Death Knell for Kamala Harris for the People

Really all that is left for "Kamala Harris for the People" (read the resignation letter of its state operations director Kelly Mehlenbacher) is for its candidate to drop out. All the delicious details can be found in "How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled" by Jonathan Martin, Astead Herndon and Alexander Burns:

Many of her own advisers are now pointing a finger directly at Ms. Harris. In interviews several of them criticized her for going on the offensive against rivals, only to retreat, and for not firmly choosing a side in the party’s ideological feud between liberals and moderates. She also created an organization with a campaign chairwoman, Maya Harris, who goes unchallenged in part because she is Ms. Harris’s sister, and a manager, Mr. Rodriguez, who could not be replaced without likely triggering the resignations of the candidate’s consulting team. Even at this late date, aides said it’s unclear who’s in charge of the campaign.

With just over two months until the Iowa caucuses, her staff is now riven between competing factions eager to belittle one another, and the candidate’s relationship with Mr. Rodriguez has turned frosty, according to multiple Democrats close to Ms. Harris. Several aides, including Jalisa Washington-Price, the state director in crucial South Carolina, have already had conversations about post-campaign jobs.

[snip]

But her troubles go beyond staffing and strategy: Her financial predicament is dire. The campaign has not taken a poll or been able to afford TV advertising since September, and it has all but quit buying Facebook ads in the last two months. Her advisers, after months of resistance, have only now signaled their desire for a group of former aides to begin a super PAC to finance an independent political effort on her behalf.

To some Democrats who know Ms. Harris, her struggles indicate larger limitations.

“You can’t run the country if you can’t run your campaign,” said Gil Duran, a former aide to Ms. Harris and other California Democrats who’s now the editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee.

[snip]

Yet it has come to this: After beginning her candidacy with a speech before 20,000 people in Oakland, some of Ms. Harris’s longtime supporters believe she should consider dropping out in late December — the deadline for taking her name off the California primary ballot — if she does not show political momentum. Some advisers are already bracing for a primary challenge, potentially from the billionaire Tom Steyer, should she run for re-election to the Senate in 2022. Her senior aides plan to assess next month whether she’s made sufficient progress to remain in the race.

Interestingly Tulsi Gabbard's attack on Harris' record as a prosecutor during the July debate is acknowledged by insiders as the dividing line of the campaign.

Martin et al. don't trouble themselves with what Harris' demise means for the Democratic primary as a whole. Harris was the anointed -- a Clinton-Obama twofer -- a chic woman of color who hailed from the Golden State. The fact that "Kamala Harris for the People" has collapsed so completely spells trouble for the Democratic National Committee.

The Democratic electorate has joined much of the planet in open rebellion. Poll-testing sappy Reaganesque slogans no longer guarantees votes.

The frenzy from here on out is how the Democratic Party oligarchy is going to pacify this rebellion.

I think we've already been given a hint. Obama will be deployed to attack Sanders and Warren. The beautiful thing is that it won't make a bit of difference; in fact, it should boomerang.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Charles Blow's column this morning is "The Horrible History of Thanksgiving," a helpful reminder of the Native American genocide at the core of U.S. history; in it Blow concludes:

I spent most of my life believing a gauzy, kindergarten version of Thanksgiving, thinking only of feasts and family, turkey and dressing.

I was blind, willfully ignorant, I suppose, to the bloodier side of the Thanksgiving story, to the more honest side of it.

But I’ve come to believe that is how America would have it if it had its druthers: We would be blissfully blind, living in a soft world bleached of hard truth. I can no longer abide that.

Blow has been a man-on-fire recently with his hard-hitting columns on Mike Bloomberg (see "You Must Never Vote for Bloomberg" and "Bloomberg’s Bogus, Belated Mea Culpa"). Unfortunately, the company that employs Blow, The New York Times, is one of the world's chief bleachers of hard truth. Hopefully Blow can sustain his man-on-fire rebirth and focus some of his wrath on the newspaper's manufacture of official enemies. Maybe there will be column on Julian Assange or Jeremy Corbyn.

It's too bad that Blow didn't read a column that appeared on the same opinion page 25 years ago. Written by Arthur Quinn, my professor in the Department of Rhetoric at U.C. Berkeley, "The Miracle Harvest" traces the origin of Thanksgiving as a national holiday to a proclamation by Abraham Lincoln following the Union's bloody defeat at Chickamauga. Basically, Thanksgiving was a reelection ploy.

The Civil War is the single greatest event in the history of the United States, an event that still dominates our politics today. We shall see next year if a purely Dixiecrat campaign can triumph for the first time in a national election. Trump did not run a completely white ultra-nationalist campaign in 2016. But Trump's four years in office have eliminated the "big tent" aspects of his candidacy -- the promise of a vast infrastructure rebuild; the promises to reduce the U.S. overseas military footprint and to discipline the Saudis -- and left him entirely reliant on appeals to a Wallacite Know Nothing reactionary base of voters.

Quinn notes (something Blow mentions) that when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth they found it largely deserted, the natives having been wiped out by plague:

Moreover, the Pilgrims had survived their ordeal, if barely, only because a previous people had not. The colonists had found Plymouth deserted but with many signs of previous inhabitants. They found large corn caches, without which they almost certainly would have starved. They also found human bones scattered around -- not just the occasional skeleton but piles of them, as if this had been a battlefield where corpses had been left to rot. The Pilgrims subsequently learned that the Pawtuxet Indians who lived there had recently been wiped out by an epidemic, a catastrophe that would become all too familiar to the indigenous peoples of eastern North America.

Troy Vettese argued in an excellent article last year in New Left Review (see "To Freeze the Thames") that the Little Ice Age of the 17th century was caused by the genocide of millions of indigenous people in the New World due to exposure to settlers from the Old World.

Thanksgiving, both its origin as a national holiday during the Civil War and as an actual historical event in the 1600s, might be dubbed Halloween II; it is essentially a nationalist appreciation of the dead by those who remain behind. (That being said, maybe Veterans Day is Halloween II and Thanksgiving is Halloween III.)

Art Quinn died of brain cancer in 1997. Today U.C. Berkeley's Bancroft Library offers a research fellowship in his name.

The Rationale of Bloomberg's Quest for the Presidency

Billionaire Republican Mike Bloomberg kicked off his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday in Norfolk, Virginia. There were no cheering crowds. Only a few handshakes in a diner followed by a soporific address to a mustered corporate media in a nearby hotel ballroom.

As Alexander Burns describes in "At First 2020 Campaign Stop, Bloomberg Boasts What His Money Can Do":

Michael R. Bloomberg started his campaign at a hushed diner in downtown Norfolk, Va., shaking hands with a snowy-haired afternoon crowd, drawing a combination of selfie requests and quizzical stares, before strolling to a nearby hotel ballroom and making an efficient statement before a bank of television cameras.

Accompanied by a small platoon of aides, including two of his former deputy mayors from New York City and a security team that flitted around a downtown waterfront nearly barren of pedestrians, Mr. Bloomberg described himself as a political pragmatist skilled at wielding his wealth to win elections.

“I know how to win,” Mr. Bloomberg, the former three-term mayor of New York City, said, “because I’ve done it time and time again.”

