-libbed falsehoods that caused more panic than calm.

By trying to play to the concerns of Wall Street, trump actually caused two of the greatest stock market crashes in financial history within three days of each other. And as this all went on, most Americans went on a panic run at the grocery store buying up all the hand sanitizer (they should have bought more soap, that helps better) and toilet paper on the shelves (to be fair, if you end up stuck at home for more than two weeks if a quarantine becomes necessary, you'd want the security of reliable bathroom trips too).

So for this Friday, in order to present himself as in charge and in control, trump scheduled a big televised press conference, timed exactly just as the stock markets were closing... just so he could end up showing how little control he had and even worse openly admit he was in charge of nothing.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's the ABC News clip about it:

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all." Doesn't matter what he's avoiding responsibility for, the fact that he's AVOIDING responsibility ought to anger every American living and past.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RESPONSIBILITY FOR SERVING AND PROTECTING THIS NATION IS IN THE JOB DESCRIPTION.

Let's look back at all the Presidents confronted with the demands of responsibility.

Harry S. Truman, a personal fave, famously had a desk sign:


This photo of Harry S. Truman Library and Museum is courtesy of Tripadvisor

"The BUCK STOPS HERE!" This is now a required meme for anyone sitting in the Oval Office (except of course for the cowardly current occupant who dares not utter it).

Here's somebody that trump won't like to hear from: President Barack Obama taking responsibility for intelligence failures back in 2010. Via Josh Gerstein at Politico:

President Barack Obama on Thursday accepted responsibility for intelligence shortcomings that led to a failed Christmas Day bombing plot on a Detroit-bound airliner, saying, “Ultimately, the buck stops with me.

“As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility,” Obama said...

Obama’s buck-stops-here message marks a change in tone from earlier statements in which Obama and other officials repeatedly noted that the watch-listing system that failed to flag the suspect, Umar AbdulMatallab, was put in place under the Bush administration.

But while Obama promised to bring more accountability into the counterterrorism system, he indicated he had no plans to fire anyone involved in the missteps prior to Christmas.

“It appears this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies. … I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer,” Obama said...

Want more?

While this isn't a quote that happened during his Presidency, Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower spoke of responsibility serving as the Allied Commander overseeing the Western European theater. For the Normandy Invasion he wrote two letters. The First Letter congratulated the Allied troops and exhorted them to victory. The Second Letter was in case the landings failed (given the harsh weather and stout German defenses, this was a legitimate concern):

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops... My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

The letter wasn't needed: D-Day was a bloody but successful landing and led to the Liberation of France within months. Less than a year later, the Nazis fell between the pincers of Ike's forces in the West and the Soviets to the East. However, that letter highlighted character of the man: Eisenhower accepted the responsibility of leadership... and the people knew it. That's one reason "I Like Ike" worked as a slogan, that's a reason why Americans elected him President.

So here comes trump, facing a global pandemic health care crisis that requires bold thinking, getting out ahead of the problem, staying in touch with all players to make sure things get done properly and to the good of all.

Unfortunately, trump's spent the last three years dismantling the government systems, understaffing agencies if not outright sabotaging them. Redirecting efforts towards projects that won't help in this crisis or any other. He oversaw the dismantling of a National Security panel tasked with coordinating pandemic responses, which left much of the federal and state agencies in the dark on who was in charge during the first months of this crisis (starting back in December 2019).

trump's response to all of this? Shifting blame on Obama instead of admitting his own involvement. Arguing that it's Obama's fault there's not enough test kits for this crisis when it should have been something trump's administration ordered done the minute it became clear - mid-January - that the coronavirus was going global. Like Obama would have known back in 2016 this particular virus was going to erupt three years after he left office.

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all."

This isn't even the first time trump has shifted blame in his life. He avoided accountability for his many bankruptcies, he avoided accountability by settling out of his many fraud trials, he avoided accountability for his destruction of a sports league, he avoided accountability for every broken promise and every theft made. And these were all before he ran for the Presidency.

