Jack Rasmus

Tonight, February 25, 2020 the Democrats held their 10th debate on the eve of the South Carolina primary this coming weekend. It’s also the last debate before next week’s Super Tuesday string of primaries held in 14 states.

A lot was riding for several candidates on stage tonight in South Carolina. Some of them will not be around for the debates to follow Super Tuesday, when 37% of the 1,991 delegates to the Democratic Party nominating convention will have been chosen. That 1,991 does not count, of course, the more than 500 special delegates the party’s leadership are holding in their back pocket until the convention. That number will decide the outcome and the party’s nominee for president—not all the trappings of democracy in the primaries—i.e. the debates, the primary voting, the multi-millions spent on ads, etc. That’s how democracy is and will be determined in the Democratic Party: the leaders will decide at the convention when they play their ‘special delegates’ card—none of whom will have been voted on by the party rank and file members in the primaries. Most of the 500 are Congressional Democrats and we know how they’ll vote when Pelosi and Shumer tell them.

Tonight’s debate showed the desperation of several of the candidates, especially Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer. All will be gone, I predict, and drop out of the race before the convention in June in Milwaukee.

So too may Biden implode, should he under-perform against Sanders in the South Carolina primary this weekend. And that looks increasingly likely to happen, as Sanders’ support continues to grow amongst under-40 year old African-American voter group. Everything rides for Biden on the black vote in South Carolina, which comprises 60% of the eligible democrat voters. A close second by Sanders will spell the end of Biden’s campaign.

The eventual, and inevitable, departure of Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer from the race by April will leave Sanders, Bloomberg, Warren (and maybe Biden) still in the race, up until the convention.

Buttigieg-Klobuchar Contra Sanders

So it wasn’t a surprise to watch Buttigieg-Klobucher (plus Bloomberg) go after Sanders with repeated slanders about his being a ‘Democratic Socialist’. The real emphasis was on Socialist, of course. Buttigieg and Klobuchar led the attack, especially the boy mayor from small town Indiana.

Buttigieg’s attack centered on the party leadership’s main talking point—now being spread wide and far in the party’s media wing (MSNBC, etc.): i.e. that a Sanders ticket would mean the loss of swing districts in the swing states in the House of Representatives and seats in the Senate. Without a Congress, even if Sanders won, he couldn’t achieve anything, Buttigieg argued.

This is an argument to bypass the fact that Sanders is polling ahead of Trump in 47 polls to date, and is clearly the strongest debater to take on Trump. Buttigieg may have had another motive in mind by making the defend Democrats in Congress point. He may have been pandering to the 500 special delegates, most of whom are seated House Reps and Senators. Or, maybe even laying some groundwork for a future run for a House seat. He and his billionaire backers certainly know that a 38 year old white boy mayor from Indiana could never become president! He’ll be well rewarded by the party in 2022 for leading the attack on Sanders.

In the post-debate CNN political commentary by so-called expert ‘talking heads’, even Van Jones, a black Democrat party activist and one of the more savvy and intelligent in the crowd, admitted Sanders would likely be the only candidate tough enough to debate toe to toe with Trump. Jones knows what’s going on in the grass roots in South Carolina. While he wouldn’t say it outright, he implied at times that the Sanders candidacy is the only one backed by a social movement and that shouldn’t be underestimated.

And can one even imagine a Bloomberg vs. Trump, or Biden vs. Trump, and, even more so a Buttigieg v. Trump debate before the election? Trump would eat the two ‘oldsters’ for lunch, given their timid debating skills. And Buttigieg? He’d have a field day, as they say, belittling and lecturing the kid from Indiana. It would look like a stern dad chastising his errant boy. Or how about Klobuchar debate going head to head with Trump? Really?

After raising the ‘down ballot’ talking point, Buttigieg then moved on to a standard red-baiting attack on Sanders. He accused Sanders of praising Fidel Castro and Cuba. Then ridiculed Sanders as being stuck in the past of ‘revolutionary politics of the 1960s’, of not being a real Democrat, and an extremist choice voters would reject. When the moderator then gave Sanders the opportunity to answer, Buttigieg continued to talk over him during Bernie’s entire response in an obvious cheap attempt to drown him out.

Klobuchar’s red-baiting of Sanders was more direct. She just flat out said that a socialist on the ticket would mean no choice for the ‘real’ Democrats in the middle. She repeated the socialist charge on several occasions. And attacked his Medicare for All plan which she grossly misrepresented by saying it would cost $60 trillion and thus three times the size of the entire US GDP.

Not to be outdone, Bloomberg early chimed in repeating the past week’s media message that Russia was again interfering in the election and undermining Democracy in America by supporting Sanders, since they (Russians) believed he, Sanders, would be the preferred candidate for Trump. That’s the line floated by an unknown ‘intelligence expert’ in the US bureaucracy, for which there was absolutely no evidence provided to back up the claim. Even the bureaucracy backed off from the line last week. But Bloomberg led with it.

It was disappointing that not one of the candidates, even Sanders, bothered to raise the point that the real threat to democracy in the US in recent years and today isn’t coming from abroad. It’s not the Russians or Putin. It’s not Xi and China. And certainly not Cuba. It’s home grown. It’s the massive and spreading voter suppression and gerrymandering going on at the state level, especially in Trump’s ‘red states’ political base. It’s what’s going on in Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere. And no one said a thing about it, drowned out by the media pushing more of the Russia and Putin somehow fooling us to vote for Trump!

Biden: Raises His Voice if Not His Chances

It wasn’t the only example of four candidates refusing to follow the time limits to comment, raising their voices, and talking over each other. There were similar shouting matches. For example Biden v. Steyer, when two old white men argued over who did more for imprisoned blacks.

Joe Biden’s performance was an improvement over his past dismal efforts, in volume of voice if not content. Joe talked it up, not saying much he hadn’t but perhaps saying it more loudly. How could he not do better? The bar of prior performance was quite low. At one point he complained to the moderator he wasn’t being called upon enough and perhaps he should be more aggressive in demanding time. But, he added, he was a gentleman, the only one on the stage. Yeah Joe, just what we need: a gentleman in the White House! That’ll make everything right.

Bloomberg: Warren’s Punching Bag (Again)

And what about Bloomberg’s performance, in his second debate? The bar was so low after his disastrous effort in his first debate last week that it wouldn’t take much to have ‘done better’. Some commentators thought he did marginally better, but still poorly. It was like a guy who got knocked out in the first round (last debate) and, this time, gets knocked around the ring several times but manages to stagger back from the ropes.

The slugger who pummeled Bloomberg was again Elizabeth Warren. She leveled a devastating ‘one-two’ punch by telling everyone how Bloomberg funded right wing Senator, Lindsay Graham’s (of South Carolina) last election; then how he helped elect the infamous governor of Michigan, who did nothing about lead poisoned drinking water in his state. Bloomberg gave him a $3 million donation. Warren added how Bloomberg had repeatedly financed other Republicans and right wingers. The message was clear: if anyone on the debate stage was not a Democrat, it wasn’t Sanders; it was Bloomberg.

If Bloomberg himself was a bad joke in his first debate, in this his second he was the repeated maker of bad jokes. What the hell did he mean about ‘naked cowboys’ in New York? I still don’t understand that one.

Bloomberg tried his best to explain his case in a repeated shout fest with Warren over his non-disclosure agreements with abused women in the past, reporting his tax returns (the only candidate not having done so yet), and his views on housing red-lining in New York. But what we got to hear, several times, was that he ran New York, which was bigger than most countries in the world; therefore he could run the USA. It was like an automaton: pushed the button and out came his New York mayor history and how New York was bigger than most of the world (an arrogance shared by many New Yorkers, by the way, including the Donald). His answer to Warren’s new charges was simply to brush them off as a “side show” and irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was he, Bloomberg, was the only candidate that could be Trump. And by implication, the rest of them were there as ‘show’—perhaps indirectly suggesting he knows something we don’t about eventual outcomes!