If Mr. Bloomberg’s first in-person appearance as a presidential candidate lacked something in organic political energy, he has already jolted the race through the sheer scale of his political spending, stunning the Democratic political establishment and stirring an outcry from the party’s populist wing. He is airing nearly $1 million in television ads in Virginia alone this week, as part of nearly $35 million in television advertising nationwide. A few bystanders said they had already seen those ads.

My thought after reading about Bloomberg's artificial Norfolk campaign kickoff is that a better site for the event would have been New York City's largest prison complex, Rikers Island. That, after all, is Bloomberg's appeal. He is our warden, our billionaire jailer. He could have repeated his apology for stop and frisk to the assembled prisoners. Rikers is slated for closing by 2026. Maybe that's what a Bloomberg candidacy augurs for the United States.

Already stories are appearing in the press documenting Bloomberg's generous support of Republicans. This will prove hard to swallow for voters presently aligned with Biden and Buttigieg, voters Bloomberg will positively have to win over if he hopes to win the nomination.

And, if they needed any more grist for their mill, there will be reminders to progressives that as mayor Bloomberg broke down the main Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park.

So at this point the safe wager is that Bloomberg's campaign is going to crash and burn spectacularly. My concern is that Bloomberg sees something we don't, knows something we can't. There's got to be a reason a guy worth $54 billion is launching a kamikaze attack. On the surface it makes no sense.

I think the answer is one I've mentioned before. Fear of Bernie. Warren, at this point, is showing evidence of a glass jaw. Biden continues to lead the field but he's not raising money. There's only one candidate who has a truly nationwide campaign apparatus and a funding mechanism that guarantees his competitiveness not to mention a lot of down-ballot support in the form of Justice Democrats running for the House of Representatives. That's Bernie Sanders.

Mike Bloomberg is a true warrior for his class. His candidacy is about one thing, blocking Bernie. The hubris of the 1% of the 1% is that Bloomberg will end up aiding Bernie rather than blocking him.

Hong Kong Proves a Landslide Election Can be Won from the Left

I've been careful not to dismiss the Hong Kong uprising as another Western-instigated color revolution. The Hong Kong protesters have legitimate demands -- universal suffrage, for one -- and grievances -- police brutality, for instance. My complaint has been with the saturation coverage in the mainstream corporate media compared to the complete exclusion of the popular uprising in Haiti or the spotty reporting on the uprising in Chile.

Another complaint I have with mainstream media in relation to the Hong Kong protests is its hypocrisy. If similar protests were to take place in San Francisco or New York, with protesters building bonfire barricades and shooting wrist-rockets and flaming arrows at police, the organs of corporate opinion would demand a harsh crackdown if not the mobilization of the national guard (as happened during the Seattle WTO).

There was some trepidation in the West that Hong Kong voters would punish pro-democracy candidates for district council seats and vote instead for the pro-Beijing status quo. That's not what happened on Sunday. According to a postmortem by Javier Hernandez:

In a rebuke to Beijing, pro-democracy candidates captured 389 of 452 elected seats, far more than they had ever won. Beijing’s allies held just 58 seats, down from 300. It was a strong message from Hong Kong voters, with record turnout of 71 percent.

In the main post-election write-up provided by The New York Times (see "Hong Kong Election Results Give Democracy Backers Big Win"), the youth vote was credited with creating the pro-democracy landslide:

Regina Ip, a cabinet member and the leader of a pro-Beijing political party, said she was surprised to see so many young voters, many of whom tried to confront her with the protesters’ demands.

“Normally,” she said, “the young people do not come out to vote. But this time, the opposition managed to turn them out.”

Ahead of the election, the city’s leadership was concerned that the vote would be marred by the chaos of recent months. Some of the most violent clashes yet between protesters and the police took place last week, turning two university campuses into battlegrounds.

But the city remained relatively calm on Sunday as voters turned out in droves. Long lines formed at polling centers in the morning, snaking around skyscrapers and past small shops. Riot police officers were deployed near polling stations on Sunday.

David Lee, a retired printer approaching his 90th birthday, was among the earliest voters on Hong Kong Island and said he had come because he wanted democracy.

“This is important,” he said.

Some analysts had predicted that pro-democracy candidates would have difficulty making big gains. Pro-Beijing candidates are much better financed, and the district races have traditionally been won on purely local issues, not big questions like democracy, said Joseph Cheng, a retired professor at City University of Hong Kong.

But voter turnout soared to 71 percent, far surpassing expectations. Typically in district council elections, it is little more than 40 percent. Four years ago, after the 2014 Umbrella Movement increased public interest in politics, turnout climbed to 47 percent. This year, the number of registered voters hit a record.

If juiced youth turnout can work in Hong Kong, why not the United States? Instead of catering to swing voters and exurban independents, why not mobilize youth?

Bear that in mind as daily stories in the press begin to tattoo Medicare For All. It seems as if the mainstream corporate media, unable to break the support for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, is pivoting to attack their signature proposal.

There is rich irony that an outcome so sought in Hong Kong by Cold Warriors is dreaded here at home.

Russiagate is Coming for Bernie Sanders

Matt Taibbi made an interesting point on his weekly "Useful Idiots" podcast with Katie Halper. The Buttigieg boom in Iowa and New Hampshire actually aids the campaign of Bernie Sanders because it subtracts voters from Biden and Warren. Even if Mayor Pete manages to win Iowa and New Hampshire, the primary campaign moves on next, after Nevada, to South Carolina where Buttigieg is polling at 0% among black voters. It doesn't get any better for Buttigieg on Super Tuesday.

I suppose that's why Bloomberg's primary strategy is built around a big showing on Super Tuesday. Bloomberg will grab the neoliberal baton from a flagging Buttigieg. That's of course assuming that Democrats will cast an appreciable number of votes for a conservative billionaire Republican.

So, yes, it's looking pretty good for Bernie. I think he knows it -- he was surprisingly relaxed and in good spirits during last week's debate -- and the oligarchy knows it. Hence the rehabilitation of Russiagate during the final day of impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee in the form of testimony by New Cold Warrior Fiona Hill.

That was Thursday. Friday and Saturday there were frontpagers in The New York Times featuring Hill's warning that the Russians are up to their dirty tricks again and they will steal another election in 2020 unless the U.S. government is vigilant.

Sunday evening 60 Minutes televised a rehash of "Russia Stole My Election!" National Security Division Assistant Attorney General John Demers admits on camera that the main point of a Russiagate prosecution isn't to bring anyone to justice; it's a psyop directed at the American public.

The Justice Department's National Security Division is overseeing the Russian hacking case.

Assistant Attorney General John Demers runs the division, along with deputies Adam Hickey and Sean Newell. DOJ attorney, Heather Alpino, worked with special counsel Mueller on the Russian indictments. All have access to the underlying intelligence, and have no doubt the Russians interfered in the 2016 election.

Bill Whitaker: This really happened.

John Demers: Yes. That really happened. And we believe that if we had to we could prove that in court tomorrow using only admissible, non-classified evidence to 12 jurors.

Bill Whitaker: Do you ever expect to get the 12 Russian officials to trial?

John Demers: I would be surprised. But the purpose of the indictment isn't just that, although that's certainly one of the purposes. The purpose of this kind of indictment is even to educate the public.