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all."

Here's the one thing required by law in the Constitution, written out as the Oath one must take when entering the Oval Office:

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Those words REQUIRE the oath-taker to execute the office of the Presidency, to preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States which means ensuring the safety of the People - all of US - who keep that Constitution standing. These are words, this is an Oath that REQUIRES responsibility out of the person who swears to it.

trump won't take that responsibility. he's openly admitting to it now, something a lot of us knew for years and we saw this moment coming.

We're in a major crisis this month and the person most responsible to lead us through it won't be responsible at all.

We are so very royally extremely sickeningly fucked.

Predicting Character: Warren Is Planning for Everything

Man this has been on the back-burner for the longest time, stuff keeps popping up, I keep getting all these distractions like I need a hole in my head (and yes, black comedy is keeping me going at the moment),

But I can't hold off on this much longer. The primaries officially kick off in less than two weeks I think, and my surgery is set almost a week away. So no more delays...

I've been tracking the habits and behaviors of the top four Democratic candidates facing off against Loser of the Popular Vote trump, having visited my personal fave Kamala Harris, then Joe Biden, then Bernie Sanders, and finally with this post Elizabeth Warren. During this stint, Harris had to drop out as she couldn't keep her early debate win momentum going (as well as keep up with the fundraising), all the while watching the dark horse candidates like Pete Buttigieg get a week or two in the spotlight much like any other primary with 2000 candidates all vying to be the Not-Hillary uh Not-Biden swaying the Democratic voting base to side with them.

We're at the point the field is winnowing (which is good) but we're also at the point where the candidates are starting to play the state-by-state pandering game that sells well in Iowa and New Hampshire but doesn't do so well for the bigger states like New York, Florida, Illinois and California where most Americans live anywho. (Yes, I am ranting in favor of a 50-state one-day primary thank you again)

All except for Warren as far as I can tell. Warren's been campaigning in a different style than most of the other front-runners. She's been campaigning as the Idea Candidate.

"Warren's Got a Plan For That."

Want Medicare 4 All? Warren's got a plan for that. Cancelling college student debt. She's got a plan for that. Robbing three casinos in one night? You damn betcha she got a plan for that!

Okay, I kid about the Oceans 11 thing (but hey if Warren calls me needing that guy on the computer to hack into the mainframe, I'll refer her to somebody and take the driver's gig instead), but Warren is serious about putting out plans and proposals for families and workers and everyone who's key to the Democratic voter turnout. It's why Warren has been getting a solid number of support groups like the Working Families PAC to switch their votes from Bernie to Warren.

As such, Warren is more of a threat to Bernie's hold on the Progressive Left forces in the Democratic ranks than she is a threat to Biden's hold on the Moderate/Centrist forces. Even though given Warren's range of topics she's supporting and covering puts her as a major candidate for BOTH factions.

So why isn't she polling any higher?

Because Biden's lead as a Passive-Positive figure appealing to a majority of the Democratic base is kinda hard to punch against. Because Sanders' True-Believer BernieBro faction isn't going to give up their ideal Utopia of a revolutionary democratic socialism... something they believe Warren isn't really going to support if she wins this November. Because the mainstream media still has a problem with women candidates and the harsh coverage shows.

Which is a damn shame because Warren's character traits suggest she'll be a strong Adaptive figure in the White House that trends towards an Active-Positive administration.

To refer to this New Yorker article by Sheelah Kolhatkar:

...Warren is one of the country’s foremost critics of Wall Street firms and big banks, which make much of their profit, in her view, by abusing consumers and taxpayers. It’s a perspective that has grown out of Warren’s work as an academic and has shaped her ideas as a politician, propelling her from Harvard Law School, where she was a professor specializing in bankruptcy law, to the Senate, where she has represented Massachusetts since 2013.