Warren Attacks Sanders’ Medicare Plan

When not attacking Bloomberg or Sanders, Warren once again tried to tug at our ‘heart strings’ with her constant stump story of her modest up-bringing, her family’s difficult fortunes, her three brothers in the military, and how she was discriminated against as a women in getting employment.

But her new ammunition was leveled at Sanders this time around, not just Bloomberg. She declared she had a better Medicare plan than Sanders since he has not explained how he would pay for it, which of course is not true. (Admittedly, in the debate Bernie did not have sufficient time to explain. What he therefore needs is a more simple, 3 or 4 point financing explanation that can be delivered in one minute). As others had done repeatedly during the debate, Warren kept talking way over her time limit and attempting to drown out Sanders’ attempt to explain. The moderators let her go on, to Sanders’ disadvantage.

Thus Warren, Klobuchar and Buttigieg thus now appear to have closed ranks attacking Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal.

If Buttigieg & Klobuchar appeared desperate and led the charge against Sanders’ socialism (with Bloomberg tagging along), Warren tacked left and right against Bloomberg then Sanders just as desperately trying to differentiate herself. But none of them will likely do well in South Carolina. Steyer was mostly the odd man out, except for his exchange with Biden, and his indirect plea that neither Bloomberg or Sanders can win. Like the other ‘centrists’ he wistfully suggested the extremes were not really ‘Democrats’ but he was. In that he echoed the centrist position, a position which none of those in the center understand is sliding away like loose sand beneath their feet. For the ranks of Democrat voters no longer want a ‘center’

Why Sanders is Leading the Race

Sanders understands this ‘disappearing center’ dynamic better than did the others on the stage. He held his ground. Like a slugger in a boxing ring, he took some hits but continued to punch away, left and right, at his long standing positions: tax the billionaires, ensure health care for all that only Medicare can deliver, free public college tuition, relieve student debt, raise minimum wages, pay living salaries to teachers, and so on.

He acknowledged his past comments on Cuba as only defending its obvious gains in literacy and healthcare, which was no more than Obama did, he argued. He did not back off from them or deny them. Even as he took swipes at China and Russia, arguing in effect he was more ‘democratic’ than ‘socialist’.

But there was no desperation in his delivery, unlike some. He did not shout out, trying to look tougher (like Biden). He did not talk over others (like Buttigieg, Klobuchar). He did not attack Warren in response. He did express his positions with feeling (unlike Bloomberg). He presented the picture of ‘what you see is what you get. I’m not backing off my positions’. And he repeated several times what the others still don’t understand: there’s a movement building. If we can organize and turn out more of the vote of the more than half of eligible voters in America who don’t vote because they see nothing in it for them—then he can win!

Sanders is the candidate that voters know what he stands for. He’s the candidate of programs and proposals. That’s his great, differentiating appeal. He’s not the candidate of critiquing and picking apart others’ proposals. Anyone having watched the debates sees that. In contrast, other candidates in the debate(s) spent more time talking about either what they had done in the past or directly attacking Sanders’ proposals. But what they stand FOR in the future is not always clear.

Except for Warren’s wealth tax and program for Medicare, it’s hard to recall from the debate what the other candidates actually propose for the future—apart from platitudes and ‘look what I did in the past’! Look what I did in New York (Bloomberg). What I did as VP under Obama (Biden). What I did as mayor (in South Bend). What I did as Senator from Minnesota (Klobuchar). What I did while a businessman (Steyer). But that doesn’t cut it any more with voters—especially youth, millennials, GenZ and even GenXers, with minority youth, and underpaid and nearly hopeless young workers.

American voters in this election cycle appear to want to know ‘what are you going to do for me’, now and in the future. Spell it out in detail. Millennials want to know how they can get out of low paying, dead end jobs and pay for their mountain of student debt; black and latino youth how to get the police and La Migra off their backs; all young people how they can afford an education; suburban moms whether their kids will come home safely from school ever again; the homeless where can they live besides on the streets; the retirees whether their social security and pensions will be taken away; the middle class why their incomes are not rising when the 1% are getting so rich; why they can’t afford prescription drugs and housing any more; and everyone is worried about the costs of hospitals, doctors, and dental care.

Sanders appears as the candidate most focused on these issues. Not on ‘what I did when’. Not on tearing down the (few) proposals of other candidates. Not on slandering them. Not on resurrecting what are, in fact, Trump-traditional Republican talking points—i.e. red-baiting, Cold war (Russians are coming) hysteria, and

While the Buttigiegs and Klobuchars turn to centrist Democrat party themes of the past; while Biden sleep walks in the present; and while Bloomberg resurrects Republican solutions for the future, Sanders appears authentic. Some may not want that authenticity—especially billionaires, corporations, and their media. But apparently youth, students, growing ranks of black and latino voters, and more and more rank and file union workers do. And that’s Sanders’ appeal and why they are flocking to him and creating a movement.

Jack Rasmus
Copyright February 2020

Dr. Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus and website: http://kyklosproductions.com

The events of the past week—beginning with the TV debates of the candidates on February 19 and culminating in the Nevada Democrat Party caucus in Nevada on February 22 this past Saturday—show a growing desperation in the ranks of the Democratic Party’s corporate-driven leadership as the Sanders campaign has assumed a clear lead in the race for the Democratic Party nomination.

Having ascended in the late 1980s to a controlling role of the party through the Democrat Leadership Conference (DLC) faction, the Democratic party’s leadership now sees itself at a critical juncture. If it has not yet crossed the political ‘Rubicon’, it at least has arrived at its opposite shore and is preparing to do so.

The choice the leadership faces is whether to transform itself into a Trump-like party, openly run by oligarchs and billionaires; or to return to a pre-1990 Democrat party—before the DLC faction takeover—and allow Bernie Sanders to become its presidential candidate.

The party leadership’s current actions clearly show it now leans heavily toward the former. Its plan is to unite itself around Bloomberg, rather than return to former, more democratic roots with Sanders.

In the worst case scenario, some of the wealthiest of the Democrat Party’s backers—like former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein ( a big financial backer of Hillary and Obama campaigns)—are even suggesting a third way. They have begun to say privately, and even publicly, they would vote for Trump instead of Sanders in November. They’ve done that before: When progressive grass roots forces coalesced around the party’s nominee, George McGovern, in 1972 and the leadership turned to support Richard Nixon. And before that in 1956 to some extent, when Adlai Stevenson was the nominee.

In other words, there’s a long standing history in the Democratic Party of the corporate wing sabotaging its candidate in a presidential election by supporting the Republican party’s candidate, either indirectly or directly.

Democrat Party As Indicator of Political Crisis

Just as the traditional Republican party imploded in 2016 and thereafter became the Party of Trump—so too is a similar fundamental transformation now underway in the Democrat party.

It was a grass roots social movement that enabled the Republican party’s transformation. It’s no less a grass roots movement in the Democrat party today driving the transformation, the final outcome yet to be determined. And in both cases, Democrat party leaders were (and are) unable to understand movement dynamics: in 2016 they couldn’t understand (or predict) why Trump won. And today, in 2020, they can’t understand how and why Sanders is gaining growing support within their party’s ranks.