Educate the public about what? Not to read social media?

Wait and see. If Bernie rolls along in the Democratic primary, as Taibbi thinks, then we'll see Russiagate revivified and applied to the Sanders campaign.

The Rebellion in Iraq Continues

The Western mainstream media has been so captive of the anti-Iranian narrative regarding the month-plus protests in Iraq that it is hard to find any news about the protesters' formidable Iraqi advocates, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr. Reuters reports today in "Iraqi forces kill three protesters, cleric warns of crisis" that 

Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Friday for politicians to hurry up in reforming electoral laws because the changes would be the only way to resolve weeks of deadly unrest.

“We affirm the importance of speeding up the passing of the electoral law and the electoral commission law because this represents the country moving past the big crisis,” his representative said during a sermon in the holy city of Kerbala.

Sistani, who rarely weighs in on politics except in times of crisis, holds massive influence over public opinion in Shi’ite-majority Iraq. He also repeated his view that the protesters had legitimate demands and should not be met with violence.

Alissa Rubin had an excellent story the other day (see "‘Our Patience Is Over’: Why Iraqis Are Protesting") about Sadr City's important role in the Baghdad protests. She mentions that

Most Sadr City residents, like many people in southern Iraq, are followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a nationalist and populist Shiite cleric and leader whose family long resisted the authority of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

[snip] 

Sadr City today remains armed and ready to defend its own.

The Sadr Organization, of which Abu Tiba is a member, and which has ties to Mr. al-Sadr’s militia, is helping to coordinate the protests from the neighborhood. Its members are thick on the ground at the protests, controlling strategic positions.

 At the outset of the protests, in the beginning of October, al-Sadr and al-Sistani were regularly mentioned as being on the side of the protesters. Then this fact largely disappeared from the coverage. If you were pro-Iranian, the protests were dismissed as another Western plot; if you were pro-American, an anti-Iranian rebellion. But in reality it is a real people-power uprising, a promising reemergence of the Arab Spring.

The Rise and Fall of Kamala Harris

According to a post-debate assessment by The New York Times (see "Who Won the Debate? Internet Roundup From Campaign Experts") lo and behold! the neoliberals won! In particular, Kamala Harris' star shined brightly.

Plainly put, it's a crock of shit. One great satisfaction for me in the Democratic primary to date has been the completely unwarranted booming of Kamala Harris early on -- she was clearly the favorite of the oligarchs who govern the Democratic Party -- followed by her almost total disappearance -- Harris was polling in the sub-5% territory of fellow neoliberals Booker and Klobuchar prior to last night's debate.

The oligarchs tried to force-feed the whining, abrasive former California Attorney General to the Democratic voting public, and the voting public refused to eat.

It's been this resounding thud of Harris' candidacy that has led to all the somersaults in the primary so far. The entry of addled septuagenarian Joe Biden; the booming of the slick, soulless Buttigieg; the late entry of B-grade Obama Deval Patrick; and the menacing hover of a Hindenburg-size nuclear-tipped drone in the form of billionaire Mike Bloomberg.

Was Harris good last night? Yes and no. She got plenty of camera time and she spoke her lines, which I suppose is better than the last few debates where she was a total non-entity. The problem is with what she said. It was the same old focus-group-tested consultant-driven hooey -- much the same as Mayor Pete's shtick -- that makes a lot of noise but means nothing.

What particularly offended me was a line from Harris where she said something like, "Unlike some on this stage I'm not buried in the past. To deal with the pressing problems of today we need forward looking solutions." It was an obvious jab at Medicare For All. Basically Harris is implying that Social Security and Medicare are vestigial relics of the days before the golden dawn of neoliberalism.

Will Harris enjoy a bounce? If she does, it will be short lived and minor. The public is not buying what the neoliberals are peddling. Buttigieg is the sole remaining neoliberal identity candidate. And my bet is that his rise in the polls in the run up to Iowa and New Hampshire is a hallucination. As the female head of the union I work for boorishly commented pre-debate last night, "Most people don't even know he's gay, let alone married. Do you think Americans are going to put a man in the White House who is married to another man who will be First Lady? Not a chance!"

The Johnson-Corbyn Debate

Stories about yesterday's Johnson-Corbyn debate were basically buried in the Western corporate press (page A8 in today's national edition of The New York Times). I assumed this to be an indication that Johnson performed poorly or Corbyn did better than expected. Sure enough, this seems to be the case. As Benjamin Mueller explains,

Mr. Corbyn, who is trying to hold together a coalition that includes both Leavers and Remainers, grew most passionate discussing Britain’s National Health Service.

Brandishing documents that he said described secret government meetings with American trade negotiators, Mr. Corbyn accused Mr. Johnson of wanting to “sell our National Health Service to the United States” during discussions over a post-Brexit free trade agreement.

And he briefly quieted a restive audience by telling the story of a friend who he said had died the day before of breast cancer after waiting eight hours for help.

“The N.H.S. is a wonderful and brilliant institution, but it is suffering under the most incredible pressure,” Mr. Corbyn said, citing thousands of nursing vacancies and long waits in emergency departments.

Labour trails by an average of roughly a dozen percentage points in polls, with Mr. Corbyn garnering the worst popularity ratings of a major party leader heading into a British election since the data was first tracked 40 years ago.

Hopes that Labour could repeat its dramatic comeback in the 2017 general election — perhaps with the rollout of its policy proposals this week — are fading as the party has failed to make up ground.

Post-debate polls showed Johnson winning by 51% to Corbyn's 49%, which has to be considered a win for Labour since it regularly polls in double digits behind the Tories.

I read Niqnaq, which is a blog written in the UK. Niqnaq has been re-posting campaign reporting of the Guardian and the Independent, all of which strikes me as unremittingly negative. Johnson is savaged. Corbyn is savaged equally. So too is Liberal Democratic leader Jo Swinson. It appears to be that the goal of the UK corporate media is to drive down voter participation.

Low turnout no doubt favors the Tories. One thing is for sure. The global zombie neoliberal consensus does not want to see Corbyn win. It would be strong proof that neoliberalism was indeed finished. In terms of foreign policy, a Corbyn win would represent significant challenges for U.S. neoconservative primacy. That's why Pompeo assured "Jewish leaders" the U.S. would block Corbyn.

If Labour, despite the hostility of the corporate press, does manage to muddle through and best the Conservative Party December 12, then one takeaway must be that people have truly stopped paying attention to mainstream media.

The Ongoing Uprisings in Hong Kong, Iraq and Haiti

Feted with daily spacious coverage in the "newspaper of record," Hong Kong's anti-extradition/pro-democracy uprising suffered a blow yesterday when the occupation of Hong Kong Polytechnic University was rolled back by a sustained police assault.

According to Elaine Yu, Steven Lee Myers and Russell Goldman (see "Hong Kong Updates: More Than 1,000 Detained at a University, and a Warning From Beijing"),

About 1,100 people were detained near the PolyU campus between Monday and Tuesday, said Kwok Ka-chuen, a police spokesman. That figure would represent the largest roundup of protesters on a single day, making up almost a fifth of the total number of arrests since the protests began in June.