On many economic issues, Warren has been remarkably prescient. She has spent decades warning Americans about the pernicious effects of income inequality, predatory corporations, and consumer debt, and about the failures of our financial system—issues that are at the heart of the 2020 Presidential campaign... She is attempting to position herself as a pragmatic advocate for the middle class, someone who can bring systemic reforms to education, health care, and democracy itself. But, unlike the Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Warren doesn’t describe herself as a “democratic socialist,” and says that she isn’t trying to do away with capitalism. “I believe in markets,” she says, over and over. She says that she simply wants to make them work better for more people...

As I noted, it's that last bit - Warren's unwillingness to join the Far Left completely, even as she pushes for reforms that would clearly fulfill a lot of what the Far Left hopes for - that scares the BernieBro faction. But it shouldn't (back to Kolhatkar):

...With the help of advisers working from her headquarters, in Boston, Warren has been releasing a torrent of detailed policy proposals. She has issued a plan to dramatically reduce student debt and to offer free tuition at public colleges; a plan to unwind large agriculture conglomerates in order to make the market more equitable for family farms; a plan to require large corporations to pay more in federal taxes; a plan to dismantle the behemoth technology companies and regulate them like utilities; and new legislation to address opioid addiction, modeled on a bill passed by Congress in 1990 to combat the H.I.V./aids epidemic. She has announced an “Economic Patriotism” plan, intended to create opportunities for American workers, and has issued proposals targeted at Donald Trump, including one that would make it permissible to indict a sitting President.

Together, the proposals promise a new level of government intervention in almost every aspect of economic life. Some of the ideas are pragmatic; others seem aimed more at marketing than at implementation. Regardless, “I have a plan for that” has become a rallying cry for her campaign—an echo of the way that “Nevertheless, she persisted” became a tagline for Warren supporters after Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, used it to describe Warren’s refusal to stand down during the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions, Trump’s former Attorney General. In May, the comedian Ashley Nicole Black wrote, on Twitter, “Do you think Elizabeth Warren has a plan to fix my love life?” Warren responded, “DM me and let’s figure this out...”

There's a couple of things to point out here about character traits: Warren's self-deprecation with that last bit, but overall a detailed, comprehensive view of every problem facing the nation and a willingness to answer those problems. A lot of this fits into what Professor Barber established as Active-Positive traits: Problem-solving, engagement, and a willingness to take stands.

When confronted with the challenges of running any election, specifically her run at the U.S. Senate in 2012, this came up:

Many voters saw Clinton as flip-flopping and opportunistic; Warren comes across as straightforward. She rarely brings up breaking the “highest and hardest glass ceiling,” as Clinton often did, although she acknowledges its existence. She told me that, when she was considering running for the Senate, in 2012, people advised her against it because of her gender. In the previous election, Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, had been beaten by an inexperienced Republican, Scott Brown. “Massachusetts is not going to elect a woman. It’s just not going to happen,” Warren was told again and again. “Every time I heard that,” she said, “I’d think, I’m definitely getting in this race...”

As I mentioned before about Truman, an A-P figure relishes the challenges of a political fight not for their own sake but for the issues and communities affected. As an aside, it should be noted Coakley didn't do a good job of campaigning, even failing at proper support of local sports teams - it's Bawston, it mattahs - while Warren proved adept at the game.

When I asked Warren how she would survive all that, she said, “I know how to fight and I know how to win.” She pointed to two of her major accomplishments in Washington: the creation of a new regulatory agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in 2010, and her Senate campaign against Scott Brown.

“After the financial crash, I knew that we needed a consumer agency to keep big banks from cheating people,” she said. “People told me two things: ‘It’s a great idea’ and ‘Don’t even try it. You can never get it passed into law. The big banks will never permit this. They’ll fight you every inch of the way.’”

She paused. “But we got organized. We fought for working people. We built a grassroots movement. And President Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law.”

A little more than a year later, Democrats encouraged Warren to challenge Brown for his seat, despite considerable odds. “I decided that I was not going to wake up on the day after the election and he would still be my senator, voting against my values, and I would have done anything less than everything I could to stop that from happening,” she said. “And I went from down seventeen points to beating Brown by seven and a half points...