Just take a look at the Democratic Party at present: Neither of the leading candidates to date are really ‘Democrats’: there’s Bernie Sanders, the independent running under the banner of the Democrat Party; and there’s Mike Bloomberg, a republican billionaire running in the primaries after having ‘bought his way into’ the debates and primaries by contributing tens of millions of dollars to the Democrat National Committee (DNC). The DNC was more than glad to change the rules to allow Bloomberg to jump into the middle of the pack in exchange for Bloomberg’s millions in last minute party contributions

As Joe Biden, the prior ‘chose one’ has faded, and continues to fade, the DNC-corporate moneybag wing of the party has clearly opted for Mike Bloomberg. And, at the same time, are intensifying their attacks on Sanders.

The Sanders vs. Bloomberg contest represents the fundamental contest in the primaries. The rest is overlay. That primary two-candidate contest will become even clearer after Super Tuesday primaries are concluded in early March. And by the end of March, the lesser candidates will have been effectively cleared from the field.

What all this represents is a collapse of the traditional Democratic party center, in favor of the two ‘outliers’ (Sanders & Bloomberg). The ‘outlier effect’ in turn reflects the fact that voters have little confidence in the leaderships’ various centrist choices to date—i.e. Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, etc. The voters have lost confidence in the leadership’s political proposals and programs—i.e. the policies that have been pushed and promoted by the corporate wing for the past three decades since the late 1980s, when the corporate wing rallied around the faction called the Democratic Leadership Caucus (DLC) and took over the party and its policies.

Those policies pushed free trade treaties, allowed Reagan-George W. Bush multi-trillion dollar corporate-investor tax cuts to continue, bailed out bankers but not Main St. after 2009, refused to restore Union rights in organizing and bargaining, offered token minimalist market solutions to the healthcare crisis, allowed the government to rip off students by imposing interest rates on student loans even higher than private lenders, allowed pensions and retirement security to collapse, provided a tepid response to police brutality, failed to stop widespread Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression at the states level that’s given Trump and the radical right a near ‘lock-hold’ on the so-called red states in national elections. That’s just a short list.

Voters sense that these neoliberal policies of the mainstream Democrat party leadership have not, and cannot, reverse or resolve the growing economic—and now political—crises now deepening within the core of America.

The ‘Get Sanders’ Party Leadership Response

As the party leaders’ former favorite, Joe Biden, fades at the polls and in the primaries, party campaign operatives—both former and current—are now being unleashed by party leaders to go after Sanders with gusto.

Meanwhile, across the country, more local party officials (mayors, party brokers, state legislators, governors, i.e. those folks comprising the majority of the so-called Special Delegates to the Democrat Party Convention) are busy increasingly endorsing publicly Bloomberg.

The ‘Get Sanders’ crowd includes some of the big names of the corporate wing of the party:

There’s Obama, who is already allowing his image and statements to be used by Bloomberg in his political ads (now totaling more than $450 million as of mid-February 2020). Expect Obama to come out more directly against Sanders soon, likely right after Super Tuesday or even before. There’s the Clintonites, from Hillary to hack hatched man, James Carville, former key campaign advisor to Bill, whose anti-Sanders slander is also rising. (Watch Bill to stumble along in Hillary’s wake as well, once Obama comes out publicly directly opposing Sanders in the next few weeks).

Then there’s the analogue to Fox News on the Trump-Republican right—the TV news channel MSNBC (sometimes called MSDNC)—that has been escalating its anti-Sanders commentary. Its star talk show host, Chris Mathews, recently declared Sanders’ win in the Nevada Caucus is similar to the Nazi conquest of France in 1940. The Mathews remark has released a flood of criticism from not only the Sanders organization, but the middle ranks of the party and independents as well, who point out that Sanders’ family members were actually murdered in the Nazi holocaust.

On the print news side, not to be forgotten, is the New York Times’ editorial page that is filled almost daily now with anti-Sanders’ screeds by writers Douthout, Leonhardt, Krugman and others.

Mathews, Hillary, Carville, the NY Times’ mouthpieces, and a growing crescendo of other Sanders slanderers together represent the forward scouting parties being sent under cover across the ‘political Rubicon’ early, in order to lay the land mines designed to implode rational public opinion and discussion of Sanders’ programs and proposals. They’re there, behind the lines, to prepare the main assault by the Democratic Party moneybags and leaders, as they deliberate when and where to best cross the river in force.

A new anti-Sanders theme launched this past week was the statement by the US intelligence bureaucracy that the Russians new prime target is to support Sanders. Russian interference in the 2020 elections thus will focus on Sanders. Somehow, the media spin goes, that’s supposed to help Trump get elected. The argument being that Sanders will be the easiest candidate for Trump to defeat. But it’s an argument that fails to acknowledge that in various national polls, Sanders leads Trump by 49% to 45%, while all other Democrat candidates are either tied with Trump or losing to Trump!

Most important here, the ‘Russia favors Sanders’ slander is backed by no evidence whatsoever from US intelligence sources. It’s just a leaked opinion by some bureaucrat, picked up by the party’s big media friends and thrown out there for the electorate to chew on. When asked what’s the proof, the advocates simply hide behind the cover of ‘can’t tell you, it’s classified information’.

In the week(s) ahead, a flood of further fear-mongering ‘Sanders slanders’ are certainly to appear from the party’s Clinton-Obama hacks and their ‘in-house’ media sources like MSNBC. We’ll hear ad nauseam themes like “Sanders can’t defeat Trump”. “Sanders will result in losses ‘down ballot’” (i.e. Congress Reps & Senators). “Sanders has always been a friend of Russia and Putin”. “Sanders is not really a Democrat”. “Sanders can’t attract the needed moderate Republicans and Independents in swing states”. And let’s not forget the even more direct charge, voiced by Bloomberg in the last debate, that “He’s a Commie”. Fox News will no doubt stretch that one to the limit and beyond.

The Pre-Nevada Caucus TV Debate

Last week’s TV debates showed clearly the limits of Bloomberg as candidate. Warren and Biden know well that Bloomberg is there to steal their support. Warren’s scathing critique of Bloomberg in the pre-Nevada caucus TV debate, exposed him as a Trump retread. Like Trump, Bloomberg carries similar baggage of non-disclosure agreements involving abused women, refusal to release his tax returns, his stop & frisk unconstitutional policing in New York while mayor, and Bloomberg’s public statement and belief that the end of ‘red-lining’ in housing was the cause of the 2008-09 housing crash (yes, he said that!).

Bloomberg’s only message in the debate was only he could defeat Trump. Really? Polls show he performs worst against Trump than almost all the other candidates. Meanwhile, as Warren went after Bloomberg in the debate, Buttigieg and Klobuchar engaged in an on-stage ‘food fight’ over who failed more to deliver results for their constituents. Not to be outdone, Biden on occasion awoke briefly from his deep political sleep, only to fall into a political coma onstage again.

The Meaning of the Nevada Caucus Results

According to the latest count, Sanders won 47% or more of the popular vote. Biden only 21%. Thus sleepy Joe’s much heralded ‘wall’ of union and Latino support in Nevada was breached and shattered by Sanders. Despite Sanders’ overwhelming win, however, it is reported that he will receive only 9 of the potential 36 Nevada caucus delegates—i.e. another indicator how the caucus and primary rules have been rigged against him. While winning the popular vote in all three of the contests thus far in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada—a feat never before accomplished by any candidate in a Democratic party primary season—Sanders still has accumulated only 30 votes (+ the 9?), while Buttigieg reportedly has been awarded 27.

The Nevada caucus shows the under 35 youth vote—both union and minority—are moving to Sanders. Biden’s campaign is now on life support. If he doesn’t win big by a wide margin in the next primary in South Carolina next weekend, he is campaign toast. If the same dynamic occurs as did in Nevada, with the youth minority vote going to Sanders, then Biden’s ‘wall of black support’ will crash just as his union-Latino wall did in Nevada.