Having participated in the "Battle in Seattle," this is the question I keep asking myself about the Hong Kong uprising, "Where are the mass arrests?" It's what authorities did to combat the civil disobedience during the Seattle WTO Ministerial. They arrested people and bused them to an old naval base. Why isn't Hong Kong doing the same?

There are far fewer dispatches from Iraq compared to Hong Kong. The chief Times reporter in Baghdad, Alissa J. Rubin, shapes her reporting of the ongoing Iraq uprising to present it as an anti-Iranian rebellion.

I think Bill Van Auken of World Socialist Web Site gets it right in this morning's "The bloodbath in Baghdad." Both the U.S. and Iran are heavily invested in the government of Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi:

Ironically, both Washington and Tehran are opposed to the demand of the demonstrators for the downfall of the regime. Both the US and Iran have pursued their respective interests through Mahdi’s administration, even as US imperialism fights to effect regime change in Iran in order to eliminate an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

The US State Department, concerned for the most part in securing the US bases out of which thousands of US troops continue to operate in Iraq, had initially remained silent on the bloody suppression of protesters. Late last month, however, after it was reported that Iran had brokered an agreement between the major Iraqi political parties to support Mahdi’s remaining in power and to suppress the opposition in the streets, Washington began to make noises about respecting the demands of the protesters.

The State Department issued a vague threat of sanctions, naming no one in particular, but indicating that any official cooperating with Iran could be targeted. At the moment, the US has nothing better with which to replace Mahdi and his fellow thieves. They are the best that Washington could find after it toppled Saddam Hussein.

The New York Times, ever the pliant propaganda tool of US war aims, helped to promote the anti-Iranian narrative by publishing on Monday what it claimed was a “trove” of secret Iranian intelligence cables illustrating Iranian ties with various actors in the Iraqi government. A purportedly unknown source—perhaps within the US intelligence apparatus—provided the alleged cables to the Intercept, which handed them off to the Times.

While the US pursues its regional war aims in Iraq, and the Iranian government strives to suppress social unrest that it fears could—and with the recent protests over fuel price hikes already has—spread across its borders, the upsurge in Iraq points to a new way forward in the Middle East. Masses have taken to the streets to pursue their class interests and fight for social equality against a political elite that has promoted sectarian divisions.

At least there is reporting on Iraq to be found. One struggles to find any mention of the now two-month-old anti-government uprising in Haiti. Captains of the corporate media obviously agree with Trump and consider Haiti a "shithole" best to be ignored.

Fake News and Censorship, A.K.A, Propaganda

Western corporate mainstream media is performing poorly these days. Examples are numerous. The week-long absurd effort to airbrush the coup in Bolivia as a resignation by a corrupt autocrat comes to mind. Then there is framing of Roger Stone's conviction Friday as a vindication of Russiagate, when, as Craig Murray explains, it was the exact opposite:

The headline “Roger Stone: Trump Adviser Found Guilty On All Charges in Trump Hacking Case” is deliberately designed to make you believe a court has found Stone was involved in “Wikileaks hacking”. In fact this is the precise opposite of the truth. Stone was found guilty of lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee by claiming to have links to Wikileaks when in fact he had none. And of threatening Randy Credico to make Credico say there were such links, when there were not.

Let's not forget Jonathan Steele's OPCW bombshell published Friday by CounterPunch, "The OPCW and Douma: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Accused of Evidence-Tampering by Its Own Inspectors." You won't find a hint of that story in NYT, WaPo, AP, Reuters, or the Guardian. The corporate mainstream media are actively censoring the story. OPCW leadership generated a fraudulent report in order to shield the United States, France and the United Kingdom from war crimes allegations.

What you will find are stories about Prince Andrew and his connection with the late sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Unfortunately you won't find anything about Amy Robach's revelation that ABC spiked a story three years ago about Epstein's pedophile ring unless you watch Fox News, which Katie Halper correctly identifies as feeding into the information tribalism that divides (and rules) the nation.

The Hong Kong uprising and the Buttigieg presidential campaign also need to be included as "events" animated by the corporate media. So much reporting is devoted to both that "facts on the ground" are being created in the Western mind. This is how propaganda works.

Deval Patrick Doesn't Stand a Chance

From Lambert Strether's Water Cooler yesterday:

• “Big-dollar donors helped Deval Patrick lay groundwork for presidential campaign” [Open Secrets]. “Patrick’s Reason to Believe PAC, launched in 2018, brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars from just a handful of wealthy donors. It then spent a large chunk of that cash on campaign consulting and polling to prepare Patrick for a presidential run. As a hybrid PAC, Patrick’s group was able to accept unlimited contributions. And it did. Just six donors accounted for $620,000, making up nearly 85 percent of its total.” • Reason to believe.

• “Ex-Massachusetts Gov. Patrick announces Dem presidential bid” [Associated Press]. “Patrick was asked on CBS if he supports the ‘Medicare for All’ health care plan, which is pushed by Sanders and would replace job-based and individual private health insurance with a government-run plan that guarantees coverage for all with no premiums or deductibles and only minimal copays for certain services. ‘No, not in the terms we’ve been talking about,’ Patrick said. ‘I do support a public option, and if Medicare is that public option, I think it’s a great idea.'” • [Cheers erupt in the donor class]. I do support bicycles, and if fish are those bicycles, I think it’s a great idea.” 

• “Why Deval Patrick Is Making A Late Bid For The Democratic Nomination” [FiveThirtyEight]. “I think the real opening for Patrick is essentially to replace Pete Buttigieg as the candidate for voters who want a charismatic, optimistic, left-but-not-that-left candidate. Patrick, I think, is betting that there’s a “Goldilocks” opportunity for him — “Buttigieg but older,” or “Biden but younger” — a candidate who is viewed as both safe on policy and safe on electability grounds by Democratic establishment types and voters who just want a somewhat generic Democratic candidate that they are confident will win the general election. After all, in his rise in Massachusetts politics, Patrick was not that reliant on black support — the Bay State has a fairly small black population (9 percent). Instead, he won a competitive 2006 Democratic primary for governor by emerging as preferred candidate among the state’s white, educated, activist class. • Weird that the Massachusetts political establishment didn’t coalesce around a single candidate. Also, Patrick won’t get any Sanders voters, so if he gets any traction, Sanders will rise relative to the other candidates from whom Patrick does take votes. 

• “Deval Patrick, Foreclosure Mogul” [HuffPo]. Quite a lead: “When Deval Patrick’s daughter was growing up in the 1980s, her kindergarten teacher gave her an assignment: Go home and describe the four seasons to your mom and dad. So she did: ‘First you drive up and the doorman takes your car.’ For the daughter of a Boston power lawyer, the Four Seasons Hotel seemed as sensible a homework topic as the basics on winter, spring, summer and fall.” • Worth reading in full

Deval Patrick's announcement that he is seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party for POTUS is more evidence of panic (or brain death, take your pick) in the master class. Patrick, a Harvard alum, corporate attorney, former governor of Massachusetts, Bain Capital bigwig, is a B-grade Obama.

Someone should tell the oligarchs that Obama is no longer the heartthrob of the Democratic masses. Obama's second term delivered the Trumpocalypse. Hillary gets left holding the bag, but Obama is just as much to blame.