While this attitude shares the ambition of the Active-Negative, you'll notice a good amount of "we needed," "we fought," "we got organized." A good Active-Positive speaks in the "We Can" voice (opposed to the "I Must" of the A-N), which tends to be the overall delivery from Warren.

And speaking of Warren's work with the CFPB:

A person involved in the effort to get the C.F.P.B. included in the bill told me that Warren’s drawn-out bankruptcy battles had helped her acquire the skills to get things accomplished in politics. “She was pretty good about both the inside game and the outside game, and how the two intersect,” he said. “The inside game is very important: you need to get a bill passed in Congress, and she understood this and got C.F.P.B. into Dodd-Frank. And then she did a lot of press interviews and a lot of things to engage the public.”

After the legislation was approved, in 2010, Warren seemed the obvious choice to lead the new agency. But Neil Barofsky, who oversaw the bailout with her, told me that her desire for the role never entered into her decision-making. The head of the new agency would initially report to Geithner, and Barofsky recalled a hearing in which Warren aggressively questioned Geithner about his treatment of the insurance company A.I.G., which had paid its traders generous bonuses after taking taxpayer funds. “If she had pulled punches in that hearing, nobody would have known,” Barofsky said. “And she just eviscerated him, and exposed the hypocrisy and the failure of the program.”

News outlets later reported that Geithner opposed the idea of Warren running the C.F.P.B. He wasn’t alone. The financial industry mobilized to derail her potential nomination. “You remember preapproved credit cards?” Warren told me. “I was a pre-rejected nominee...”

...Obama, facing intense resistance, nominated Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, for the role. But he asked Warren to help set up the agency; she spent a year doing that. Under Cordray, the C.F.P.B. forced financial institutions to return twelve billion dollars to customers who had been targeted by scams such as unauthorized overdraft charges and illegal fees for student-loan repayments. Congressional Republicans kept up their opposition; by 2017, they had introduced a hundred and thirty-five bills and resolutions to weaken or eliminate the agency...

One measure of respect in politics is the class of enemies you make. Warren is arguably the most hated Democrat among the super-rich financial institutions and corporations trying to squeeze more money out of Americans (and the world) than ever before. In that regards, she deserves serious consideration to run against the most corrupt financial figure of the last 50 years in trump.

So how would I grade her as a candidate for the Presidency?

Elizabeth Warren - Senator, Massachusetts.
Positives: Popular Senator who has had national coverage since her consumer advocacy in the 2000s, has worked as a major player of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is aware of the challenges of reining in fraud and financial corruption, she would be the one of the few candidates if elected to hold businesses accountable and do a lot of things to end the income inequality threatening the nation. Would be the first Woman President to actually sit in the Oval Office (sorry Hillary). Would be someone capable of undoing a lot of the fiscal damage trump has done since 2017. Also, Kate McKinnon can play her on SNL.

Negatives: Along with Biden and Sanders, Warren is part of an aging Boomer population (despite the appeal she has to a lot of Gen X and Millennial liberals/moderates). Still is answering for questionable past behavior revolving around a college-period claim of Native American ancestry (which trump and fellow haters are using to drag her real name through the mud). Is too Pragmatic a figure for the Progressives to accept and too Reformist for the Moderates to trust. Like Hillary before her, Warren has to overcome a legitimate problem with sexism in our nation's media and voting population.

Chances: She's currently in the mix in the early primary / caucus states for the Democratic primaries, but she's low on funding compared to Biden and Sanders (and also to the rich guys Steyer and Bloomberg who are spending millions in ads she can't afford to make and air yet). If she can pull off an upset or two early on - maybe Iowa, maybe New Hampshire - and weather the push by the media to drop out before the big states, she may gain momentum the way Obama did in 2008.

