It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.

In an article this long, it's hard to find a pull that summarizes the gist, but I've chosen a single sentence. It's a long read, and worth the extra minutes.

‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden, by Alex Thompson (Politico)

Behind the friendship was a more complicated relationship, which now drives the former vice president to prove his partner wrong.

Biden aides acknowledge that Obama didn’t do nearly as much for Biden in 2020 as he did for Clinton in 2016.

Just say "no" to Joe Biden.

"We’re going to be told that candidates offering real change, like Sanders and Warren, are too progressive for America. That they’re not “electable”. We’re going to be told that we should repeat the mistakes of 2016 all over again."

That's about the size of it.

Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 – and it won't end well this time either, by Arwa Mahdawi (The Guardian)

His is the vaguest and most centrist of battle cries: let’s go back to, you know, ‘all those good things’

... Biden’s answer to Trump isn’t systemic change that will make America a more equitable place. He’s not offering progressive policies like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. His is the vaguest and most centrist of battle cries: let’s go back to, you know, “all those good things”. Let’s go back to a time where racism was a little more polite and white people could pretend America was a post-racial society. Let’s fight for the soul of America by pretending that Trump is the problem, not just a symptom of the problem. Let’s pretend that Charlottesville was a direct result of Trump – an aberration – and not a product of a racism that has always existed in America. Let’s rewind the clock a few years to when everything was just fine and dandy.

What’s really frustrating about Biden is the fact that, even though he is another version of Clinton, and seems to be getting set to run a carbon copy of Clinton’s campaign, we’re going to be told ad nauseam that he’s our best bet at beating Trump. We’re going to be told that he’s the only Democrat that can win the white working class over – forget the fact that Sanders is currently the candidate best connecting with that demographic, gaining cheers and enthusiasm at a Fox town hall with his vision for universal healthcare. We’re going to be told that candidates offering real change, like Sanders and Warren, are too progressive for America. That they’re not “electable”. We’re going to be told that we should repeat the mistakes of 2016 all over again. We’re going to be told that it will work out this time.

Yglesias: "Bill Clinton should have resigned. What he did to Monica Lewinsky was wrong, and he should have paid the price."

I'm excising a few hundred words, but you're encouraged to click through and read the essay in its entirety. "Thought-provoking" may be a cliche, but it certainly describes this essay.

Bill Clinton should have resigned, by Matthew Yglesias (Vox)

What he did to Monica Lewinsky was wrong, and he should have paid the price.

Many years ago, when I was a high school student making my first visit to Washington for a two-week summer camp for weird politics dorks, the dominant news story was then-President Bill Clinton’s August 17, 1998, admission that despite earlier denials, he “did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate.”

“In fact,” Clinton conceded, “it was wrong,” and it “constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”

In the days before the admission, there was considerable conviction in the chattering classes that the allegations, if true, would end up leading to Clinton’s resignation. That proved to be incorrect. Clinton was not shamed into resigning, and senior leaders of the Democratic Party did not pressure him into resigning.

At the time I, like most Americans, was glad to see Clinton prevail and regarded the whole sordid matter as primarily the fault of congressional Republicans’ excessive scandal-mongering. Now, looking back after the election of Donald Trump, the revelations of massive sexual harassment scandals at Fox News, the stories about Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry, and the stories about Roy Moore’s pursuit of sexual relationships with teenagers, I think we got it wrong. We argued about perjury and adultery and the meaning of the word “is.” Republicans prosecuted a bad case against a president they’d been investigating for years.

What we should have talked about was men abusing their social and economic power over younger and less powerful women.

The United States, and perhaps the broader English-speaking world, is currently undergoing a much-needed accountability moment in which each wave of stories emboldens more people to come forward and more institutions to rethink their practices. Looking back, the 1998 revelation that the president of the United States carried on an affair with an intern could have been that moment ...

Skipping to the conclusion. The author was a "sophisticated high schooler," although I was 38 years old, and made exactly the same Euro/Mitterand argument numerous times from behind the Public House's bar. Problem is: apples versus oranges.

