Bloomberg, BDS and Biden

The news is neither good nor bad: Michael Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that he would not be running for president. After an extensive examination of his chances for victory, Bloomberg concluded his money would best be spent on launching a new initiative:

Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.

At the heart of Beyond Carbon is the conviction that, as the science has made clear, every year matters. The idea of a Green New Deal — first suggested by the columnist Tom Friedman more than a decade ago — stands no chance of passage in the Senate over the next two years. But Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we.

Speaking of Tom Friedman, his latest column "Ilhan Omar, Aipac and Me," is vintage Friedman. He defends the failed status quo -- in this case, the prohibition on criticism of Israel -- by marshaling arguments from the anti-establishment left.

Friedman grants that AIPAC is a blight, and chides its joined-at-the-hip alliance with the GOP, but he takes Ilham Omar's non-committal equivocations on BDS as proof that she hankers for the destruction of the Israeli state. I kid you not.

Here's Friedman's best shot, such as it is, at Omar:

When I see that dual-loyalty charge coming from a congresswoman who first signaled opposition to B.D.S. and then support for it, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who has never been to Israel, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who, to my knowledge, has never criticized the Palestinian leadership for its corruption and failure — time and again — to seize on peace overtures from Israeli leaders who, unlike Netanyahu, actually wanted to forge a two-state solution, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who seems to be obsessed with Israel’s misdeeds as the biggest problem in the Middle East — not Iran’s effective occupation of four Arab capitals, its support for ethnic cleansing and the use of poison gas in Syria and its crushing of Lebanese democracy — it makes me suspicious of her motives.

Basically it is the same old same old: corrupt Palestinian leadership (corrupted by who?); an Iranian bogeyman (a very tough sell); and Syrian poison gas (whose poison gas?).

But back to Bloomberg's latest aborted presidential run. The New York Times story made the argument that Bloomberg's path to the White House was a long shot, but it becomes well-nigh impossible with Biden in the race.

That leads one to believe that Biden is coming in (because, remember, Bloomberg waited until after Hillary's Super Tuesday 2016 romp before announcing that he would not pursue the presidency). All indications are that Biden will join the race soon. But why hasn't he announced already? Could it be he wants Andrew Cockburn's devastating Harper's cover story "No Joe!" off the newsstands before he tosses his hat in the ring.

Biden 2020 will be a version of Hillary 2016, with the DNC mucking about and a neo-McCarthyite song so shrill voters will a large supply of wax to plug up their ears.