Warren "Troubled" By Obama's $400k Speaking Fee

Ah, Geez, Elizabeth too? I expected Bernie to have a problem with it, but I thought Elizabeth was smart enough not to be bothered unless and until there was some shred of evidence that Barack had actually compromised himself. When Hillary was asked why she took nearly $1 million from Lehman Bros, she nailed it: "That was how much they offered." Elizabeth, Barack, Hillary and I and every other Democrat, as far as I know, wants to overturn Citizen's United. But until that happens, there's no reason for us to shoot ourselves in the foot or penalize ourselves because we'd rather be pure than defeat Republicans.

Another example of what I'm talking about occurs to me: A lot of people criticized George Bernard Shaw for portraying the Salvation Army -- pacifists -- taking a cash donation from a billionaire arms dealer in his play Major Barbara.

You know who wasn't upset by it? Actual members of the Salvation Army. One of them put it this way: if an arms dealer wanted to give them money, they'd be more than happy to get it out of the Devil's hands and into the Lord's. He mentioned also that the Salvation Army -- teetotalers -- often had meetings inside bars and accepted donations there. He didn't seem in the slightest bothered by suggestions that the Salvation Army compromised itself in such ways.

Anyway: Elizabeth, I'm sure you've heard of George Bernard Shaw. I don't know whether you've seen or read Major Barbara. Shaw's Preface to the play is awfully good, as his Prefaces tend to be -- better than the plays themselves for me, although I suppose for most people the plays are crucial. The plays aren't bad, but the Prefaces are brilliant. It is in the Preface to Major Barbara that I heard about people objecting to Shaw's depiction of the Salvation Army, and the much more sensible reaction of the Salvation Army itself.

Hillary and Barack haven't sold themselves. How about waiting for evidence that something is actually wrong before becoming "concerned"?

100 Million People Didn't Vote

According to the Washington Post, about 100 million people who could've voted in the US elections last week didn't.

According to a study by the United States Election Project, about 232 million people could've voted, and about 132 million did.

Politico claimed back in October that the US had passed the 200 million mark in registered voters. If that's accurate and the Election Project numbers are accurate, it means that about 68 million Americans were registered to vote last week and didn't, and about 32 million more could have registered but didn't.

It seems to me that we Democrats have some room for improvement when it comes to getting our campaign messages across. Very often in the run-up to the election I encountered the claim that Hillary and Donald are pretty much the same. Obviously, the differences between them are huge, and Democrats described these differences accurately and eloquently -- but apparently millions of people who despise Trump and didn't vote for him either never heard us, or heard us and didn't believe us. They despise Hillary too.

How do we improve at getting information across? How do we convince people that leading Democrats are honest, and that we did not, in fact, just nominate history's greatest monster for President?

I don't know. But it's something that we should be thinking about very seriously. How to get through.

I would've thought that a great majority of Americans are by now very concerned about climate change. If that were true, then it would have been an example of American voters not realizing that one Presidential candidate -- Hillary -- shared their concern and had all sorts of plans to deal with the issue, while the other candidate -- Donald -- is completely out to lunch on the topic. However, this web page from the Pew Research Center seems to indicate that barely a majority of Americans are greatly concerned about climate change. Only 68% of Democrats surveyed, and 20% of Republicans, agreed with the statement "global climate change is a very serious problem." Okay, so there's obviously a very serious weakness when it comes to basic scientific education in the US -- a catastrophic weakness among Republicans, but a very serious weakness among Democrats as well. We need to get people to understand science better.

The incoming Republican administration is not going to be very helpful with education. Fox and Breitbart and the "History Channel" are not going to be helpful at all. I'm sorry, I wish I were just brimming with helpful suggestions about how to turn this all around. The only hopeful thing I can say is that I see numerous surveys suggesting that younger voters vote Democratic more often, are well-educated on climate change more often, are more in favor of equal rights for women and ethnic minorities and LGBT's -- they're just more Democratic. That gives me hope that this is all turning around. Just not as quickly as we'd like.

Having a distinguished professor and pre-eminent intellectual such as Elizabeth Warren in the Oval Office would be tremendously helpful. Warren 2020!

Looking Forward To "Bernie-Or-Bust" Heads Exploding When/If He Endorses Hillary

Predictably, some of the diehard Bernie folks have denounced Elizabeth Warren for endorsing Hillary. Cenk Uygur and Truthdig, for example, have said that the endorsement has unmasked her as a "phony progressive."