The South Carolina Primary

The Democrat voter base is 60% black in South Carolina. Polls show Biden with only 27% black support to Sanders’ 23%. Biden can’t afford to win that narrowly. If he does, his money support—already dwindling—will collapse just as the Super Tuesday primaries begin. He must win big over Sanders in South Carolina or else his days in the primaries are numbered. But if Bernie has 23% support now and momentum, it’s clear he’s going to peel off much of the under-35 black vote in the South Carolina primary next weekend.

A second place by Sanders in North Carolina will be viewed as another big victory for him; a weak first place by Biden will be viewed as the last nail in his primary campaign coffin.

What the Democrat party leadership and their candidates don’t understand is the dynamics of movement politics. Sanders has a movement behind him, focused around the youth, and increasingly minority, voter surge toward Sanders.

Sanders’ support remains solid in the 35% or more range, steadily growing. Bloomberg is siphoning off the support of the other candidates, not Sanders’. Warren and others know this. Thus her, and their, targeting Bloomberg in the last debate. What irks Elizabeth and the other candidates most, however, is that Bloomberg is buying his way into their base.

In some ways, the Sanders movement is beginning to show signs not unlike the Obama surge in 2008. There are also elements of similarity to Trump’s 2016 movement and campaign. But Democrat Party leaders don’t understand the movement dynamic going on today in their own party—any more than they understood the movement dynamic that brought Trump to the top of the Republican ticket in 2016. They failed to predict Trump’s win; they’re failing to predict Sanders’.

The Super Tuesday (March 3) Primaries

The 15 state primaries to be held next week will reveal the fundamental contest behind the cacophony of the multiple candidates’ campaigns. That contest is between the money interests and leadership of the Democrat Party vs. the bottom-up surge demanding change and the re-direction of the party away from the neoliberal policies and those money interests dominating the party that has been the case at least since the early 1990s.

No less than 37% of all the party’s Milwaukee convention’s 1,991 delegates will be determined by Super Tuesday, a week from now. By the end of March, it will be 60%. That’s not counting, of course, the more than 500 Special Delegates the party leadership is holding in its back pocket. They will be released on the second ballot at the convention by the party leadership, in order to ensure their choice nominee gets the party’s presidential nod at the convention. And their choice is Bloomberg, not Sanders.

The party leadership’s prime strategic goal now is to stop Sanders. Their boy Biden can’t do it. So they’ve brought Bloomberg in from the wings (after reportedly taking a $50 million contribution from him to their general campaign fund). The other candidates are being kept in the race in order to split the votes in the primaries, to prevent Sanders from getting a clear majority on the first ballot at the convention. After that, the leadership will release the ‘kraken’ of the 500 Special Delegates to vote for their own billionaire in the presidential race, Bloomberg.

The Consequences of the Democrat Leadership’s Current Strategy
The leadership-corporate wing clearly believes they can win the November election even if they scuttle Sanders once again and prevent him from getting the nomination. One can almost hear them talking in the backrooms and cloakrooms at the primary city hotels: “We only lost in 2016 by 70 electoral votes in 3 swing states. We can take those states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) in 2020 even without Bernie. The minorities have nowhere else to go. The Union top leaders are with us. Middle class white women hate Trump, especially in the swing state suburbs and exurbs. We’ll put a woman or a minority on the ticket as VP. That’ll keep the youth and progressives in tow. We’ll adopt Sanders’ programs in our campaign speeches, then drop them after the election. We can win without Sanders on the ticket!”.

But they are wrong. Sanders’ voters will largely abstain. Being prevented from the nomination twice, in 2016 and now 2020, they will mostly not vote. Trump will eat Bloomberg alive in the presidential debates. And the Democrats will lose in November with Bloomberg…once again. They will prove they are strategically inept and tactically incapable once again.

What the party’s leadership will accomplish should they scuttle Sanders in 2020, however, is to set in motion a process leading to the creation of a bona-fide third party. This time rising from a real grass roots movement base, not via some top-down declaration by left intellectuals or some ambitious politician. This time the real thing.

Should it lose in November, the Democrat Party leadership will be painted as having re-elected Trump by having maneuvered in Bloomberg and pushed out Sanders. Even if they win with Bloomberg in November, given the deep economic crisis that will erupt immediately after the election (if not sooner), they will once again propose Obama-like neoliberal policies that won’t resolve that crisis any better for Main St. in 2021 than had Obama in 2009. And unlike Obama in 2012, they won’t be given a second chance.

Should that joint political-economic crisis scenario emerge post-November 2020, what remains of the Democrat party will implode. US politics in 2024 will thereafter be on a totally new plane.

Dr. Jack Rasmus
February 23, 2020

Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com and twitter handle @drjackrasmus.

It appears that the realization the coronavirus is more a threat biologically and economically is just now penetrating the business media, investors, financial markets, and institutions. The media spin, that the virus was being contained and would result only in a contraction in China, and that would be ‘V-Shape’ recovery this spring, is breaking down.

Listen to my Alternative Visions radio show of friday, February 21, for my analysis of the 6 economic contagion channels that will propagate the contagion economically from China to the rest of the global economy.

TO LISTEN GO TO:

http://alternativevisions.podbean.com

SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT

Dr. Rasmus provides an update on latest developments of past week on the Coronavirus and its growing impact on China’s economy, and the contagion channels to the rest of the global economy. Media and business ‘consensus’ that effect and recovery will be ‘V-shape’ in China is now collapsing. Ditto that the economic effects will be largely contained to China itself. Multiple sources of evidence emerging the virus is spreading faster, and outside China now. Five channels of economic contagion are discussed: trade/supply chain channel; currency channel; commodities and commodity futures channel, financial asset market channel, consumption channel (tourism & luxury goods). Why Japan (and So. Korea) economy is most fragile and susceptible to China contagion. Other Asian economies at risK: Honk Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Australia. (Why no reporting coming from Taiwan?). Goldman Sachs, IMF, S&P forecasts. Review of Japan’s current recession underway and deepening due to sales tax hike, Trump trade war, China-Japan supply chain & tourism impacts. Why monetary and fiscal stimulus won’t work. The show concludes with brief analysis of the recent Democrat party candidates debate and why the ‘traditional middle’ of the party is collapsing in favor of Sanders & Bloomberg.

Read my recent 2 published articles in Z Magazine summarizing the major themes, arguments, and predictions about the contradictions of US Neoliberal policies AND/OR listen to my 2 hour long interviews on the same topic with Guns & Butter radio show host, Bonnie Faulkner.

For the 2 print articles GO TO:

http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=405

For the 2 radio show interviews GO TO:

Interview #1: “Neoliberalism: From Expansion to Stagnation”

http://gunsandbutter.snappages.com/blog/2020/01/23/neoliberalism-from-expansion-to-stagnation

Interview #2: “After Trump and Neoliberalism What’s Next?”

http://gunsandbutter.org/blog/2020/02/02/after-trump-and-neoliberalism-whats-next

SUMMARY of Articles & Interviews:

My January 2020 book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, focuses on the material origins of Neoliberalism, as the latest phase in capitalist restructuring of the US economy. In the process it critiques most accounts of Neoliberalism to date as too focused on ideas (and ideological) while insufficiently considering the material forces driving the evolution of Neoliberalism, including technological change, financialization & globalization of capitalist product markets, radical transformation of labor markets and jobs, change in the nature of money & money markets, and the new requirements of US capitalist expansion and retention of its global economic empire.

