"Deval Patrick Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party."

"Maybe five or ten years ago, Deval Patrick might have been the best Democrat that our dismal system could have produced. But that’s no longer the case. The time for guys like this has passed."

And by extension, this is why it's so very difficult to find a reason to vote for Democrats. The two party system is a reeking cesspool.

Deval Patrick Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party, by Liza Featherstone (Jacobin)

Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s resume reads like a dystopian novel about the nihilism and brutality of contemporary capitalism. He should leave public life forever.

The donor classes do not want Bernie Sanders to be president. Most of them don’t want Elizabeth Warren, either. They’d prefer someone who doesn’t have much to say about wealth distribution, whether in the form of taxing the rich, or big programs like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Their most electable option in this vein — at least as measured by primary and general election polling, as well as occasional, if fleeting, resemblance to a sympathetic human being — is obviously Joe Biden. Unhappily for them, Biden is also a chucklehead. Terrified that the Left might win, the titans of industry have a plan: Deval Patrick.

Like Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, is the extremely disappointing progeny of a radical father. (Pat Patrick, a jazz musician, played with Sun Ra’s band, The Arkestra.) That’s probably the coolest thing about him.

The enthusiasm for Sanders and Warren at the grassroots — as well as for progressive and socialist local and Congressional candidates nationwide — might suggest a sea change, a popular desire to grapple seriously with the problems caused by capitalism. Deval Patrick, until recently an executive at Bain Capital, is a flagrant insult to that popular uprising. He is a cherished asset of the fossil fuel, private equity, and subprime mortgage industries, which are some of the worst phenomena that contemporary capitalism has produced. What’s next, a member of the Sackler family?

Though news coverage insists on characterizing his entry into the primary as “sudden,” it seems that a few members of the ruling class have been working on his campaign for a while. Since 2018, OpenSecrets News reports, big donors, especially in private equity, have been pouring money into Deval Patrick’s PAC, putting his campaign in an advantageous position. Even in October 2018, more than a year ago, the PAC, called Reason to Believe, was far outperforming PACs of other candidates considering a 2020 run. Most of the money came from one private equity mogul: Dan Fireman, a billionaire golf enthusiast ...

Actually no, I won't consider voting for a Gahan/Dickey-like centrist presidential candidate. The Democrats can do much better than capitulation.

I can vote for Bernie Sanders, and I can vote for Elizabeth Warren. After that, it's all up in the air -- and Taibbi explains why.

Deval Patrick’s Candidacy Is Another Chapter in the Democrats’ 2020 Clown Car Disaster, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

The entrance of the former Massachusetts governor into the presidential race is more proof the party has no clue where the votes are

... Along with an alarmingly high number of press figures, politicians like (Deval) Patrick seem to be trapped in an “electability” concept that hasn’t made sense since the Reagan-Bush years. Outside of a few spots on the Upper East Side and in Georgetown and L.A., the “center” has been gone a long time.

From Donald Trump to Sanders to Warren, the politicians attracting the biggest and most enthusiastic responses in recent years have run on furious, throw-the-bums-out themes, for the logical reason that bums by now clearly need throwing out.

America’s political establishment has created vast inequities not only in the economy, but in criminal justice (where street crime is heavily punished, but white collar crime is not), war (it’s mostly not the sons and daughters of politicians and CEOs getting killed in overseas conflicts), health care (where much of the population lives in fear that getting sick will trigger bankruptcy), debt forgiveness (Wall Street bailout recipients got to write off losses, but people suffering foreclosures and student loan defaults are ruined), and other arenas.

You can’t capture the widespread discontent over these issues if you’re running on a message that the donor class doesn’t deserve censure for helping create these messes. It’s worse if you actually worked — as Patrick did — for a company like Ameriquest, a poster child for the practices that caused the 2008 financial crisis: using aggressive and/or predatory tactics to push homeowners into new subprime mortgages or mortgage refis, fueling the disastrous financial bubble.