We can’t change the past, but we should be clear about it

Building a firm line around that kind of activity would give any organization a stronger, healthier culture. Our expectations for the conduct of the president of the United States should be high, and we should treat men’s abuse of authority over younger female subordinates for sexual purposes as a serious, endemic social problem, not a private marital issue between the boss and his wife.

My guess is that in the years to come, most left-of-center people born in the 1980s will say that if they’d been old enough to have a view on the matter back in 1998, they would have favored pressuring Clinton to resign. I hope that is the case, at least. Most young Democrats backed Bernie Sanders over Clinton in 2016 and are accustomed as a result to the idea of an emotionally and intellectually hostile attitude toward “the Clintons.”

Unfortunately for me, I’m a little too old to get away with claiming to have had no opinion on this at the time. My version of a sophisticated high schooler’s take on the matter was that the American media should get over its bourgeois morality hang-ups and be more like the French, where François Mitterrand’s wife and his longtime mistress grieved together at his funeral.

As a married 30-something father, I’ve come around to a less “worldly” view of infidelity. As a co-founder of Vox, I’d never in a million years want us to be the kind of place where men in senior roles can get away with the kind of misconduct that we’ve seen is all too common in our industry and in so many others.

Most of all, as a citizen I’ve come to see that the scandal was never about infidelity or perjury — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. It was about power in the workplace and its use. The policy case that Democrats needed Clinton in office was weak, and the message that driving him from office would have sent would have been profound and welcome. That this view was not commonplace at the time shows that we did not, as a society, give the most important part of the story the weight it deserved.

As the current accountability moment grows, we ought to recognize and admit that we had a chance to do this almost 20 years ago — potentially sparing countless young women a wide range of unpleasant and discriminatory experiences, or at a minimum reducing their frequency and severity. And we blew it.

"By buying into a myth about why (Democrats) lost in 2016, they are ignoring the underlying math about what really happened."

Dream team: Any Canon voters here? 

As a contributor to The Guardian helpfully explains:

(Hillary) Clinton has largely kept a low profile since the election, occasionally sending Twitter barbs in Trump’s direction. The best case scenario for Democrats is for Clinton – and her family – to stay away. The wise thing for the party to do is to abandon the failed “Third Way” centrist politics that she and her husband have come to exemplify. Even so, the Democratic establishment appears to not be learning any lessons

Our emerging 9th district race will be instructive in this regard. If Dan Canon wins the primary, he'll be pressured to stop talking genuine issues and position himself in the center, which actually is the right, which is why he shouldn't.

But area Democrats have been non-democratic for so very long that their old Dixiecratic habits will be dying a slow, agonizing death.

Just so long as we agree these habits need to die.

Democrats Are Trying to Win the 2018 Midterms in All the Wrong Ways, by Steve Phillips (The Nation)

If there are 7 million Obama-to-Trump voters, why didn’t Trump’s vote total increase by 7 million?

It is quite possible that Democrats are going to spend nearly $1 billion trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. By buying into a myth about why they lost in 2016, they are ignoring the underlying math about what really happened—and not only misspending huge amounts of money, but setting themselves up to lose again, in the critical contests to come.

Many progressive politicians and pundits have bought into the notion that millions of people who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 defected from the Democrats and voted for Donald Trump in 2016. The strategic premise flowing from this conclusion—that the Democrats can prevail in the congressional and presidential races to come by winning those voters back—is influencing how tens of millions of dollars are being spent and will continue to shape the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in the mid-term elections next year. But as my colleagues at Democracy in Color and I point out in the new report “Return of the Majority Progress Report: Another Billion Dollar Blunder?,” the premise driving this strategy is ill-founded and incorrect ...

Democrats seeking an alternative to Trump: "You won’t have a choice but to try something new."

Trump-ready balconies?

"Whatever the cause, something is different here. One age is dying, and another is rearing its head."