Character Chart: I've already pointed out how I view her as an Active-Positive figure. She shows the Adaptive trait of accepting and taking on policy ideas of fellow candidates (with a willingness to admit where she got the ideas from), working with a level of Self-Confidence (her primary trait IMHO) and Long-Term Planning (the gamemanship skills of a Kennedy/Obama) that other A-Ps have deployed. Like Truman before her, she does the homework to debate her points with aplomb and directness. If I had to compare Warren to anyone, it would be FDR (A-P), a reform-minded charismatic willing to fix a broken system rather than replace it outright.


Okay, that's all I got for the four three main candidates for the Democrats to choose from. Having lost my primary candidate in Harris - whom I supported for her early advocacy for better teacher pay and boosts to education funding - I've decided to put my support to Warren, whose agenda mostly matches my own hopes for a better government taking care of the citizenry. Past all that, I am willing to support ANY Democratic candidate - even Sanders but definitely NOT Gabbard - due to the reality of how dangerous it is letting trump and the Republicans retain ANY power in our government.

If I had a preference order, it'd be 1) Warren, 2) Booker, 3) Klobuchar, 4) Biden, 5) Sanders, 6) Maybe Mayor Pete, I'm not sure who's left in the equation 7) Anybody but Gabbard.

Predicting Character: Bernie As Constant Curmudgeon

Okay, this has taken me a little longer to write than I'd hoped, mostly because I am trying to keep a promise to myself to make this as unbiased and professional a review as possible.

SO CAN YOU BERNIEBROS SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR PRECIOUS FEE-FEES ABOUT NOT GETTING YOUR WAY WITH THE DNC RULES FOR A MINUTE HERE?! Ahem. Sorry. Let's try to keep it cool, okay self? Okay.

Next up on the candidate reviews - based on James David Barber's model of Presidential Character - is a fellow we've have guest-star before, this Senator from Vermont by the name of Bernie Sanders. (Insane amount of cheering from Facebook rises up) For heaven's sake, BernieBros, can I get through this without ANY interruptions?! (boos echo through the blog) Too bad, shaddup, and read on.

This is what I wrote before in 2015 during the build-up to that election cycle:

Positives: Has electoral experience for decades serving as a congressman and then Senator.  Has a political agenda that pushes hard Left after decades that most agendas pushed hard Right (the Age of Reagan), meaning a decent chance to shift the goal-posts of the national dialog back to the center.
Negatives: As much as the Far Far Right candidates like Cruz, Rand Paul, and Huckabee (announcing very soon) are poison to the general voting electorate, Sanders is too Far Far Left.  Half of his platform will reek too much of a Socialist agenda too many Americans still despise.  Comes from a small-population state that will not help as a base of voter support.   There is a question that as an independent (not really in the party) that he may not qualify on enough state ballots to count (his campaign is going to have to work overtime to make those ballots).
Chances: Slim.  He's determined, and has a reason to run this thing as far as possible.  But the Democratic Establishment types would be horrified if he gets the nomination: the Wall Street forces will rally like mad for the pro-business candidates like Hillary and could well swamp Sanders' campaign with too much money/power (which ironically will prove Sanders correct about the corruption of campaign money). And he may not appeal across the individual states - especially the more centrist, Red/Purple states in the South and West - he'll need to win primaries.
Character Chart: Sanders' socialist agenda is aggressively behind using the powers of the federal government to the fullest extent of the law, and that government can be used to improve the economy, improve jobs and wages, and uphold broad civil liberties.  On that, Sanders has the look of an Active-Positive (views government as an effective means of change).  However, Sanders displays many of the Active-Negative traits of being Idealistic and Uncompromising: he will not bend on the issues.  The only thing I can be certain of: he will be an Active President if elected.

Ever since I put up that Character assessment, I got to see more of Bernie in action. Or to be more specific, I got to see more of his followers in action.

This is where my ire and distrust about them kicked in...

Here's the deal, Bernie followers: Hillary's supporters are NOT sheep nor sheeple. A majority of Hillary's followers have solid reasons to side with her this 2016 election, and they have reasons not to share the worldview you've got that make you side with Bernie with such fervor.