The themes of the book, and the summary articles and radio interviews address: how US Neoliberalism has evolved since the late 1970s decade, how its evolution lost momentum in the 2008-09 crash, why Obama’s regime failed to restore it, why Trump policies represent a new more aggressive, virulent form of Neoliberal policy regime, and why Trump’s restoration will fail.

My view and most likely scenario from New Hampshire to June:

NH primary shows money and votes shifting from Biden (who’s already toast) to Pete the Butt. Ditto from Biden and Warren to the Klob. Biden & Warren will be both gone after Super Tuesday.

The Bloomin’ Boomer Mike then jumps into Super Tuesday and moves to front of the pack with Sanders & Pete the Butt in the aftermath. Pete’s support and money backers (big shadow bankers, hedge funds, etc. who leaped onto his bandwagon last december), eventually flow back to the DLC-moneybag corporate Dems preferred candidate, Mike. By May-June it’s a two person race: Bernie & Mike.

DLC-moneybag Dem leaders strategy until then: keep splitting the primary vote until Mike can go head to head with Sanders post Super Tuesday and the other candidates drop out. Then the attack on Bernie ratchets up to an even more intense level.

At the convention, Biden and other drop outs throw their delegates to Bloomberg. If he doesn’t prevail on the first vote, Sanders then gets squashed by the release of the special delegates by Perez. (Maybe even on the first vote—i.e. Perez may reverse himself and allow them to vote first ballot, instead of second as promised to Sanders).

Trump in the meantime will move Congressional appropriated funds to whatever projects he wants (to maximize his support—i.e. farm sector to make up for China fewer purchases?). An indication of this direction perhaps is the Pentagon, which this past week announced it will be moving money earmarked by Congress for Vets and other non-hardware Pentagon spending to accelerate military hardware acquisitions and other direct Pentagon spending, Space Force, hyper missiles development, etc. It’s the Trump-Barr ‘unitary executive’ theory in action (defined as ‘I can do whatever I want only the voters can say no in Nov. 2020’.

Dr. Jack Rasmus
February 12, 2020

Interested in the real facts behind the actual US GDP, jobs numbers, wages? How Neoliberal economic policies are intensifying under Trump? And why the ‘organizational question’ today is paramount.

Watch my hour presentation to local bay are progressive group

GO TO: https://speakoutsocialists.org/us-economic-policy-whats-in-store-for-the-99-2/

“On Tuesday, February 4, 2020 Donald Trump delivered a State of the Union speech that revealed his election 2020 strategy, designed to roil and mobilize his political base, and to declare to the Democrats that his political war with them will now escalate further.

If anyone thinks the recent impeachment and Senate trial was the high point of the growing conflict between the two political parties, Republican (correct that: Trumpublicans now) and Democrat, they haven’t seen anything yet. The worse, much worse is yet to come in the months leading up to the November 2020 elections.

The visual personification of this intensifying conflict was evident during Trump’s speech: As he began speaking Trump turned to vice president Pence and House of Representatives leader, Pelosi, both sitting behind him on a dais. Trump handed them his written speech, as is the tradition. He then abruptly turned away from Pelosi refusing to shake her extended hand—as traditional decorum has always required. Pelosi, shocked by the snub, after Trump finished, in turn symbolically tore up the written speech. All this was caught on national TV. The event was symbolic of the fight will now escalate and get even more vicious in the run up to November.

If Trump’s speech summarized the conflict up to this point, the exchange between him and Pelosi reflected the ‘gloves off’ political conflict now about to begin. As the saying goes, “We ain’t seen nothing yet”!

It is not difficult to understand the true meaning of Trump’s SOTU. Above all, it represents a toss of ‘red meat’ to his radical political base. There was very little in it about what he proposes for the country in the future, as is normal for a SOTU speech. Instead, what we got was a speech designed to agitate and mobilize his political base based on themes of fear (of the immigrant) and hate (of Pelosi and the Democrats). The dish of fear/hate was sauteed with a large dose of lies and misrepresentations, and served up with a new recipe of racism designed to help Trump hold on to the swing states that delivered his electoral college majority in 2016. The speech marks what will be a significant escalation of extraordinary political attacks by Trump and his movement against his Democrat opponents in the election. And if past practice is any clue, the Democrat leadership is likely unprepared for what is to come.

The ‘Red Meat’ to the Base

The speech was replete with what Trump’s base wants to hear, with no punches pulled. Once again, as in 2016, the immigrant is the dangerous criminal and killer. The immigrant is of course anyone of color, but especially Latinos crossing the southern US border, and anyone sympathetic in any way to them or even those already legally here. Trump wants to protect us from the immigrant. And according to Trump’s appeal to this base: the Democrats want to embrace him, protect him with taxpayer money, and thereby identify themselves with the criminal-killer element among us.

In the same breath as he reiterated his politically successful anti-Latino racist appeal, Trump touted his “long, tall and very powerful” wall, claiming 100 miles have already been built and another 500 coming next year. More money for the wall will thus by inference be necessary. Or else we may all suffer the fate of the anecdotal killer-criminal-immigrant, who of course is Latino.
A variation on this illegal (read: Latino) ‘enemy within us’ theme is the Sanctuary Cities movement and, by association, the entire state of California which has declared itself a sanctuary state. Trump spent a good deal of time in his speech attacking sanctuary cities. In the past, his bete noir was a person (Hillary, Pelosi, etc.) Now it’s a geography, even a state. Watch out California. Trump is about to swing his ax, far and wide, and in your direction!

Like most demagogues, Trump likes to make his case with anecdotal, emotional appeals. Thus, with a fear-mongering, melodramatic anecdotal example early in his speech he cited a criminal illegal running amuck, shooting everyone in California. That cleared the way for his proposal for legislation to go after Sanctuary Cities, in particular in California. The legislation proposed was the ‘Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities’ Act that would allow individuals to sue Sanctuary Cities. It is clearly a move to open the door for radical elements of his base to protest and engage in even more militant, perhaps even violent, action—-not unlike how anti-abortion radicals were encouraged in the past to physically attack abortion clinics and threaten and assault doctors and nurses.

Like all extreme nationalist and proto-fascist movements, there must be an ‘enemy within’ that is identified as the source of the country’s problems—including those who might defend them.
Another ‘red meat’ toss to his base in his speech was his proposal for legislation to bar late term abortions. Still another dish offered up was allowing prayer in public schools, which he followed up with a pledge to increase federal funding to promote it.

Another fresh bone thrown to the base was Trump’s strong endorsement of 2nd amendment gun rights. In contrast, throughout the speech not a word was said about mass killings at US schools or the fact that studies show a shooting and killing goes on in schools in America at least once every day somewhere.

His base was no doubt pleased as well with his solution to the growing climate crisis: somehow business and the public will plant 1 trillion more trees, he proposed. That would presumably create enough oxygen to prevent the oceans from acidifying, glaciers from melting, and Australia and California from burning.

There was also an attack on public schools. Trump claimed they were failing everywhere and that every parent should have the choice of sending their kid to whatever school they wanted, and receive scholarship money paid by the taxpayer to send them to a private school of their choice. Trump touted the ‘Educational Freedom & Scholarship Act’. In one of at least a half dozen examples, best described as ‘gallery melodrama’, he turned to the gallery in the House chamber and introduced a young black girl and her mother, announcing on the spot he personally was giving her a scholarship under the Act.

One of the more disgusting examples of ‘gallery melodrama’, that has become ready fare apparently in these SOTU speeches in recent years, was Trump’s introduction of the right wing radical talk show pundit, Rush Limbaugh. Long an ideologue of the radical, extreme right who has dished up lies and misrepresentations on a daily basis, Limbaugh was introduced as having stage 4 lung cancer. That was to set up the sympathy appeal, of course. Trump then announced he was giving Rush the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rush acted surprised. The person next to Rush then immediately pulled out the medal and draped it around Limbaugh’s neck. We’re supposed to believe it was all unrehearsed and spontaneous. Not a dry eye in the gallery. Trump’s message: all you liars and hate mongers on the right out there, you too can become a hero under Trump. Just keep up the good work in the coming election year!