Dan O'Sullivan writes like the love child of Alexander Cockburn and Hunter S. Thompson, and the result may be the single best summary I've yet seen of the recently concluded presidential election, as well as a thoughtful (and delightfully florid) assessment of where we are are, as a nation, right now.

Vengeance Is Mine, at Jacobin

Chaos reigns … fascist stooge finds his balcony … the resistible rise of Donald Trump … bomb crater America finds its Dauphin … Hillary Clinton: 10.0 Richter scale failure … the pinko revolt begins … digging ourselves out of the collapsed gold mine

(SNIP) The results will be radioactive. There is a perverse and hideous gift here. While the madness of a Clinton interregnum would’ve proceeded according to standard operating procedure, a banal yet sickening continuity with that of Obama and Bush, the colossal weirdness of Trump’s movement does represent something of an innovation. Frankly, Trump is too fucked up to ignore, and his core gang of freaks will make this country an extravagantly worse place.

You won’t have a choice but to try something new.

So, what is to be done?

For one thing, face the "alt-right" for what it really is, take a lesson from Bernie Sanders, and promote a genuinely alternative vision.

They may be loud and sinister; they may harass and impugn and assault those weaker than them. They are also cowards, emboldened by their tangerine stalking horse. I know them; they are young losers who crave the attention otherwise denied in life. Their will is as weak as their leader. Stop giving them for free what they dream of all day long.

No more of this narrow view of either wooing or abandoning “the white working class,” either. The zero-sum, emotionally bankrupt thinking on race that has dominated this country — one in which African-Americans see their voting rights stolen, while white Americans are incited against “welfare cheats” and other euphemistic scapegoats while further immiserated themselves — must be smashed. It is time to defend and support the entire working class — the black working class, the Latino working class, indigenous Americans, and the white working class.

There is no need to pick and choose between helping one group to the detriment of another; an alternative vision will answer Trump’s bigotry with an abiding antiracism, a radical compassion capable of freeing all Americans from the indignities of life today in this country.

There can be no dealing with this man. Bernie has lain down a gauntlet Trump cannot meet. Now, every day, and in every way, it is time to say “go fuck yourself” to Trump and his ilk, until the weapons capable of destroying him can be perfected.

Trump is, for all his monstrosity, just a symptom; as daunting as the challenge of frustrating Trump and the GOP’s agenda at every turn will be, of even graver importance will be constructing an alternative vision capable of contending with the crisis of American life.

It is impossible to select meaningful excerpts from an essay of this length, so please click through and read it all. You too, Adam.

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XIII, This Isn’t the Article I Expected to Write.

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XIII, This Isn’t the Article I Expected to Write

By Nick Vaughn, Guest Columnist

I stood in the ballroom of the JW Marriott in Indianapolis on November 8th. It was a long and winding road from campus that luckily provided service so I could stay updated on the US Senate and House races. That was where the real battle would be fought, I had thought. I put in a ton of hours over the summer as well as over the course of my first semester of college to make sure that Congressman Todd Young would beat Evan Bayh. I was tracking the early results as they came in and I was a tad perplexed. To be running against someone like Bayh, I thought the early results were odd. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Young jumped out to a 10% lead and never looked back. Then Eric Holcomb won and then Jennifer McCormick won and before I knew it Donald Trump was the projected winner of Florida. What was going on?

I am still processing what occurred on Election Day as well as the events that have followed. I never thought in a million years I would see Donald Trump as President-Elect. I knew Hillary Clinton was unpopular but I never knew that it was to this magnitude. Clinton must feel lower than Walter Mondale. Of course, a blowout probably hurts much less than a close defeat (I can attest). Clinton simply dropped the ball. Sure, she can blame this on FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress that they were alerted to new emails and they needed to check them out, but he did send another letter that said they were all hunky dory. This race was Hillary’s to lose and she lost it. She simply underperformed. She was 100,000 votes behind President Obama’s 2012 total in Wisconsin and the voter demographics were certainly not in her favor. Further still, Trump somehow garnered 30% of total minority votes which was enough to
put him over the edge while performing 1 point less than Romney did among white voters in 2012.