In your pursuit of defending your candidate, you're going out of your way to insult fellow Democrats and Left-leaning centrists who are still a vital part of the Democratic party's chances to win big this 2016.

As much as you feel alienated from having a Far Left / progressive agenda get shot down for 40-plus years since the rise of Nixon and the Republican Southern Strategy, you're not helping by alienating the more moderate, pragmatic party members who aren't going to be in the mood for your denunciations and scorn...

Look, you can argue for Bernie Sanders. Argue on the merits, argue about the need to fight income inequality. Get ahead on the issue about the growing crisis in rental and homeowning costs for a majority of Americans. Go loud and strong on dealing with the massive personal debt crisis that got ignored by the Big Banks and Wall Street.

But stop with the insults and dismissal of your fellow Democrats. THEY ARE YOU AND YOU ARE THEY both on the same side of social justice and economic fairness, despite all the stuff about Hillary being in bed with Wall Street. At the end of the day, Hillary is still talking about making things work the way Democrats want things to work...

My ongoing exposure to the Bernie fanbase has been a continuing spectacle of a fervent group who believe THEY are the true voice of Dem voters fighting against an "Establishment" party that's trying to retain enough cohesion to fucking win a Presidential election. Again. Yet it's that failure of purity that's already driving some of the more publicly-known pro-Bernie supporters to say they won't support any other Democratic candidate in 2020. Just like they promised not to for Hillary in 2016. Essentially, they're extorting the Democratic party into accepting Bernie or else suffer low turnout guaranteeing a second trump term.

In other words, the BernieBros are promising to be assholes. Again. (Booing increases from the corners of the Internet where they reside) I'm not WRONG, you jerks. Look at yourselves... Sheesh, anyway...

The current drum-beating from the BernieBro elements are that the other major candidates - Biden, Harris, even Warren - are insufficiently Progressive enough to win them over if they get the nomination. Worse, they're convinced that none of the other candidates can appeal to the coveted "working whites" voting group that went for trump in 2016, as though that voting bloc is ever attainable for Democrats in 2020. Never mind the facts - same as in 2016 - that a Democratic administration if they win would support - and even pass - enough of a Far Left platform to make the United States more secure on key issues for progressives like better wages, repairing the damage of climate change, ending trump's human rights abuses on immigration, and more.

The Bernie voters - like any Idealistic extremist world-view - want their Utopia. To them, "Merely Good" is NOT "Perfect". And only Bernie can deliver "Perfect".

So what the hell IS "Perfect" for a Bernie supporter? In short, a radical redesign of American political and social philosophy, away from Capitalism and fully attuned to Socialism (based on what Bernie calls a Democratic Socialism akin to Scandinavian nations).

I can re-argue the problem of Utopian thinking in detail (Again), but the most obvious argument here is that a majority of Americans - many of them AREN'T as Left-leaning as the Progressives want to believe - are NOT going to support a Bernie agenda that on paper looks to change everything we know about how America works. 

When people vote For or Against anything, the biggest concerns they will always have are What do I gain from this, and What will this cost me? A massive revamp of even healthcare away from the Obamacare system (which supports the current Capitalist view) to a Medicare-For-All system (which forces wholesale changes that even its supporters can't fully explain) will scare enough honest voters (even the ones who would benefit the most) away from supporting that.

This is where Bernie differs from much of the primary field. Even Warren - who is closest to Bernie when it comes to Progressive issues - is more focused on reforming the systems we have instead of massive change. In this regard, Warren is more an FDR New Deal supporter - which kept Capitalism but heavily regulated it - than an outright Henry Wallace-type of Far Left candidate.

And if you know your history, Henry Wallace really did not appeal to most Americans when he had his chance. For all the changes to how Americans view full-out Socialism today (especially among younger voters), there still are a lot of voters who won't accept it. Even among solid Liberal Democratic voters sympathetic to those goals.