The New Racism Card

Democrats should take note of Trump’s new racism strategy. He clearly is now appealing to the African-American voter—even as he writes off and declares the Latino as the illegal alien threat.
In at least six episodes of ‘gallery melodrama’, Trump’s subject was a black American. In addition to the young girl and her mother, noted above, Trump introduced a black former drug user who became a businessman, enabled by Trump’s ‘opportunity zone’ legislation—in fact a piece of legislation designed to give special tax cuts to businesses in certain cities. Then there was the black kid who wants to become an astronaut. He was introduced with his 100 year old grandfather, a former Air Force officer, Charles McGee, who served in Korea and Vietnam, next to him. Trump announced he just made McGee a brigadier general. That kills ‘three birds with one stone’, as they say: a kudo to senior citizens, to blacks, and to the military all in one melodrama bundle. Trump then proposed an increase in funding for black colleges.

In only one, and very brief, ‘gallery melodrama’ episode during the speech was a Latino introduced. Unlike all the black kids and moms, he was a Latino ICE officer. Not as much emotional sympathy appeal there.

See where this is going? Up with blacks; down with Latinos? Split the minority vote.

Why the strange pro-black strategy? A strategy launched, by the way, a few days earlier in his unprecedented election Ad in the super-bowl, where Trump took credit for the bipartisan criminal reform legislation just passed, by showing a middle aged black women crying in relief now that Trump had released her relative from prison. Trump now a defender of African-Americans? A reformed former racist? Trump the declarer that Africans lived in shithole countries?

It’s not that Trump has overnight given up his racist attitude against African Americans. What he’s doing is counting the electoral votes in the swing states. The new appeal to blacks is designed to provide him a margin of extra votes in those swing states, a safer margin in the red states, especially the south in places like Georgia, all to ensure he wins the electoral college votes in those states as he did in 2016. That black vote margin is needed to offset the possible loss of middle class white women in the swing states that are, according to polls, put off by Trump’s aggressive and off the cuff tweets and statements.

Manipulate blacks. Mobilize white nationalists by vilifying Latinos and other peoples of color. Split the minority vote, in other words.

Trump’s Lies by Commission

As heard so often from Trump, much of his SOTU speech was laden with outright lies. In the roughly one-third of it devoted to the economy, this was especially the case. (Another one third of the speech was devoted to domestic issues and another third to foreign policy).

First there was Trump’s claim that the under him the US economy is “the best it has ever been” in US history. But what are the facts? Not so in terms of US GDP. Trump’s roughly 2% growth rate today is not that much different from the average since 2000. Nevertheless he said “Families are flourishing”. Oh? What about the more than half of families today who have less than $400 to their name for emergencies? Or the more than half in each of the last two years who say, in polls, they received no wage increase at all in either year? Or what about the tens of millions of millennials and youth indentured with $1.6 trillion in student debt and can’t get homes or families even started?

In the speech, Trump claimed the unemployment rate was the lowest ever. But that’s the so-called U-3 rate which covers only full time workers, whose employment ranks by the way have been declining in absolute terms. It further excludes altogether the roughly 60 million US part time, gig and temp workers. If they were accurately estimated and included in unemployment figures, the true unemployment rate would be 8%-10%.

And what about wages? In the speech Trump repeated the oft-heard statistic that wages have been rising on his watch. But behind that figure lay several deeper facts: first, there’s the more than half of the labor force who acknowledge they received no wage increase at all last year or the year before. That suggests it is the top 10% of tech, professional, and other workers who are getting most of the wage gains. Moreover, the wage figures and gains noted by Trump are an average: if those at the top get more, those at the middle and below are getting less or even nothing. In addition, the numbers are for full time workers, leaving out the 60 million part time and temps. Finally, they’re wages not adjusted for inflation.

The real picture is that unemployment is much higher and wages are stagnating for the vast majority or worse. But this didn’t stop Trump in his SOTU speech from saying “companies are coming back to the US” and creating jobs. Or that this is a ‘blue collar boom’ with wages rising.

Trump also declared in his SOTU that he would protect social security and Medicare. But in his recent speech to the billionaire crowd in Davos, Switzerland he let it slip to the well-heeled in attendance he would be going after both once he won the election again. One wonders which audience he’s speaking the truth of his real intentions to.

In the SOTU he also gave support to infrastructure spending. But his prior proposals define ‘infrastructure investment’ as tax cuts for real estate developers.

He also declared in the SOTU speech that his recent proposals would lower prescription drug prices. But by this he really meant consumers being gouged by the Pharma companies would get to see how much the various drugs were being raised, in order to choose which one that would gouge them less. Market transparency does not mean lower drug prices. Big Pharma is not a competitive market where the consumer can choose among multiple offerings.

An even more outrageous, blatant lie was Trump’s declaration he was giving his “ironclad” guarantee that those with health related, pre-existing conditions would have access to health care–when in fact what he has proposed to date are various measures to roll back pre-existing conditions guarantees.

Trump’s most ridiculous lie was that Medicare was socialist. Here he was obviously attacking the growing support for a Medicare for All solution to the health crisis, increasingly supported both by the public and within the ranks of the Democrats. As he put it, 180 million Americans love their private health insurance. And he promised not to let the socialists take that away, even though it’s quite clear that 70% of the US population is now dissatisfied with private health insurance and want something better. And if Medicare is socialist, does that mean the 50 million seniors on Medicare and Social Security are socialists as well? Add the millennials and seniors, and America must have already gone socialist!

One of the more disgusting outright lying claims of Trump was his comment that, under his regime, 7 million on food stamps had left the program. But what he didn’t mention was he and the Republicans just declared 700,000 no longer eligible for food stamp support, including single moms with kids.

Trump’s SOTU: Lying by Omission

Lies may be committed by carefully not elaborating on topics. Here Trump excelled as well in his SOTU speech. For example, he boasted that the stock markets had risen in value by $12 trillion on his watch. But what he didn’t say is that more than $1 trillion every year has been passed on by corporations to investors and stock holders in the form of stock buybacks and dividend payouts. That’s what drove the $12 Trillion, making the 2% of the voters who own most of the stock richer than ever in history.

He then glossed over the recent signed China-US phase 1 trade deal as well as the NAFTA 2.0 USMCA trade deal. he said they were great achievements, but refused to indicate in what sense. In recent weeks he has declared China would buy $100 billion more in US goods this year as part of that deal. But the fact is China never agreed to that and most economists estimate it will be well less than $50B, and maybe not even that now that the coronavirus is undermining US-China trade.

And so far as the USMCA is concerned, Trump in the SOTU speech reported it will produce 100,000 new US jobs. But even a cursory reading of the terms of that deal show there are no measures designed to bring back jobs from Mexico to the US. In both the trade deals, there’s really ‘no there there’, as economists are now beginning to determine. Both the China and USMCA trade deals are just old wine in new bottles, as they say, corked up with a lot of bombast, hyperbole, and factual misrepresentation.

Missing totally from the SOTU speech was any reference how Trump’s multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for corporations and investors and war spending have driven the US budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion a year, with trillion dollar additional deficits for another decade! In short, unlike all Republican presidents before him, in his SOTU speech Trump said nothing about the accelerating deficit, and in turn the $23 trillion national debt, or how he proposed to address it in the coming year or beyond.