I know what they're thinking. With some luck, Patrick could coalesce the neoliberal vote -- swallow Buttigieg, Booker, Klobuchar and Harris, while euthanizing Biden -- at the same time taking a significant bite out of Warren's base. This is something Mike Bloomberg can't do.

But it's all a rich man's fantasy. The real marvel of the Democratic primary field to date is the tandem of Warren and Sanders, weighing in at somewhere around 40% in opinion polls. That's a solid 40%. And it's what terrifies the oligarchs because absent some sort of Hail Mary miracle it's only going to grow. If it grows any more we're looking at a majority.

Basically at this point the best the oligarchs can hope for is a brokered convention that delivers a neoliberal nominee with solid progressive bona fides (who would that be? Sherrod Brown?) as a compromise.

Washington Losing Control of the Narrative: Coup in Bolivia is Now Undeniable

Today Caitlin Johnstone has another worthwhile piece on the coup in Bolivia, “No No You Guys, THIS US-Backed Coup Is Perfectly Legitimate!” Alliance For Global Justice has published a statement on the coup. AFGJ has set up a Bolivia updates page. Reporting from La Paz, Clifford Krauss of The New York Times didn't make it to the front page, though he did get a thumbnail at the bottom of the fold.

The reason? After reading Krauss's "Bolivia’s Interim Leader Pledges to ‘Reconstruct Democracy’" it is well nigh impossible to deny that what happened in Bolivia is a coup. A civil war is unfolding there. At least The Times didn't censor the photo of Morales supporters marching in La Paz against self-declared president Jeanine Añez Chavez.

I was waiting to see how the military would handle the return of Movement toward Socialism (MAS) lawmakers to the legislature. MAS has a large majority, and it was the stated intention of the legislators to declare president Añez illegitimate.

As Krauss explains,

On Wednesday afternoon, after using tear gas to break up a peaceful protest by supporters of Mr. Morales, the police blocked about a dozen senators allied with the former president from entering the legislature. 

“Dictatorship! Dictatorship!” chanted the crowd accompanying the lawmakers.

Less than an hour later, as tear gas wafted outside the government palace, the armed forces announced a shake-up of the high command. An army general, Carlos Orellana Centellas, became the new top commander of the armed forces and promised to take orders from Ms. Añez.

“We will guarantee the security of the constitutional government,” General Orellana Centellas said.

The shakeup in the army high command is textbook coup d'etat stuff. The far-right coup leaders are clearing the deck of anyone squeamish about slaughtering Morales supporters. And make no mistake that is what it is coming. Judging from the size of the crowds in La Paz things are going to get very bloody.

By that time Clifford Krauss will be back in Houston reporting on petroleum and the news will be buried with not even a thumbnail bottom of the fold.

Already Washington and its captive OAS are losing control of the narrative because they can't prove any election fraud and they can't deny that Morales was the rightful winner of the October 20 election (who would have won even if it had go to a runoff). A coup d'etat in Bolivia is now undeniable.

Textbook Coup

It's getting harder for the corporate media to dress up the coup in Bolivia as a people power uprising. Reuters reports that

Earlier on Tuesday, [self-declared interim president] Anez called for Bolivians to come together but fell short of promising protection for MAS lawmakers who have asked for safety guarantees.

“We are emerging from one of the darkest episodes of our democratic history,” said Anez. “To those who have caused damage or committed any crime: God and justice will judge you.”

More than 30 election officials have been arrested following Morales’ resignation, according to the office of Bolivia’s attorney general.

That's why Morales had to resign; he was headed to prison otherwise. The fact that Peru and Ecuador refused to accommodate the Mexican transport of Morales shows that the coup was an international effort of the Organization of American states, which preposterously claimed that yes there was a coup but it was perpetrated by Morales himself when he engaged in electoral fraud on October 20.

On the purported vote rigging Jacobin writes,

Delegitimizing foreign elections where the wrong person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media. There is a great deal of uncritical acceptance of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) opinions on elections, including in coverage of Bolivia’s October vote (for example, BBC; Vox; Voice of America), despite the lack of evidence to back up its assertions. No mainstream outlet warned its readers that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments. In 1962, for example, it passed an official resolution claiming that the Cuban government was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system.” Furthermore, the organization is bankrolled by the US government; indeed, in justifying its continued funding, US AID argued that the OAS is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia.

In contrast, there was no coverage at all in US corporate media of the detailed new report from the Washington-based think tank CEPR, which claimed that the election results were “consistent” with the win totals announced. There was also scant mention of the kidnapping and torture of elected officials, the ransacking of Morales’s house, the burning of public buildings and of the indigenous Wiphala flag, all of which were widely shared on social media and would have suggested a very different interpretation of events.

Words have power. And framing an event is a powerful method of conveying legitimacy and suggesting action. “Coups,” almost by definition, cannot be supported, while “protests” generally should be. Chilean president Sebastian Piñera, a conservative, US-backed billionaire, has literally declared war on over a million people demonstrating against his rule. Corporate media, however, has framed that uprising not as a protest, but rather a “riot” (for example, NBC News; Reuters; Toronto Sun). In fact, Reuters described the events as Piñera responding to “vandals” and “looters.” Who would possibly oppose that?

Morales was the first indigenous president in his majority-indigenous nation — one that has been ruled by a white European elite since the days of the conquistadors. While in office, his Movement Towards Socialism party has managed to reduce poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent, cut unemployment in half, and conduct a number of impressive public works programs. Morales saw himself as part of a decolonizing wave across Latin America, rejecting neoliberalism and nationalizing the country’s key resources, spending the proceeds on health, education, and affordable food for the population.

Bolivia is headed toward civil war. Self-declared interim president Jeanine Añez Chavez is facing dissolution of her self-appointment today by a majority of legislators, according to Clifford Krauss:

It seemed uncertain that Ms. Añez would be able to calm the tense and deeply polarized nation. Shortly after her announcement, members of Mr. Morales’s party said they would hold another legislative session on Wednesday to nullify her decision.

Añez can ignore the duly elected legislature or she can order members of the majority imprisoned. Both are illegal and very difficult to defend in the mainstream press.

Añez has already called the army out into the streets. Can the army quell a popular uprising or are we headed toward another shattered nation?

We know from the last decade-plus that the U.S. prefers a failed state to a functioning one.

Two Problems with the Mainstream Narrative of Bolivia's Coup

UPDATE: There is a helpful synopsis provided by Antiwar's David Decamp of the "electoral irregularities" at the heart of the Bolivia coup:

The claims of election fraud stem from a 24-hour pause in the vote count on election day after 84 percent of the vote was tallied. After the pause, the data was updated, and it showed Morales with a 10 percent lead, which he needed for an immediate victory to prevent a run-off vote. The OAS report found Morales had a favorable increase in the last five percent of the votes that was not consistent with the first 95 percent.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a think-tank based in Washington, released their own detailed report on the election on Friday. The CEPR found "no evidence that irregularities or fraud affected the official result that gave President Evo Morales a first-round victory."

The CEPR argument for the increase in Morales votes towards the end was geography. The areas where the votes were counted before the 24-hour pause have a history of being friendlier to Morales’s opposition.