Now we see protests of the election (we would have either way). The peaceful protests we see today as a result of Trump’s victory could have very well been supplemented with violent protests, killings, possibly even lynchings if he had lost. In fact, the Trump advocates’ response to these protests are for the protesters to get over it. Some have even called them cry babies and they just need to get a job. This total hypocrisy is absolutely astonishing (though not unexpected) and shows the blinding effects Trump’s divisive rhetoric have had on people throughout this election cycle. Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani even got in on the absurd bashing of protests claiming that these protesters are “professional protestors” that were hired by the DNC to cause riots after the election results.

While Trump has toned down his rhetoric since winning, his advocates and supporters are still in campaign mode. This type of rhetoric Trump used to glide into victory has caused more destruction than even his lack of discipline and discernment could as Commander-in-Chief. Sure, a President Trump could be a hot head and lack the proper judgement that would cause us to fall head first into war, however, I would argue he has done something far worse. Donald Trump has caused people to hate each other. People who are separated only by meaningless things like party identification or race or ethnicity. We have made a complete about face from Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise words of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

So, I would ask you to take action over the next four years. Not obstructionist action but instead a objective support/check and balance combo as Trump ascends to the Oval Office. What’s done is done and there isn’t any going back. While I wholeheartedly understand the “He is not my president" sentiments, however, he has to be your president. For the sake of stability he must be our president. Donald Trump has already begun to tone down his rhetoric and his outlandish policies are no longer on the forefront of his agenda. Let’s be hopeful. By the way, next week I plan to dive into our local results. Until then, here is the quote of the day: “If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” - John F. Kennedy

Come out from your silos, because it's time to learn from our mistakes.

Photo credit.

"Trump’s message was: 'All is hell.' Clinton answered: 'All is well.' But it’s not well – far from it."

It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump, by Naomi Klein (The Guardian)

People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Chairman Dickey is running away from Hillary as fast as his obsequious legs will carry him.

Trying to keep the Trump margin of victory in Floyd County down to 20 points, Adam?

Cornel West: "The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity have led to our grand moment of spiritual blackout."

But hey -- WATER PARK!

Spiritual blackout in America: Election 2016, by Cornel West (Boston Globe)

THE MOST FRIGHTENING feature of the civic melancholia in present-day America is the relative collapse of integrity, honesty, and decency — an undeniable spiritual blackout of grand proportions. The sad spectacle of the presidential election is no surprise. Rather, the neofascist catastrophe called Donald Trump and the neoliberal disaster named Hillary Clinton are predictable symbols of our spiritual blackout. Trump dislodged an inert conservative establishment by unleashing an ugly contempt for liberal elites and vulnerable citizens of color — and the mainstream media followed every performance (even his tweets!) for financial gain. Clinton laid bare a dishonest liberal establishment that was unfair to Bernie Sanders and obsessed with winning at any cost — and the mainstream media selectively weighed in for pecuniary ends.

In short, the rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity have led to our grand moment of spiritual blackout.

"One of the many things that makes Donald Trump angry is that Bernie Sanders does not seem to hold grudges."

It's a fast read, a good read, and a better excuse to repost these two photos of Bernie Sanders at The Exchange in May, 2016, when he WON the Indiana Democratic primary.

Come what may ... they can't take THAT away from me.

BERNIE SANDERS’S HARD FIGHT FOR HILLARY CLINTON, by Amy Davidson (The New Yorker)

... Since conceding defeat in the primaries, Sanders has been one of the real champions of this campaign. He let his supporters yell at him and deride him as a sellout in bleak delegate breakfasts at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, as he endorsed Clinton and explained why they needed to do the same. He made getting support for her his priority, putting aside any subtle, undermining gestures that might have better preserved his rebel-rock-star status. He has kept doing so despite other revelations in the Podesta e-mails, ones that are not about him personally but about issues that he believes in—for example, about money in politics, as exemplified by the Clinton team’s nurturing of donors. And he has earned the right to negotiate hard on such issues in the future.