In yet another example of lying by omission, in the speech Trump claimed that low wage workers had experienced an increase of 16% in wages on his watch, but then didn’t bother to explain that most of that was due to the raising of minimum wages by governors and legislatures in the ‘blue’ Democratic states.

Lying by omission means taking credit for things you never did, or were done by others. That’s become a norm for Trump, and he kept up that practice throughout the SOTU speech.

Foreign Policy Fantasies

Trump has had no actual foreign policy accomplishment during his entire term in office. Nothing came of the North Korea deal. He was able to get only a few token European countries, like Greece, to increase their NATO spending a little, but not much. His attempted support for a coup in Venezuela collapsed. (That didn’t stop him by bringing to his speech the US selected puppet, Guido, and introducing him in the gallery). His trade deals produced very little in actual gains for the US ballooning trade deficit. He achieved nothing in Syria or Turkey except to allow Russia to increase its influence in both. And he failed to get Iran to the bargaining table to renegotiate the nuclear deal.

What he did declare in his SOTU speech as victories in foreign policy was his reversal of the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba. His recent launch a new Mideast Israel-Palestine initiative that was dead on arrival. The claim he destroyed ISIS, when in fact it was mostly the Iranians, Kurds, Russians, and Turks that did it. And his declaration that peace talks in Afghanistan to end that conflict were making “tremendous progress”, when in fact a deal isn’t even close. And, not least, his assassination of the Iranian general, Soleimani, that almost pushed both countries over the brink of war. Not much there in foreign policy either.

The SOTU Message: Domestic Political Warfare

Where Trump has succeeded is in his domestic political war with the Democrats. As he noted in the SOTU speech, he has approved 187 new Federal Court judges and two Supreme Court judges, giving him a clear majority in the Judiciary. The US Senate has become no less myopically committed to him than his political grassroots base and media machine. Senate leader, McConnell, has proven to be one of the most obsequious Senate leaders in history. With the Judiciary and one house of Congress firmly in his pocket now he has not been reluctant to break whatever rules and norms he deems necessary.

Having outmaneuvered the Democrats in the Mueller Report and Russia interference affair, and now as well in the impeachment attempt, Trump is now even more confident no doubt that he can run roughshod over Pelosi and the Democrats in this election year. And he will.

His SOTU speech was in effect a declaration of his intent to do so. And the confrontation at the end of the speech between himself and Pelosi—-Trump refusing to shake her extended hand and Pelosi then ripping up his speech—is symbolic of the political dogfight about to come. Throughout it all, Trump’s approval rating has survived in safe territory. His red state allies are intent on ensuring his electoral vote majority via both gerrymandering and voter roll suppression. His grass roots minions are itching to release more aggressive protests, demonstrations and action. His strategists are formulating a new racist appeal to split Democrats’ historical minority base of support.

Meanwhile, the Democrats themselves are sliding into their own internal conflict, with the corporate wing planning to scuttle Sanders by any means necessary and replace him with Bloomberg as their candidate at the convention.

In short, Trump’s SOTU speech was less about the state of the union and more about the state of Trump’s re-election and the Trump strategy to win a second term in November. And it appears he may succeed in domestic politics, while having clearly failed in economics and foreign policy.”

Jack Rasmus
February 4, 2020
copyright 2020

Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020. His website is: kyklosproductions.com, his blog: jackrasmus.com. And his twitter handle @drjackrasmus.

Guns & Butter radio host, Bonnie Faulkner, continues the interview Dr. Rasmus on the major themes and analyses of his just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump‘, Clarity Press, January 2020.

In Part 1

the first interview (see posted below this blog), Bonnie and Dr. Rasmus discuss the material origins of Neoliberalism, its evolution from the late 1970s to its crisis in 2008-09, the failure of Obama to restore its full momentum, and Trump’s current effort to do so–which has been only partially successful.

In this Part 2

of the interview, Rasmus explains why Trump’s restoration of a new virulent form of Neoliberalism is failing, and why it will continue, due to new emergent technological and other material forces in the 21st century US and global economy. Rasmus discusses these technological-material forces, which constitute the ‘natural’ restructuring of the capitalist system, and why such forces are coming increasingly into contradiction with the ‘induced’ restructuring represented by Neoliberal policies. Rasmus explains this increasingly unstable relationship will of necessity lead to the deeper crisis of Neoliberalism (compared to 2008-09 that was partially overcome) in the 2020s decade ahead.

A new policy mix and regime will have to emerge. The structure of that regime won’t be Neoliberal as we know it, but something else–i.e. either more proto-fascist (corporate-state integration) or something more progressive. The outcome will be decided by political conflict. In the process the US political system will continue to change, as it has the last three decades, but now more rapidly as political sources defending Neoliberalism chip away at democratic rights at home (USA) and former alliances abroad. The collapse of Neoliberalism is accompanied by a structuring of the US political system itself, especially a further restriction on democratic and civil rights and liberties.

Listen to the Part 2 Interview, “After Trump, What’s Next?”, GO TO

http://gunsandbutter.org/blog/2020/02/02/after-trump-and-neoliberalism-whats-next

(For those interested in the Part 1 Interview, “Neoliberalism from Expansion to Stagnation”, GO TO)

http://gunsandbutter.snappages.com/blog/2020/01/23/neoliberalism-from-expansion-to-stagnation

My initial reply to the ‘Open Letter’ in Znet blog by Chomsky and Others–which argued the Green party candidates should not run in ‘contested states’ less they ensure the re-election of Trump in November–has prompted a debate between myself and Znet editor, Michael Albert. Michael has generously posted my reply to him and his criticisms of my initial ‘reply’ to the Open Letter, and followed with further comments of his own (see Znet). I’m sharing here with readers my second reply to Albert’s first response to my first reply to the Open Letter.

The election of November 2020 is not the endgame. Win or Lose, Trump and his radical right nationalist, and racist, movement will not be defeated in November. The fight will have only begun, and at a more intense level in 2021. Discouraging those movements, youth, and workers who don’t want either Trump or a Democrat corporate Clinton-Obama clone from organizing in this election year is an unprincipled position, I argue. Here’s my second reply:

Reply to Albert’s Reponse to My 1st Critique of the Open Letter

“In his reply to my challenge to the Open Letter to the Green Party to get out of elections in the contested states in the 2020 election, Michael engaged in quote by quote commentary. I’m not going to bother readers with a detailed ‘he said she said’ response.

But what bothered me most about the Open Letter is that, despite all its clever intellectual nuancing, the Letter said it’s ok to vote for Biden and the corporate Democrat alternative in order to defeat Trump. Even when a vote for Biden will be a vote to elect Trump.

I will quote the Letter just one time on this point. It said: “real solutions require Trump out of office…Real solutions will be somewhat more probable even with the likes of Biden in office”.

Presumably that means per the Letter only in the ‘contested states’. But how can the signers of the Letter know a priori which states are going to be ‘contested’. Do you think this election is going to be simply a repeat of 2016? Do you have a political crystal ball? I don’t care what polls you refer to in support of this. The polls often mean little, and are more than not candidate marketing tools. You can’t know beforehand what states for independent third parties to run in, so you can’t demand they don’t run in any. To do so is to reject the progressive principle of independent political action.

The whole thrust of the Letter is that Greens should defer to the Democrats no matter who they run, including Biden! Sorry, that’s my reading of it despite all the nuancing about contested states, etc.