As for labeling the coup a non-coup, Jason Ditz reminds us why it is important:

The US not wanting to recognize a coup as a coup is not just about superficial appearances. Rather, US law forbids the US from providing military aid to a nation under military rule. The US has often used a failure to recognize to dodge that requirement, with Egypt a major recent example of a nation where an overt, violent military takeover went unrecognized by the US, in no small reason because the US preferred the junta to the elected government.

 ****

After his house was torched and a warrant issued for his arrest, ousted Bolivian president Evo Morales decided to take Mexico's offer of asylum.

There is little doubt that what transpired was a coup. Read the non-mainstream reporting from World Socialist Web Site and Max Blumenthal's Grayzone and a picture forming is of La Paz as a Kiev and Morales's Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) the victim of far-right political forces.

Two things interest me about the mainstream U.S. coverage of the Morales coup: 1) How a coup is being defined as a non-coup, and 2) How the purported election fraud which lies at the heart of the Morales coup has gone undefined altogether.

Regarding the first, the coup is being defined as a non-coup because the military isn't directly taking over the responsibilities of government. This has been repeated numerous times since Sunday, the latest example of which is found in "‘This Will Be Forever’: How the Ambitions of Evo Morales Contributed to His Fall" by Ernesto Londono, The New York Times' coup apologist:

Ms. Hummel [Calla Hummel, a political scientist at the University of Miami] said the sequence of events did not necessarily constitute a coup, considering that the military seems uninterested in taking control of the country. “We’re seeing people taking to the streets and demanding better governance, which is potentially hopeful,” she said.

Pretty weak. In other words, a thief isn't a thief if he doesn't wear the watch he just stole.

Second, Londono's total avoidance of an explanation of the October 20 presidential election fraud leads a seasoned news consumer to suspect a CoRev (color revolution) at work. Here is Londono's synopsis:

Mr. Morales was declared the winner in the Oct. 20 vote, albeit by a tighter margin than in any presidential election since 2005. But his victory set off a firestorm of protests and violent clashes amid mounting evidence of electoral irregularities.

As the unrest spread, and the legitimacy of his victory became impossible to defend, Mr. Morales on Sunday called for a new vote. But it was too little too late. With much of the police force in open revolt, the military chiefs on Sunday urged Mr. Morales to resign.

So what were the "electoral irregularities"? Not a word.

According to Blumenthal,

On October 20, Morales won re-election by more than 600,000 votes, giving him just above the 10 percent margin needed to defeat opposition presidential candidate Mesa in the first round.

Experts who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia’s publicly available voting data found no evidence of irregularities or fraud. But the opposition claimed otherwise, and took to the streets in weeks of protests and riots.

The events that precipitated the resignation of Morales were indisputably violent. Right-wing opposition gangs attacked numerous elected politicians from the ruling leftist MAS party. They then ransacked the home of President Morales, while burning down the houses of several other top officials. The family members of some politicians were kidnapped and held hostage until they resigned. A female socialist mayor was publicly tortured by a mob.

Following the forced departure of Morales, coup leaders arrested the president and vice president of the government’s electoral body, and forced the organization’s other officials to resign. Camacho’s followers proceeded to burn Wiphala flags that symbolized the country’s Indigenous population and the plurinational vision of Morales.

The Organization of American States, a pro-US organization founded by Washington during the Cold War as an alliance of right-wing anti-communist countries in Latin America, helped rubber stamp the Bolivian coup. It called for new elections, claiming there were numerous irregularities in the October 20 vote, without citing any evidence. Then the OAS remained silent as Morales was overthrown by his military and his party’s officials were attacked and violently forced to resign.

The day after, the Donald Trump White House enthusiastically praised the coup, trumpeting it as a “significant moment for democracy,” and a “strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Things are going to get very messy in Bolivia.

Caitlin Johnstone on the Coup in Bolivia

It is noteworthy that neither Chilean president Sebastián Piñera nor Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, nor Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi for that matter, have "stepped down" despite enormous protests for more than a month, but the one socialist president with a true mass base of support, Bolivian president Evo Morales, has "resigned." Might it be that the latter is an opponent of the Washington Consensus while the former are supporters? Might it be the latter is "coup appropriate" but the former have the backing of the United States?

Caitlin Johnstone has the must-read piece, "MSM Adamantly Avoids The Word 'Coup' In Bolivia Reporting," on the coup in Bolivia (which is shaping up to be reminiscent of Ukraine 2014).

Kshama Sawant has Won! Wave Approaching!

I’m incredibly proud to announce our victory! Together, we defeated the determined efforts of the world’s richest man to buy Seattle City Hall. Thank you for all your support and sacrifices.

With mail-in ballot returns as of Friday night, we’ve surged from being eight points behind on election night to leading by 3.6% and 1,515 votes, with that number likely to rise even further as the final thousand ballots are counted.

These election results are a repudiation of the relentless attacks of the billionaire class and the lies of the corporate establishment. Working people have stood up and said loud and clear: Seattle is not for sale! We want to keep our socialist voice in City Hall.

We won a stunning 60% of the later ballots, which come overwhelmingly from young and working-class people. While our district includes some of the wealthiest parts of the city — and is home to many members of the corporate elite like billionaire Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz — more working-class areas and neighborhoods with many young people and people of color, like Seattle’s Central District and Capitol Hill, voted decisively for our campaign. Many such precincts voted for us by more than 70% even on election night's initial returns.

Kshama Sawant 

In the end, all Amazon's loot could not buy a city council; it did buy the preferred candidate of the plutocracy, a bland gay aspiring capitalist, nine percentage points. Which is a lot.

As David Kroman writes in Crosscut,

When she’s sworn in for a third term this January, Sawant will be City Hall’s most senior elected official, a reality few could have imagined when she first declared her candidacy in 2013 on an explicitly Marxist platform.

In Sawant’s view, her reelection was not despite her far-left platform, but because of it. “It is the power of socialist ideas, Marxist ideas, the power of our analysis, strategies, our understanding of class struggle, the historical memory and lessons we bring of the past victories and defeats of our class, the working class,” she said.

For Seattle’s business community, her election represents a reversal of expectations. With just weeks until election day, groups such as the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce felt optimistic both that Sawant would be defeated by her opponent Egan Orion and that several candidates would be elected who were more friendly to the chamber’s agenda. While they suspected they’d lose races in Districts 1 and 2, there was an expectation that they could win in most or all of the remaining districts.

But then Amazon wrote a check for $1 million to the chamber-supported political action committee — bringing its total for the election cycle up to $1.5 million — and things began to turn south. In the race for District 3 between Sawant and Orion, polling two weeks before election day had Orion winning by high-single digits, according to a source familiar with the late-tracking polls. But the same polling also showed a strongly negative reaction to the Amazon contribution, which spelled trouble for those most associated with the cash dumps.

[snip]

In her speech to supporters, Sawant called the results a “mandate for bold, progressive ideas.” She called on her “progressive” colleagues-to-be to work to implement a hard-left agenda. Notably, she explicitly called for reviving the now-famous “head tax” on high-grossing businesses — which, once upon a time, was assumed to be politically toxic.

“The overall city council results were as close to a referendum on the Amazon tax as possible,” she said. “I look forward to working with this new progressive city council to urgently pass a strong tax on the largest businesses in the city, like Amazon.”

So what are the takeaways?