1. Great again? "Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting."

Money into influence? That's not restricted to the major party candidates, is it?

Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting, by Barbara Ehrenreich (The Guardian)

The most sordid side of our democracy has been laid out for all to see. But that’s only the beginning: whoever wins, the mutual revulsion will only intensify

... (Trump's) supporters – generally portrayed as laid-off blue-collar workers who, in the absence of unions, have devoted themselves to the cause of whiteness – cheer on each of his macro-aggressions. To them, he is a giant middle finger in the face of the bipartisan political elite, and the crazier he acts, the more resounding this fuck-you gets. It doesn’t matter that most of Trump’s assertions can’t stand up to fact-checking; ignorance has been enshrined by an entire alternative media, stretching from Fox News to Stormfront on the Nazi-leaning right.

On the liberal left, tragically, we do not have Bernie Sanders, who would have dispatched Trump’s populist pretensions with a wrist flick. But no, representing the side of tolerance, good government and cosmopolitanism, we have the very epitome of Democratic party elitism, a woman who labeled half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables”, a politician who is so robotic that any efforts to analyze her motives risk the charge of anthropomorphism. Consider her statement on the Standing Rock occupation in North Dakota, which could have been issued by an unmanned typewriter. As soldiers and police bore down on the protesters, she urged all parties – tribal peoples and the pipeline company that threatens their culture and habitat – “to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest”.

If a withering cynicism hangs over the land it’s because both candidates share a Tony-Blairish zeal for turning money into influence and vice versa. He has his Trump Foundation, whose largest beneficiary was reportedly a fountain in need of renovations that faces the Trump Plaza hotel. She has the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which shares some of its revenues with the global poor, but also emits a stench of corruption which, according to leaked emails, even the ever tractable Chelsea could not help noticing ...

2. Great again? "No Matter Who Loses the Election, the Winner Will Be the National Security State."

Welcome to the "peacetime" war state.

No Matter Who Loses the Election, the Winner Will Be the National Security State, by Tom Engelhardt (The Nation)

Both Trump and Clinton have pledged to pour more money into the already bloated military and security apparatus.

The United States remains the great imperial state on Planet Earth in terms of the reach of its military and the power of its economy and culture to influence the workings of everything just about everywhere. And yet, based on the last strange year of election campaigning, it’s hard not to think that something—and not just The Donald—is unnervingly amiss on Planet America.

3. Great again? "Barrel Bomb: the Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016."

Counting the minutes until business as usual.

Barrel Bomb: the Cataclysmic Close of Campaign 2016, by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch)

Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time, we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an inch. The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that that some of them might well elect an Establishment insider whose sinister clowning makes him appear to be a ‘rebel’ — will not come. Thus their bitterness will grow deeper, more sour, erupting more and more often in physical violence: from militarized police against protestors, from Trump-empowered racists (if he wins or loses), from extremist militias, from angry, maddened people on every side. And of course there will be more — much more — of the horrific, never-ending, globe-spanning violence of the bipartisan Terror War that churns on and on, no matter who is sitting temporarily in the White House.

There’s no use in pretending that’s not what we face. But there’s also no use in pretending that this situation is somehow sui generis, some terribly unlucky conflation of unforeseen circumstances coming together at this particular time. It is in fact the culmination and embodiment of the deliberate choices of the most powerful forces in society: the choices to enrich themselves beyond all reason and extend their military and economic dominance over the earth.

I was expecting the News and Tribune to come out in favor of two-way streets, but all I got ...

... was this lousy endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President, though at least is sets the table for a wisecrack or two.

Can someone show me the sentence herein written by the editorial board's Chris Morris?

Did Bill Hanson conclude that America's first female president would be a boost for a whole news series of cooking schools at his church?