This lack of actual support for an openly Socialist agenda is leading into the other problem: Bernie is not doing so great in the primaries this time. Last time, against Hillary and minor candidates, Bernie was the clear alternative to the juggernaut that was the Hillary campaign. But that was then. Today, Sanders is part of a field of 24 - no, wait, it's dropped down to 16 finally thank the Gods - to where there isn't a dominant Establishment figure (Hillary) against whom a single candidate could run (the Not-Hillary). This time, there's one dominant Establishment figure (Biden) against whom there are three viable Not-Bidens (Bernie but also Harris and also Warren) to split the opposition vote. Bernie cannot rely on a solid 40-45 percent of Democratic voters in the primaries, he has to fight for them vs. Warren and Harris.

Just to repeat meself: Bernie's not doing a very good job of winning over that voting base this time. Sanders' Uncompromising behavior is a big reason why (via Peter Hamby at Vanity Fair):

Sanders might be 77 years old and “salty as ever,” as CNN’s Kate Bolduan said on-air Tuesday after his announcement, but he’s still a central figure in the dialectic of the Democratic Party, its most uncompromising ideological figure, and best fund-raiser. Like Trump, Sanders didn’t get there by climbing the ladder in Washington like his fellow senators now in the presidential race; he did it by tapping into common-sense ideas about economic fairness and raising oceans of small-donor cash online in the process. He delivered his message using non-traditional media and waited for the green-room journalism crowd to catch up. A democratic socialist, Sanders might have chosen to run in 2016 as a third-party liberal in the mold of Nader. But instead, he smartly decided to disrupt the Democratic Party from the inside by seeking its presidential nomination, all while never calling himself a Democrat. Sanders became the liberal folk hero of the last campaign, the subject of graffiti murals, hipster endorsements, and D.I.Y. merch, the cool grassroots signifiers that swirled around Nader a decade and a half earlier...

Sanders’s biggest failure in 2016 was not building coalitions. He found it difficult to expand his reach beyond liberals, white workers, and young people, to win over the older women and African-Americans who eventually gave their votes to Clinton. But on CBS, Sanders told Dickerson that unlike in 2016, he can plausibly win the nomination without cobbling together a majority of Democrats. “In some ways it makes it easier,” Sanders said. “When you’re running against one person you know you gotta have 51 percent of the votes. Now who knows what you need? Thirty, thirty-five percent...?”

Sanders seems like he’d rather watch a 10-hour Bachelor marathon, Clockwork Orange–style, than do the same. He is permanently averse to playing the inside political game, gabbing with power brokers on the phone, or charming the media off-the-record. His sequel campaign will test whether those choices matter anymore, whether big speeches, lofty policy ideas, and social media alone can carry the day. This might be a Very Bill Simmons Hot Take, but Sanders is the James Harden of politics. He’ll get you 30 points a night, but it’s hard to see how he wins a championship without getting his teammates involved. Either way, he’ll still be in the conversation...

The short gist: Sanders will lead the Democratic Party but he won't work with it. Compromise is a dirty word to him. If I need to say something positive about this, I could call him an Idealist deeply committed to an alternative world-view of America as a Socialist Utopia. As much as an Idealist Bernie is, we've seen Idealists in action before: Of previous Presidents, Sanders IMHO would follow in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson, whose ambitions and agendas surely capped the Progressive Era of early 20th Century... only to have everything crash and burn due to his stubborn ideology. And if you've read my blog enough, you know what I think of Utopias...

Add to that this bit from a Jeva Lange article I dug up from The Week back in 2015:

"Bernie's an a--hole, but he's our a--hole," one unnamed Vermont politician explained to Boston Magazine. Sanders' campaign field director put it more gently: "Bernie is a very demanding guy. He has very high expectations, and he expects people to meet them."

Chris Graff, a journalist who has covered Sanders for the past two and a half decades, expressed similar sentiments. "Bernie has no social skills, no sense of humor, and he's quick to boil over," he said. "He's the most unpolitical person in politics I've ever come across." Likewise, following Bernie's threats to walk off the stage when Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted him in Phoenix, Vermont's Seven Days newspaper described the move as "exasperating and classic Bernie... Man of the people treating the people like tiresome children, telling them what the issue is, instead of listening to what their issue, our issue, America's issue is right now."