First, corporate cash boomerangs. The plutocrats are so unpopular with the electorate a proud Marxist can triumph in their backyard. This will necessitate some shrewd re-branding by the oligarchy. But they don't seem to have read this memo yet. Bloomberg's nascent quest for the Democratic nomination, as Maureen Dowd notes, will all but guarantee a victory for Elizabeth Warren. And one also-ran after the next in the lineup of the neoliberal anointed -- Klobuchar, Harris, Buttigieg, Booker -- continues to receive free advertising from The New York Times. All to no avail because the neoliberal anointed remain ten-points south of the big three -- Biden, Warren and Sanders.

Second, a blue tsunami approaches. Trump's tent was much bigger in 2016 than it will be next year. In 2016 Trump could rope in anti-war, anti-free-trade, pro-social-democracy voters; he can't do that this go-round. Trump shattered Rojava merely to move troops and bases to Deir ez-Zor; he's looking to settle with China; and he never delivered on infrastructure and was obviously never serious about it. Plus, after Charlottesville, young voters and African Americans will not sit out 2020 like they did 2016.

Third, nothing matters unless policies are actually implemented. So let's keep our eye on this newly-elected progressive council. Winning a left-leaning election mandate rarely translates into systemic change. Look at what people have to show for two Obama landslides: the (un)Affordable Care Act and scotched JCPOA.  Let's see if the head tax on Amazon is reintroduced and passed.

There's a Connection between Kshama Sawant and Michael Bloomberg: the Growing Panic of the Super-Rich

I learned about both yesterday late in the afternoon: Kshama Sawant's wonderful reversal of fortune in Seattle City Council District Three and Michael Bloomberg's announcement that he was entering the Democratic Primary despite a declaration earlier in the year that he was sitting it out.

On Wednesday when I made the argument to coworkers that Kshama's apparent defeat in a city council district spells trouble for a progressive presidential nominee, someone like a Sanders or a Warren, heading the Democratic ticket I was greeted with quizzical looks. Remember the Tip O'Neill line, "All politics is local." If a popular progressive incumbent with broad support (look at her endorsements!) can be knocked off by concentrated corporate cash, there's little doubt that it can be replicated nationally.

It's still early. There are two more ballot drops today, but, as Rich Smith wrote yesterday,

Sawant needed 58% of the vote today to stay alive, and she got just over 59%. Later ballots lean left, and if she repeats this performance in tomorrow's ballot drop, she'll keep her seat.

Bloomberg's promise of a presidential run reaches the front pages of the mainstream media every four years. The reason is always the same: Bloomberg, as the defender of U.S. oligarchy, feels the electorate veering too far to the left and hence in need of a little oligarchic discipline.

The chutzpah of the super-rich is amazing. Bloomberg has about as much chance of winning the Democratic Primary as any of the other neoliberal also-rans already on the dung heap -- Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, et al.

According to Alexander Burns,

Mr. Bloomberg, 77, initially bowed out of the 2020 race because of Mr. Biden’s apparent strength, but he has since grown skeptical that Mr. Biden is on track to win the Democratic nomination and he does not see the two leading liberals in the race, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as strong candidates for the general election. [It's actually the reverse: Bloomberg sees a strong possibility that Warren or Sanders might end up in the White House.]

But Mr. Bloomberg would face a difficult path in a Democratic primary largely defined so far by debates about economic inequality. His presence in the race would offer fodder to the party’s rising populist wing, led by Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, who contend that the extremely rich already wield far too much influence in politics. He is a former Republican who registered as a Democrat ahead of the midterm elections last year. And his mayoral record, including his support for stop-and-frisk policing and his championing of charter schools, has the potential to alienate pillars of the Democratic Party’s political base.

Ms. Warren, who has sparred from afar with Mr. Bloomberg over her proposals to tax the extremely rich, issued a blistering fund-raising message calling his potential candidacy “another example of the wealthy wanting our government and economy to only work for themselves.” Campaigning in North Carolina on Thursday evening, Ms. Warren offered a restrained comment on Mr. Bloomberg and cast her candidacy as a “grass roots movement.”

“It’s not enough just to have somebody come in, anybody, and say they’re going to buy this election,” she said.

Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, signaled the stiff resistance Mr. Bloomberg would face if he joined the race.

“More billionaires seeking more political power surely isn’t the change America needs,” Mr. Shakir said in an email.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that the former mayor has grown uneasy about the existing trajectory of the Democratic primary. He said Mr. Bloomberg viewed President Trump as an “unprecedented threat to our nation,” and noted the Democrat’s heavy spending in the 2018 midterm elections and this week’s off-year races in Virginia.

One thing is for sure. The rich are getting scared. If Kshama Sawant can overcome a tidal wave of corporate cash, it's good news for Warren, for Bernie, for all of us, and will foretell a rough road for Mike Bloomberg's candidacy.

Maybe I Don't Know Myself

The function of neoliberal government is to serve and protect concentrated wealth. Neoliberalism is defined as "free market trade, deregulation of financial markets, individualization, and the shift away from state welfare provision (austerity)." Mainstream political parties adhere to and enforce the neoliberal credo.

The problem is that voters no longer believe in neoliberalism. Trump is a prime example. Trump is still a market fundamentalist, but he is cagey enough, like a professional wrestler, to "body slam" aspects of neoliberalism, like free trade, and slap a bunch of tariffs on allies and enemies alike.

A real opponent of neoliberalism is something different though. And when a real opponent of neoliberalism appears on the scene and demonstrates an ability to win over voters, then the bloodless zombie snaps to attention.

Tariq Ali predicted five-years ago in The Extreme Centre that neoliberalism had another quarter-century of life left in it. It was hard for me to accept at the time, but Ali is probably right.

Kshama Sawant is another sort of example. She is fearless. She is a socialist who campaigned explicitly in the recent election on the Green New Deal and rent control. Her opponent was a non-entity for whom there was zero -- I kid you not -- visible proof of life in my meanderings throughout the council district. Yet, as of yesterday's ongoing vote count, Kshama is still eight points behind.

According to Lester Black,

Is it time to count Sawant out? It doesn’t look great for Sawant supporters, but we can't write her off yet. King County Elections has counted 35,291 returned ballots from District 3 as of today, but the county has only reported 23,929 votes so far. That means there’s 11,362 votes to be counted—and only 1,925 separate Sawant from Orion.

The chamber of commerce political action committee, engorged with donations from Amazon and Starbucks, blanketed the district with media on behalf of Orion and against Sawant.

At this point it looks like a majority of voters did as they were told and got rid of that pesky brown socialist.

It has left me more discouraged than I imagined. A mini existential crisis. If I don't know my own neighborhood, a place I have lived for more than 25 years, maybe I don't know myself.

One thing is for sure. Money is most powerful. It's going to take an Iraq uprising to shake the neoliberal death-grip. As Bob Dylan sings, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

Socialist Kshama Sawant in Trouble

Kshama came from 7.5 points back on election eve to beat Richard Conlin in
2013. But eight points is a larger margin to overcome and the environment
is far more polarized than in 2013. It's too early to spill some tears, but
it doesn't look good for Kshama.

