As the Democratic Party’s “moderate” (or shall we say “establishment”) wing coalesces around Joe Biden to stop Bernie, the primary contest is starting to look a lot like 2016, when the same wing rallied around Hillary Clinton.
Monday Amy Klobuchar quit the race to endorse Biden. Pete Buttigieg is endorsing Biden, too. As the New York Times’s David Leonhardt puts it in his column today, “if you’re a Democrat who doesn’t want Bernie Sanders to be the party’s nominee, your choice is now clear: you should vote for Joe Biden.”
But suppose you’re a Democrat who doesn’t want Donald Trump to have a second term? Suppose you’re a Democrat who suspects that Trump got elected in the first place because he exploited a deep sense of betrayal felt by tens of millions of Americans whose wages haven’t budged in 40 years and who know the system is rigged for the benefit of those at the top? Do you really vote for Joe Biden?
I don’t think so.
What do you think?
This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Robert B. Reich is the chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His film, Inequality for All, was released in 2013. Follow him on Twitter: @RBReich.
I venture to say that Joe Biden would not be my choice. Elizabeth Warren would be, but I am glad and I hope Sanders gets knocked off the ticket. He is much more like an autocrat than you seem to be willing to admit, and while Biden would not be my choice, I will gladly vote for him if push comes to shove. I hope he can dismount the fascist grifter in the while house from his seat in the oval office.
This is gonna be way funnier than I expected. I might even watch the debate to see that crooked senile fuck Biden get beat like a drum. There’s no reason to vote, of course, but maybe Biden will shit himself on the podium or take his dick out or something really great.