"Bernie is so certain that what he represents politically is unquestionably correct, therefore everyone should agree," Susan Boardman Russ, the former chief of staff for Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, told Boston Magazine. "Not much room for compromise... it was, 'Play in my sandbox, or get out.'"

If you've read this blog enough - especially the Presidential Character stuff - you'll know the second I apply Uncompromising to describe someone I'm labeling that person Active-Negative. It's the key trait for A-Ns - just as Adaptive is for Active-Positive and Congeniality is for Passive-Positive and Duty is for Passive-Negative - where their ambition to achieve their goals outweigh their ability to actually reach those goals. Or if they do reach those goals, they fail to realize the costs - before AND after - those goals require.

If I had to redraw the Character description for 2020, it'd look like this:

Bernie Sanders - Senator, Vermont
Positives: Has electoral experience for decades serving as a congressman and then Senator. An engaging and driven personality. Aggressively pushes for a Left-leaning populist agenda that may appeal to key voting blocs. Has developed a dedicated fanbase that should provide a solid voter base in the primaries.

Negatives: Even in an election cycle where the Democratic candidates are more Progressive than ever (outside of Biden and a handful of other second-tier candidates), Sanders is still too far a Far Left figure. For all his years - since the 1990s! - at the federal level, does not have an extensive success track record with legislation: Very few sponsored bills getting passed or even voted on. Still does not show many signs of playing well with others. .

Chances: Slim. Bernie started off as the marquee name this primary cycle but was eclipsed by Biden the second Joe threw his hat in. Bernie's also been overtaken by Warren whose progressive bona fides - and more positive campaign style - has claimed a lot of the followers he had in 2016. He's determined (as already noted), and has a reason to run this thing as far as possible. But this time he doesn't have the Outsider cachet, he doesn't have the Progressive Warrior banner to himself, and this time he's worn out his welcome.

Character Chart: Before, I had little awareness of Sanders' performance and world-view outside of his stated platform. I couldn't tell then if he were Positive (politically engaged and viewing Presidential power as a means for helping others) or Negative (dedicated - obsessed even - with a particular agenda as a form of personal success). Having seen him in action since 2016, I've gotten a better understanding of how his Uncompromising stances on his Democratic Socialist agenda makes him too Active-Negative a figure to be Adaptive to the challenges any President will face. Sanders wants to be the one to turn the United States away from a Capitalist political-economic society towards a Socialist one. That's one hell of an ambitious agenda, but speaks to a world-view that will chafe against the restrictions of a Federalist system. A Sanders administration - even with a Democratic-controlled Congress - will be a bar brawl every step of the way.

The United States cannot afford four more years of trumpism. It can't even afford one more DAY of Mitch McConnell selling out our Senate to the NRA and Putin. The only way this can get solved is by backing the Democratic Party across all ballots, all elected offices. THAT'S how this nation can recover and rebuild. If the candidate is Biden, so be it, VOTE. If the candidate is Harris, so be it, VOTE. If the candidate is Warren, so be it, VOTE. If the candidate is Bernie, so be it, VOTE. If the candidate is Gabbard... okay, fucking thing's been rigged, WTF Putin even THAT would be too obvious a hack.

But here's the problem: I am not hearing from a lot of Bernie supporters that if the choice ends up being Biden or Harris or Warren they'll still vote Dem. I'm getting the vibe, hearing too much feedback that the pro-Bernie faction will - again - sit out the vote in protest and let trump and those crooks continue destroying our world.

"I will vote FOR the Democratic nominee for President in 2020." That's an easy thing to say and do, Bernie supporters. Recognize and support the Democratic candidate most likely to fulfill an agenda that makes the world close to what you want it to be. It won't be PERFECT, but it'll be better than it is now. Please and thank you.

Next up on the Presidential Character preview for 2020: Oh you better believe there's a plan for that.