The 2020 Presidential Election Campaign as of January 2019

As we've seen in the UK, fealty to Israel, and all of Israel's odious policies vis-à-vis Palestine, is being used to buttress the zombie consensus that governs the mainstream "left." It aligns neoliberalism and perpetual warfare with a "My country, right or wrong" defense of the Jewish state.

Now, according to Jonathan Martin ("Prominent Democrats Form Pro-Israel Group to Counter Skepticism on the Left"), a new PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, devoted to electing Democrats opposed to BDS, has been announced.

The election last fall of Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has terrified the Democratic establishment. This is where the cutting edge of the party is located: Women of color, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are not willing to abandon advocacy of social justice in exchange for a seat at the boardroom table.

Efforts at cornering the BDS movement are going to prove futile. Martin outlines the demographics in play:

Beyond individual races, the more fundamental challenge pro-Israel Democrats are confronting is that many millennials are growing far more wary of Israel and particularly the Netanyahu government. The Pew poll indicated that while 56 percent of voters over 65 sympathized more with Israel than the Palestinians, only 32 percent of those under the age of 30 who were surveyed said they felt the same way.

“My generation sees the occupation and what’s happening in Israel-Palestine as a crisis the same way we do climate change,” said Simone Zimmerman, 28, a co-founder of a progressive group, IfNotNow, that opposes what it calls Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Ms. Zimmerman scorned what she called “the Trump-Netanyahu” alliance and said “too many in the American Jewish establishment and the Democratic establishment have let them off the hook.”

At this early stage of the 2020 presidential election, it is clear to me that the Democratic Party establishment is tilting towards Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Biden tossed a big hurdle up in front of himself by campaigning for Whirlpool scion and Republican Representative of Michigan's 6th CD Fred Upton (see Alexander Burns' "Joe Biden’s Paid Speech Buoyed the G.O.P. in Midwest Battleground"). Biden's defense is "Hey, this is a Republican who helped pass cancer research funding after my son Beau died." Then why accept $200K to praise Upton at a public forum three weeks before an election where the Democratic challenger had a real chance to ride the blue wave to victory?

It's rancid, and, in the Age of Trump, for any Democrat not see that, s/he would have to be brain dead. Biden is the zombie candidate par excellence, representing a neoliberal orthodoxy that is easily 20 years past its "sell by" date.

The other marquee zombie Democratic presidential contender is Kamala Harris, whose campaign hosted a kickoff rally at Oakland City Hall attended by an eye-popping 20,000-plus. I have to say I'm skeptical. The San Jose Mercury mentioned that the number was confirmed by the Oakland Police Department. I'm skeptical. If you have ever attended a march or rally, you'll know that 20,000 people is a huge number, truly gigantic.

Harris is basically running as a female Obama, of which there are numerous liabilities. The one plus is that I do think that the Harris campaign resonates with middle-age professional women and "soccer moms." But the minuses outweigh this single demographic plus, as Astead Herndon and Susan Chira make plain this morning in "Can Kamala Harris Repeat Obama’s Success With Black Voters? It’s Complicated." For starters, plenty of black voters had sobered on Obama by the end of his second term:

Across the country in Oakland, Calif., Kijani Edwards, 34, was also wary. “Ten years ago, I was moved by Obama. I was in tears in November of 2008, we all celebrated up and down,” he said.

But Mr. Obama did not bring the changes Mr. Edwards expected. “The banks got bailed out,” he said. “Interest rates got raised on the very citizens who bailed them out.”

“I’m tired of having the conversation of voting for the lesser of two evils,” he added, referring in part to Ms. Harris.

Also, Herndon and Chira make a pretty convincing case that 1) black voters are wary of Harris' record as a "tough on crime" prosecutor, and 2) black men don't want a woman to take on Trump; they're waiting for Cory Booker to enter the race.

That means, at the this point, January 2019, before Bernie Sanders announces, Elizabeth Warren has to be considered the front runner. And that's a problem for the neoliberals. Why? Take a peek at these two sentences at the end of Astead Herndon's slightly sneering frontpager from the other day ("Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Strategy: Stand Out by ‘Nerding Out’"):

On Thursday, Ms. Warren announced a plan that would impose a new annual tax on the 75,000 wealthiest families in the United States. The proposal would raise $2.75 trillion in tax revenue over a decade, according to calculations by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two University of California-Berkeley economists who consulted with Ms. Warren on the plan.

All of which explains Starbucks billionaire kingpin Howard Schultz's 60 Minutes announcement of an independent presidential campaign. Schultz is banking (see Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Howard Schultz Draws Fire from Trump and Bloomberg Over 2020 Plans") that a social democrat like Warren or Sanders is going to capture the Democratic nomination, and he's snatching billionaire Mike Bloomberg's spotlight. Usually Bloomberg commands frontpage attention while he ponders whether to run an independent presidential campaign. Now he's reduced to complaining that Schultz will help elect Trump.

Though on the issues Schultz is a neoliberal standard bearer, I have no problem with his run as an independent. The fact is that we don't live in an open society. It is a politically closed society ruled by the super-rich who control the two-party system. The United States is a democracy in name only. A billionaire -- and you need to be a billionaire to gain ballot access in 50 states -- running an independent presidential campaign will highlight how undemocratic the U.S. political system is.

As for Trump, read Rachel Bitecofer's spot on "Why Trump Will Lose in 2020."