Would the authors of the Letter demand that as well, not just of the Greens, but of the ‘Our Revolution’ crowd. What if the OR group decides to run Sanders (or someone else) as an independent should the Democrats deny Sanders their nomination (again) when they manipulate their super delegates at their nominating convention this summer? And they will. Their strategy is transparent: split the primary votes and deny Sanders a nomination on the first ballot. Then release the political ‘Kraken’ of the Democrats’ hundreds of special delegates, mostly party hacks, to vote on the second ballot. That’s where Michael Bloomberg comes in. Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and even Warren will be kept in the race by corporate money to ensure Sanders doesn’t win on the first ballot. Most likely Bloomberg then gets the nomination, and we all get to vote on which billionaire will be president for another four years!

And what if Sanders himself runs as an independent after being denied the nomination? (Very highly unlikely I admit). Should we still support Biden then, just to stop Trump? Should we tell Bernie don’t run in the ‘contested states’? Or tell disaffected youth and workers don’t write in his name? Or don’t vote for Greens or anyone else? Do the authors of the Open Letter see where this leads?

Trump has you guys all panicking. Willing to abandon important principles. Declaring that independents should not run ‘here or there’, a priori decided by some intellectuals.

Sorry that’s a Left Liberal position and formulation. It undermine the principle of supporting independent political action on the Left and among progressives everywhere. And it’s only independent political action that can get us out of this 40 year mess or economic stagnation and decline, the collapsing social structure, and the incremental (now accelerating) decline of even the limited democratic rights that still exist.

So, in short, I was shocked to read long time Z writers would stoop to support Biden and corporate Democrats if it came down to that. That’s what I expect to read from The Nation magazine, the Democrat party and corporate funded rag. Not from those who write for Z.

If the Democrats lose in November it will be because the corporate moneybag wing of the Corporate Party of America—aka Democrats—refuse to let go of the strategy they adopted back in 1992 when they put their boy, Bill Clinton, up as their candidate; and when the DLC faction took over that party, holding on to it to the very present. The Democrats are bankrupt. Look what Obama did for eight years, which created the groundwork for Trump. Look what Hillary didn’t do in 2016, giving Trump the presidency. Look how the Pelosi-Shumer regime has botched first the Mueller investigation and now the Impeachment. Do you think they, and Biden, will change anything? But the authors of the Letter say nonetheless we should vote for Biden (yes, you do say that, notwithstanding carefully nuanced).

Stop letting this guy Trump terrify you. After all, he is creating the next generation of socialists among millennials and GenZers.

As for Michael Albert’s comment, would I vote for Sanders. Yes, probably. But I’d vote for his program, not for him personally. And I am watching closely to see if he is really ‘for real’ and principled about his program or not. Or whether he’ll pull an ‘Obama’—i.e. talk the talk and then abandon the walk once nominated. Or, when shit on again by the Democrats at the convention, turn once more and urge a vote for them again—which will be Biden or Bloomberg.

It’s for that latter reason of mistrust as well that I won’t vote for Warren. She’ll bend to corporate party pressure if nominated. She’s already offered them to do so. She’d be a repeat Obama.

And the others: Buttigieg (now getting big money from shadow bankers, hedge funds, private equity) and Klobuchar—they’re there to split the Sanders vote in the primaries. And Bloomberg? The billionaire ex-Republican spending on ads trying to appear like a flaming progressive? He’s the party’s back up candidate and political safety valve.

The only real candidate is Sanders. But he’ll never get the nomination, and he will fall in line even after being deprived of it a second time, and say vote for Biden, like you guys of the Open Letter. The real candidate of the Democrat wing of the Corporate party of America is Mike Bloomberg, just offstage, waiting to be called in to save us all—like Bill, like Barack, like Hillary.

Anything to stop Trump. That’s the 40 year shell game. And I was greatly disappointed to read that the authors of the Open Letter have fallen for it again. All the rest of ‘he said, she said’ in Michael’s rebuttal to my initial post are irrelevant. It’s all about defeat Trump at any cost. The authors of the Open Letter support that. I don’t. Not 40 more years of a Biden or Bloomberg or any other corporate candidate.

In summary, I’m not for telling any independent party to stand down in any state, contested or not. That’s a matter of principle with me, I guess, which the authors of the Letter clearly don’t share.”

A recent reader of my book, “The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump”, Clarity Press, January 2020, recently asked why I argued in the book–i.e. on the topic of the contradictions and crisis of Neoliberal policy–that even a future fiscal stimulus may not prove sufficient to generate recovery from the next recession around the corner. A theme in the book is that Neoliberal policies are facing greater contradictions, Trump is failing to restore the momentum of Neoliberalism that was in effect from 1978 to 2008-09. Thus something different, a new policy mix and regime that is not Neoliberal will likely follow in the 2020s. One possible form could be a US specific version of fascist economic policies. The second question asked me is what might that look like?

The following is my reply, shared here with readers, as to why traditional fiscal policies likely won’t prove sufficient to generate recovery from the next recession, even if not Neoliberal; and my preliminary comments on what US-specific fascist economic programs might look like.

1. Why fiscal policies won’t have much stimulus effect in a 2020s Post-Crisis Recovery

The multiplier effect for tax cuts is always less than for direct government spending. Even more so for business-investor tax cuts. For 20 yrs now the main stimulus approach for fiscal policy has been business-investor tax cuts. They’ll likely do that again, whoever wins the election and faces the recession in 2021. But there are even further depressing effects of such tax cut stimulus occurring now. One is globalization. Much of the result of the tax cuts for business is redirected overseas to emerging markets. So it has little effect on the US economy. Even more so is the other diversion: into financial markets. (Global stock market values surged from $35T to $85T from 2010-18, a 200% increase). Non-stock financial markets (called capital markets) surged by 600% as well. So financialization is negating the multiplier effect of tax policy. What about cuts to household consumer taxes? Here the problem for the multiplier is that the tax cuts get diverted in part to pay for the principal and interest on the massive $15Tin US household debt. It doesn’t get spent on new consumption.

What about government spending programs as fiscal stimulus? Multipliers are usually higher. But government spending on infrastructure, for example, is longer term. It’s initial impact in a recession is weak and delayed. Besides, the neoliberal corporate parties (both wings of the corporate party of America) are resistant to spending on infrastructure and have shown they are both willing to reduce social program spending. What about other non-infrastructure government spending? It could have a stimulus effect, but it is viewed as the way to reduce the US deficit (created by tax cuts and war spending hikes). So what about war spending by government? Is that stimulating growth? Not so much any more. War goods production is not labor intensive as it used to be. Costs of aircraft, missiles, etc. are very high per item. Production processes don’t require as much labor any more. And much of the production is offshored to US allies (reducing labor content and thus wages and thus the multiplier effect even further). So in toto, multipliers are weaker today even for war spending.

2. What might US-specific fascist economic policies Look Like

Fascist economics is closely associated with what’s called ‘corporatism’. It is a very close alliance between capitalists and the state. The two meld even more than under ‘normal’ capitalism. The State plays a greater, more aggressive managerial role in determining what’s produced and by which companies, distribution, and in general guarantees the profits of business by various means. When the state wants to expand geographically (as did Germany and Italy for example), the state directed production takes on a military character. I don’t think US corporatism will assume that character. It is already, pre-fascist, highly developed in that military economic sense. The future US fascist state will find new ways to subsidize US capital. It will play a bigger role in financing technology development, controlling labor markets and thus unions and wages, and defending the US global economic empire by asymmetrical military spending and space form spending (to check Russia and China). It’s hard to see how US corporatism and fascism will assume form. It will become clearer once the next crisis erupts and the State has to bail out the capitalists again. But we’ll see its early outlines in 2-3 years I believe. Fascism is bigger than just the experience of Germany-Italy-Iberia last century. The US form will be different. But no less fascist in the broader sense of State-Corporate integration.

Dr. Jack Rasmus
copyright 2020