As readers of this blog know, I consider Bernie to be a phony Socialist. That is, I consider the Democratic Party to be socialist, it's just that we have a phobia in the US of the term "socialist" because we don't know what it means: a stronger social safety net, universal health care, labor unions, education, infrastructure, regulation of businesses and financial markets -- in short: Democratic stuff. Bernie isn't to the Left of the Left wing of the Democratic Party. Case in point: Elizabeth Warren.

One big difference between Bernie and Elizabeth is that Elizabeth doesn't just talk about government giving more help to those who need it and less help to those who don't: she gets it done, by working with other Democrats, because the reality is: it's Democrats or Republicans. Endorsing Hillary is a case in point. Bernie talks about wanting to do everything he can to defeat Trump. Elizabeth did something about it, she endorsed Trump's opponent. I hope Bernie endorses Hillary too.

If he does -- I'm not at all sure that he will. I think he might even go third-party. I think he's that much of a self-centered asshole -- if and when he does endorse Hillary, I can't wait to see the reactions of all of these completely useless people who call themselves the true American Left, who refuse to ever accomplish anything by actually participating in the process of government in the US, who run for office in political campaigns which always fail.

So many people are saying so many reassuring things about how Bernie will eventually endorse Hillary and campaign for Hillary. I hope they're right, because that would almost surely mean a huge Democratic landslide in November. It's not all just about Hillary. It's also about Congress and Governors and mayors and city councils and judges and so forth. Obama has been struggling against a Republican Party which, as we now know, has been systematically working to sabotage his each and every move. If there are Democratic majorities in Congress and state and local government, a Democratic President will actually be able to get a lot done.

Bernie can be a big help with that, or he can continue to be a crybaby and a sore loser, and continue to alienate his followers from the Democratic Party, which would be a huge help for the Republican Party and continue this gridlock we're in.

And also, as I said, it would be great fun for me personally to see Bernie's hardcore doofuses failing to be able to process the information that Bernie had endorsed Hillary. Calling him a sellout, claiming that they had seen all along that Bernie was fake, whatever nonsense they come up with. Bernie endorsing Hillary, and campaigning for her like he really means it, would detach the hard core of his followers who believe that Hillary is an evil corporate thug from the political process, as well as uniting the Democratic Party. We don't need the Hillary-hating, low-information hardcore, because there aren't enough of them to matter.

Does Bernie need them, for ego-related reasons, is the question. I'm really worried that he does, and that he might really mess things up instead of "doing everything he can to defeat Trump," as he has constantly been saying for months he wants to do, without mentioning Hillary's name or giving any indication that he acknowledges that she might have some part to play in defeating Trump. Alongside the many reassuring voices saying that Bernie will definitely do the right thing and get behind party unity in a big way (about a year after he finally joined the Democratic Party, in order to use it for this big ego-trip), there are also some people saying that Bernie has never been a gracious loser, which is what he needs to be now. That is to say: it's what the real Left needs from him right now, the Left that actually gets to determine US policy and pass laws. I'd like to believe the reassuring voices telling us that Bernie is about to get on board. But he sure looks and sounds like a bad loser to me, who cares much more about being special, about being adored by crowds who are deluded into thinking that his policies are completely different from those of the Democrats, than about being a team player.

I hope so much that I'm completely wrong about him. Bernie and Hillary are going to meet on Tuesday evening. What on Earth will they have to talk about, if he doesn't concede?

Continue Your Campaign, Or Be Helpful, Bernie. You Can't Do Both

Okay: After Bernie met with Barack, he said he would meet with Hillary and work with her to do everything he can to defeat Trump, and he also vowed to continue his campaign on into the convention.

Mother of Sweating Jesus. Bernie, ya gotta pick one: be helpful, or continue your campaign. You can't do both.

I'm not with this whole be-nice-and-gentle-with-Bernie-and-his fanatical-followers approach. As has been pointed out often lately in clear hindsight, the Republican Party's policy of being nice and gentle with the Tea Party nutbags has led directly to Candidate Trump. The Bernie-or-Bust irrationality is a different kind of irrationality from the Te Party-Trump madness, but it is irrationality nevertheless. And it is never good to act as if irrationality is rational, as if irreality is real. The race for the nomination is over. Bernie wasn't cheated out of it, he just lost, that's all. And it wasn't close.

Okay. I don't know what Barack and Bernie talked about, but a couple of hours later, Barack officially endorsed Hillary. Elizabeth Warren will endorse Hillary soon. This primary race is over, and Bernie is behaving like a jackass, and being nice and gentle about it is only encouraging him to continue behaving like a jackass.