Finally, what about that ringing two-way street endorsement?

Even the previous Jeff-centric editor managed to nudge in the right direction.

OUR OPINION: Hillary Clinton best choice for president

... America needs an experienced, reasoned and balanced leader in the White House. Democrat Hillary Clinton best meets the qualifications of leadership and is our choice for president. Republican Donald Trump is her polar opposite in style and substance.

Clinton’s experience in government service exceeds that of many past presidents as well as presidential hopefuls ...

... The News and Tribune editorial board is comprised of Publisher Bill Hanson, Editor Susan Duncan, Digital Editor Claire White, Assistant Editor Chris Morris and Assistant Editor Jason Thomas. Responses can be sent to susan.duncan@newsandtribune.com

"So, no — when Clinton is elected, we will not enter a post-gender society. Instead, we will face another convulsion of bigotry from the defeated foes."

Nine white males on the New Albany Common Council ... and this excellent commentary by the editor of LEO. I usually read Erika Rucker's column, but little else. Maybe it's time to dig a little deeper.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No post-gender society, by Keith Stone (LEO)

Watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be mesmerized by the world-class female athletes who are killing it in their events and showing the world how to take absolutely no shit. Like 19-year-old Lilly King, who matched her outrage over Russian doping with an outrageously-fast, winning swim. Or Simone Biles, who may be the best female gymnast ever and whose performances in Rio drew cheers from teammates and competitors alike. And then there is Simone Manuel, the first African-American woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming.

Maybe their domination presages what could be America’s Year of The Woman. After all, in less than 100 days we choose between Cheeto-wrought, worldwide mayhem and electing the first female president ...

 ... Will we become gender-blind? ... Not.

Bravo: "If Hillary Clinton Seeks (or Accepts) an Endorsement from Henry Kissinger, She's Lost My Vote."

List of Kissinger War Crimes.

At this point, I may write in my own name.

If Hillary Clinton Seeks (or Accepts) an Endorsement from Henry Kissinger, She's Lost My Vote, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

 ... So I can say this full in the knowledge that what I say will not have the slightest effect on the outcome of the presidential election. But it is not negotiable.

If Hillary Clinton actively seeks, or publicly accepts, the endorsement of Henry Kissinger, I will vote for Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on November 8.

(Jill Stein, you might've been a contender, but going off to Red Square to talk about Vladimir Putin and human rights? Being an honored guest of a Russian propaganda channel? I don't think so.) 

Kissinger is a bridge too far. He is responsible for more unnecessary deaths than any official of a putative Western democracy since the days when Lord John Russell was starving the Irish, if not the days when President Andy Jackson was inaugurating the genocide of the Cherokee. He should be coughing his life away as an inmate at The Hague, not whispering in the ears of a putatively progressive Democratic presidential candidate. I can tolerate (somewhat) the notion of her reaching out to the rest of the wax museum there, but Kissinger is a monster too far. He is my line in the sand. I can choose who I endorse to lead my country, a blessing that Henry Kissinger worked his whole career to deny to too many people ...

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode IX, The Nineties Are Calling ... They Want Their Politicians Back.

Within City Limits

Episode IX, The Nineties Are Calling ... They Want Their Politicians Back.

By Nick Vaughn, Guest Columnist

With Evan Bayh announcing he is seeking his old senate seat and Hillary Clinton being endorsed by Bernie Sanders, I felt like a baby again. Being born in 1997, I am only familiar with the political landscape by looking backwards, something Democrats are never advocating -- until now.

When President Obama was running for President and reelection, he had the slogans of “Forward” and “Progress,” but today's Democratic Party is running on nostalgia and backwardness. You can argue with me about platform points and “evolving on issues” like gay marriage, but the bottom line is that these politicians who are the standard bearers for the Democratic Party nationally and on an Indiana state level are still the same politicians who were the standard bearers in the 1990s.

