The last three days
of 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate horse-trading has been
goddamned looney-tunes. From the Neo-Keynesian dynamic duo of the
first debates, suddenly Sanders and Warren are mortal enemies,
betrayed and betrayer? It is ludicrous. If the CIA hadn't conceived
of it they'll be studying it to deploy against social democrats the
world over. The privately owned media have interjected strife between
the world's two leading voices for left-liberal to social-democratic
Keynesian political economic theory. It is a salacious, nonsense,
reality TV gaffe trainwreck which has, unfortunately, world-historic
significance. There are plenty of disingenuous smear tactics that
weaponize identity politics against this or that politician who
espouses class politics. Let me tell you why I believe this is
different: what is disturbing is the lack of empathy for Warren's
position, which is hypocritical with respect to the entire ontology
of belief espoused by Sanders.
We believe women,
but when a woman expresses that she thought something a male friend
said to her was sexist then suddenly she is a liar turncoat who
conspires with CNN to stab Bernie in the back? This is sub-comic-book
level Manicheaen myopia, and the willingness to cast Warren into the
ninth circle of hell for having not denied the allegation made that
Senator Sanders said to her something which basically amounted to 'a
woman can't win,' or 'is less likely to win,' or something
effectively similar.
We know essentially
what was said: The two spoke; both noted how Trump was a bigot and
misogynist who would weaponize Senator Warren's gender against her.
And maybe, just maybe, the good Saint Bernard, guiding light, lapsed
Trot from Vermont, noted how Warren's gender would be weaponized
against her so much, and emphasized how that cynical weaponization
could, and would, be combated and overcome so little, that he inadvertently
hurt and wounded a close friend and ally. The total inability to
conceive that Bernie, human, fallible old man that he is, may err,
may be in the wrong in a situation, is deeply disturbing, and belies
Sanders essential message: that it is up to the whole of society to
be critical.
Everything is
explicable from the hot-mic meeting after the debate:
'I think you called
me a liar on National TV.'
'What?'
'I think you called
me a liar on National TV.'
'Let's not do this
right now. You want to have that conversation, we can have that
conversation.'
'Anytime.'
'You called me a
liar. . . alright, lets not do this right now.'
Neither of them
understands what the other is talking about. Both are absolutely
certain that they are correct. Both of them are correct and neither
of them are. It is not a case of 'he said, she said' from which we
can divine no sense of the truth of the matter. Rather we can get a
picture of exactly what the truth of the matter is, and it is right
in the middle, at the border of 'noting Trump will do x' and actually
being critical with respect to that, and being willing to challenge
that. Senator Sanders maintains, quite rightly, that he would never
ever say that a woman can't win the presidency, and I believe him.
But did he follow up 'noting' how Trump would weaponize Warren's
gender with an equally fulsome analysis of how the two could beat
Trump nonetheless, or did he bootstrap off from that as a postulate
to imply that he invariably ought to be the nominee? Senator Warren
maintains, quite rightly, that she disagreed with Senator Sanders
about whether a woman could win the presidency (importantly
irrespective of whether Senator Sanders said as much and in those
terms), and I believe her. But is she now allowing Senator Sanders to
be suspected of saying 'a woman can't win' when in fact he simply
didn't state positively 'a woman can win' in that particular
conversation? Is this an important distinction? If you fail to
positively state, in each and every instance, 'a woman can win,' are
you therein contributing to and reproducing 'a woman can't win,' even
if you don't say it in those terms?
Ultimately the
situation is very sad. Two close friends are inscrutably fighting and
being sharp with one another in front of a general audience. The gods
clashing. Nobody is coming off well from this conflict, and how could
they? Its one thing to be slandered by one's enemies and to slough
them off, but it is quite another to be misunderstood by one's
closest friends. It is unnerving and anxiety producing that these
titans of policy and thought could be laid low by the kind of
inexplicable family meltdown which punctuates the holidays.
Acquiescing to this Sanders v Warren fight, to their supporters being
acrimonious with one another, is boneheaded, self-indulgent pouting
and catharsis. The most malign influences are ecstatic about the
rift.
The non-aggression
pact gave them both legitimacy and room for maneouver, now they have
neither. 'She's a liar,' 'she's a traitor,' 'she's a snake,' these
are really gross, knee-jerk oversimplifications, and they reflect
really really badly on Sanders' support base. Hardcore Sanders fans
don't seem to appreciate how tenuous and fledgling their little
class-consciousness bloom actually is. In the short term the
beneficiary is Biden, insofar as Sanders and Warren voters becoming
inimical to one another cuts them off from each other's 15% to 20% of
primary voters and caucus goers. In the long term the beneficiary is
Trump insofar as what Trump requires to be elected, as in 2016, is a
catastrophic rift between the Liberal Democratic and Social
Democratic wings of the Democratic Party.
At the same time,
Warren had an opportunity to push back against CNN's salacious
framing of the conflict, and demurred from doing so. I don't want to
endorse Senator Warren, or say that her political and economic plans
are sufficient to the present moment, or that her baggage with Native
American ancestry claimancy was legitimate or culturally sensitive,
but just to say that it is okay to say that you don't think a friend
was supportive enough, which is all she did. I don't want to detract
from absolutely endorsing Senator Sanders by saying that the man is
not god, that he is right politically and economically only in the
very modest reformist context of the United States, and that I can
very easily believe that in a conversation about how Trump would
weaponize Senator Warren's gender, that Senator Sanders may have not
emphasized that this could be overcome enough so as to not hurt and
wound his friend. What we are looking at in this inscrutable
upside-down through-the-looking-glass last three days is an open
wound between two long-time friends and allies. On the one hand we
ought not stare at that wound. We should let Senator Warren and
Senator Sanders talk about what is evidently a strong disagreement
between themselves. On the other hand we should acknowledge that the
truth isn't binary, that what amounts to saying 'a woman can't be
president' is not necessarily self-same with saying 'a woman can't be
president.' Or is it? That's what this ought to be about, whether the
distinction matters, not who is lying or telling the truth, but
shades of what was emphasized, and how, and for what purposes?
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