Public Comment

The spate of me-too Democratic Presidential candidates is suspiciously strange. There has never been an event like this in America’s long history. Why so many? Why now? 

Judging from visible results in what passes for news media these days—and from remarks heard by media viewers in the Bay Area—we are witnessing a full-court press to avoid the prospect of nominating a progressive Democratic candidate for the 2020 general election: ‘as if’ there is a coordinated effort by the Democratic National Committee to steer the nomination to defenders of the status quo. 

The arrival of so many candidates is reported and written about to marginalize Sanders and Warren, by focusing on personalities and minor ideological differences among the many would-be candidates, who clearly are not going to be the next President: Klobuchar, Booker, Yang, De Blasio, Castro, and the rest of the pack with zero chance of winning the Democratic nomination. 

What has led them to suddenly declare? Very strange! Odder still, as 14 Democratic candidates dropped out of the race, more have come forward to replace them. Instead of letting the few serious contenders go to work, too many candidates are being dangled before a bewildered electorate. This has to be a deliberate strategy. It does look like the Party faithful are pulling out all the stops to curtail the talk about progressive policies. The crowd on each debate stage ensures that neither Sanders nor Warren has much time to espouse their respective views and proposals.  

Just imagine what the debates would be like if they could…. 

The football of health care for all that the progressive candidates have loosed upon the field has been punted by quibbling over funding, while CNN runs profitable ads by Kaiser and Blue Cross to ensure that insurance actuaries continue to decide who gets which medical treatments. 

DNC poster boy Joe Biden has loudly proclaimed that 167 million Americans ‘like their health care’. How does he know this? What are the size and distribution of his polling samples? Uncle Joe has said he will consider a Republican running mate, in an obvious appeal to however many Republican voters wanting to make the little man take his loafers out of the Oval Office. Joe has also said he will not serve a second term. He now is trying to downplay that revealing statement, but Biden is obviously not the game-changing President this suffering country needs. Nor is Mayor Pete, the other apologist for the insurance industry, gamboling amidst wads of rich donors’ cash. 

The large number of Democratic candidates allows CNN and Fox ‘News’ to propel viewers’ attention from candidate to candidate in a dizzying whirl. At this late stage in the campaigns, there are still people in Berkeley and the East Bay who say, ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet.’ These casual references are uttered without noticeable concern, as if they are choosing a flavor of ice cream. If voters do not educate themselves and work all-out to nominate the best available Democratic candidate at this critical time in our history—we will not have the President we so desperately need.