The top three candidates on the Democratic ticket in Indiana are all rehashes from a bygone era where the state's economy was in the toilet, brought on by large deficits and high taxes. We looked a lot like Illinois back then. Hillary Clinton, John Gregg, Evan Bayh; all rehashes. While their talking points are much different than they were back then, they are still the same people. 1990s politicians should not be the ones solving the problems of the 2000s and beyond.

Beyond my displeasure and discontent with the rehashing of candidates, all three represent special interests, Wall Street, and back room politics at their absolute worst. John Gregg is still taking advantage of the state’s healthcare for elected officials being paid by the taxpayers, a practice that has ended. Furthermore, Gregg was a lawyer for the Bingham McHale law firm, where lobbying records show he was a well connected lobbyist for various topics. You can read more about his lobbying here: Gregg's lobbying record doesn't worry Democrats.

Evan Bayh used to be a public servant until he decided to retire from the U.S. Senate to take a lobbying job. Bayh epitomizes what is wrong with Washington, D.C. He went there as a senator and cashed in on the special interest money by fighting the laws he helped pass (including Obamacare). Plus Bayh just recently moved back to Indiana. He had previously lived in DC in a $2.9 million dollar home and had a modest vacation home in Florida worth over $3 million.

Bayh saying he will represent everyday Hoosiers might be the biggest lie of the campaign season. He is out of touch and filled to the brim with special interest money. Read more about Bayh the Lobbyist here: Lobbyist Evan Bayh Lit On Fire By The Left and here Evan Bayh Won’t Rule Out Becoming A Lobbyist After His Term Ends.

Hillary Clinton. Well, enough said.

So that I get my point across, I think it is inherently hypocritical and ironic that the Democrats have long been the party of vilifying the rich and lobbying class that infests Washington, D.C. and Indianapolis, yet all three of their candidates at the top of the ticket have deep ties to Wall Street, special interest money, and lobbying. For Pete’s sake, two of them are former lobbyists! Not to mention all three are rehashed candidates of a bygone era.

My question is: will the people of Indiana hold these three accountable? Or will they be fooled by the talking points? Also, do the Democrats who reject the Wall Street, special interest, and lobbying culture of Washington, D.C. and Indianapolis hold their nose and vote for three candidates who epitomize what is wrong with our system of government? Or will they stand for what they believe in and hold their party and their candidates accountable?

And as always, I leave you with the quote of the day: “In 2005, the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen reported that 43 percent of the members (of Congress) who retired from 1998 to 2004 registered as lobbyists.” -- Huffington Post

Vote Green: Dr. Jill Stein for President in 2016.

Indiana voters will be able to write in Jill Stein for president. It's what I'll be doing. Jill Stein isn't Hillary, and she isn't Trump. She is something, and my preference is principled somethingness over the same-old nothingness.

From CounterPunch.

The following is reprinted in its entirety.

---

Revolution Undermined: On Bernie Sanders’s Endorsement of Hillary Clinton, by Jill Stein (CounterPunch)

I join millions of Americans who see Hillary Clinton’s campaign as the opposite of what they and Bernie Sanders have fought for. Despite her penchant for flip flopping rhetoric, Hillary Clinton has spent decades consistently serving the causes of Wall Street, war and the Walmart economy.

The policies she fought for – along with her husband and political partner, Bill Clinton – have been foundations of the economic disaster most Americans are still struggling with: the abuses of deregulated Wall Street, rigged corporate trade agreements, racist mass incarceration, and the destruction of the social safety net for poor women and children. The consistent efforts of the Democratic Party to minimize, sideline, and sabotage the Sanders campaign are a wake up call that we can’t have a revolutionary campaign inside a counter-revolutionary party.

Sadly, Sanders is one of a long line of true reformers that have been undermined by the Democratic Party. The eventual suppression of the Sanders campaign was virtually guaranteed from the beginning with super-delegates and super Tuesdays, that were created after George McGovern’s nomination to prevent grassroots campaigns from winning the nomination again.

Sanders, a life-long independent who has advocated for building an independent democratic socialist party similar to Canada’s New Democratic Party, has said that his decision to run as a Democrat was based on pragmatism, but there is nothing pragmatic about supporting a party that for decades has consistently sold out the progressive majority to the billionaire class. This false pragmatism is not the path to revolutionary change but rather an incrementalism that keeps us trapped, voting for lesser evil again and again.

Each time a progressive challenger like Sanders, Dennis Kucinich or Jesse Jackson has inspired hope for real change, the Democratic Party has sabotaged them while marching to the right, becoming more corporatist and militarist with each election cycle.

Millions are realizing that if we want to fix the rigged economy, the rigged racial injustice system, the rigged health care system, toxic fossil fuel energy and all the other systems failing us, we must fix the rigged political system, and that will not happen through the rigged Democratic Party.

Right now we have a real chance to change our rigged political system, and we must not squander this opportunity by pledging allegiance to a corrupt political insider who the majority of Americans do not like, trust or believe in.

What is most disappointing is that Sanders has refused invitations to speak to the Green Party, a truly democratic national party that has long championed the progressive stands that lifted the Sanders campaign to the top of national polls.

Fortunately, this November voters across America will still have the choice to cast a revolutionary vote to cancel student debt, achieve full employment and stop the climate meltdown through a Green New Deal, provide universal healthcare with Medicare for All, provide a welcoming path to citizenship, end mass incarceration and create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights. We need to commit to improving the lives of all Americans, not just the wealthy and special interests.

As the Sanders campaign’s dominance of national polls has shown, our positions are shared by a majority of voters, and with the Green Party on the ballot in November the majority can vote for what they want and get it. Together we can beat both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two most unpopular and least trusted presidential candidates in American history.

I call on the tens of millions inspired by Bernie Sanders’ call for political revolution, the 60% of Americans who want a new major party, and the independents who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans to reject the self-defeating strategy of voting for the lesser evil and join our fight for the greater good.

I ask the rising independent majority to demand our inclusion in the Presidential debates, for as Sanders proved, in fair debates we can rally the majority of Americans behind a plan for an America and a world that works for all of us.

I congratulate Bernie Sanders on running an impressive campaign within an undemocratic primary, and I thank Bernie for showing clearly how a grassroots campaign, armed only with a progressive vision and small contributions from real people, can win over the majority of Americans. Let’s keep the revolution going and build it into the powerful force for transformative change that it is becoming. Together we are unstoppable.

Welcome to a masterpiece of satire: "Hitler Hears Bernie Sanders Won't Stand Down."

Thanks, RC. But I still like this one best.

“He’ll take Mr. Sanders’s aspirational approach over Mrs. Clinton’s caution any day.”

“Democrats who want to win a big majority in November, to take back the Congress and to move forward in the states, know that the party has to stand for something that excites young people, that excites working people. No matter who the nominee is, the party has to take a big-vision stand.”

Water park!

Boomtown!

A place to walk your dog!

Those are big ideas, right?

A Contested Convention Is Exactly What the Democratic Party Needs, by John Nichols (The Nation)

Bernie Sanders will go to Philadelphia with more pledged delegates than any insurgent in modern history. Here’s what he could do with them.

Joe Biden understands something about the Democratic Party and its future that his fellow partisans would do well to consider. “I don’t think any Democrat’s ever won saying, ‘We can’t think that big—we ought to really downsize here because it’s not realistic,’” the vice president told The New York Times in April. “C’mon man, this is the Democratic Party! I’m not part of the party that says, ‘Well, we can’t do it.’” Mocking Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Bernie Sanders for proposing bold reforms, Biden dismissed the politics of lowered expectations. “I like the idea of saying, ‘We can do much more,’ because we can,” he declared, leading the Times to observe that, while Biden wasn’t making an endorsement, “He’ll take Mr. Sanders’s aspirational approach over Mrs. Clinton’s caution any day.”