I ran into one of her street organizers last week, and I asked him how he
felt. He said it was going to be close. I said, "Really? There's zero Orion
presence in the district." He acknowledged that to be true, but he said
that the Kshama campaign was having difficulty reaching people in the big
apartment buildings, and that occupancy in those buildings had flipped by
a third since 2015.

When I gave him my line about an Orion win in District Three would be of
Trumpian magnitude and even closer akin to a miracle since the district is
not home to the average Trump voter, he replied elliptically, "You'd be
surprised."

He tried to get me to volunteer this past Saturday but I demurred. I
promised him I would wear my Kshama shirt around the district -- running,
walking to work, etc. Which I did. And rather than the love that greeted
me earlier in the year I was getting chilly bizarre vibes, mostly from
guys.

So the saturation mailings obviously paid off. Politics isn't much of a
science but the definition of enemies has been pretty much perfected.
Kshama was demonized.

If she can't squeak through this time it is going to be a tremendous win
for the forces of darkness.

Rich Smith provides an accurate overview of the Amazon-vs.-Sawant campaign.

Money creates fear.

If Kshama loses it bodes ill for Warren and Sanders.

If Kshama loses it shows neoliberalism can continue to zombie along.

Saudi Aramco IPO + Tulsi Gabbard's Whispered Third Party Campaign, a Mainstream Conspiracy Theory

Clifford Krauss's "Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming" appeared on the front page yesterday. It tells the story of major new oil production from Norway, Canada, Brazil and Guyana coming online in the next few years. Krauss implies that this coming oil glut is behind not only the recent re-announcement of Saudi Aramco's IPO but also a likely rationale for another war drive against Iran and Venezuela:

Canada, Norway, Brazil and Guyana are all relatively stable at a time of turbulence for traditional producers like Venezuela and Libya and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their oil riches should undercut efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to support prices with cuts in production and give American and other Western policymakers an added cushion in case there are renewed attacks on oil tankers or processing facilities in the Persian Gulf.

[snip]

There is already a glut on the world market, even with exports from Venezuela and Iran sharply curtailed by American sanctions. Should their production come back, that glut would only expand.

The Aramco IPO was first announced three years ago. But low oil prices, a botched genocidal war in neighboring Yemen, a sloppy assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, climate change, and last but not least, the devastating Houthi drone attack on Aramco production facilities in September have stymied crown prince Mohammed bin Salman from realizing his dream of a $2 trillion initial public offering.

The $2 trillion IPO has now dropped to $1.5 trillion, and it will take place sometime next month on the Riyadh exchange, not in London or New York. No date has been announced. So don't hold your breath.

****

Caitlin Johnstone makes mention of the fascinating whisper campaign regarding a third party run by Democratic Party presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard that has proliferated in the last few weeks:

The narrative that Gabbard is preparing a third party run is revealing, in that there’s zero evidence for it whatsoever yet they keep bringing it up. It’s literally just something pundits started saying in an authoritative tone of voice, and it was magically transformed into accepted orthodoxy. It’s a great illustration of how effective the establishment narrative managers are; they can create the illusion of a fact out of thin air just by saying something over and over again in an assertive tone.

I had not one but two coworkers question me about this. I said I would eat my cap if it turns out to be true.

U.S. ballot access laws are splintered throughout 50 states. The timetable precludes Gabbard from pursuing a viable third party challenge. She would have to drop out of the Democratic primaries now with hundreds of millions in her coffers and an enormous staff just to get on the ballot in major states in time for the election next year. It's absurd. A sanctioned mainstream conspiracy theory.

The more likely third party campaign will be by a Wall-Street backed neoliberal once it appears inevitable (early March?) that Elizabeth Warren will win the nomination.

A Specter is Haunting Wall Street

Wall Street must have finally figured out that Elizabeth Warren will be the likely winner of the Democratic Party nomination because a piercing bestial wail has gone up in the last couple of weeks, one that coincides with a Buttigieg boom. According to Kate Kelly and Lisa Lerer in "As Warren Gains in Race, Wall Street Sounds the Alarm":

Interviews with more than two dozen hedge-fund managers, private-equity and bank officials, analysts and lobbyists made clear that Ms. Warren has stirred more alarm than any other Democratic candidate. (Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a socialist, is also feared, but is considered less likely to capture the nomination.)

Wall Street has long tried to influence American politics and generally donated to both parties, though it traditionally has been more aligned with Republicans. But while there’s no coordinated strategy, the industry is more or less united against Ms. Warren. With just months before the first voting begins, it is unleashing a barrage of public attacks, donating money to her rivals and scrambling to counter her blistering narrative about Wall Street.

“Everyone is nervous,” said Steven Rattner, a prominent Democratic donor who manages the wealth of Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor. “What scares the hell out of me is the way she would fundamentally change our free-enterprise system.”

While even some of Ms. Warren’s detractors see her soak-the-rich approach as a winning issue in the Democratic primary, President Trump and his team would undoubtedly try to weaponize it against her in a general election. Already, some Republicans are defining Ms. Warren as a veiled socialist who would disrupt the fragile economy with her sweeping plans.

As president, Ms. Warren would also confront a long list of powerful and well-funded opponents on Wall Street, potentially complicating her ability to enact her agenda. Her tightly organized campaign has no Wall Street liaison or circle of advisers drawn from the industry and has done little outreach to the finance world.

Yet even if Ms. Warren cannot get some of her more far-reaching proposals through Congress, finance executives fear that as president she would appoint regulators who take a far stricter view of the industry.

Ms. Warren’s campaign declined to comment, pointing to her public remarks, in which she has welcomed doing battle with Wall Street.

In recent weeks, Wall Street’s warning signals about Ms. Warren have begun exploding into the public, coloring analyst reports and earnings calls, and echoing from the stages of industry conferences. The billionaire money manager Leon Cooperman castigated her in an open letter released Thursday, and on Friday Goldman Sachs researchers suggested that tax hikes proposed by Ms. Warren and others could lower corporate earnings by 11 percent.

Prominent money managers have predicted a double-digit decline in the stock market if Ms. Warren wins the presidency, a claim that some skeptics find hyperbolic. Some traders and investors have said, only half-kiddingly, that they’ll leave the country — or at least, relatively high-tax states like New York — to minimize the impact of what they view as punitive policies.

With the presidential election one year away it is clear that the real contest will not be Warren versus Trump but Warren versus Wall Street. As Kelly and Lerer note, Watt Street's preferred candidates are Buttigieg and Trump:

Ms. Warren also ranks well down the list in money raised from individual donors in the finance industry. She has raised about $330,000, according to year-to-date figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, far less than Mr. Buttigieg, who leads the Democrats with nearly $1.3 million. (At about $1.5 million, Mr. Trump is the biggest beneficiary of finance-industry donations.)

In her presidential campaign, Ms. Warren has eschewed donations from corporate PACs and bundlers, swearing off big donor events as she collects a flood of small donations that have put her among the race’s leading fund-raisers. Last month, her campaign announced that they would no longer accept contributions of more than $200 from executives at big banks, hedge funds or private equity firms.

To understand why Warren is shaping up to be a radical, transformative figure, all one need do is read about how she proposes to finance her Medicare For All plan (see Margot Sanger-Katz and Sarah Kliff, "Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Medicare for All’ Math"):

• Employers would be required to pay fees to the federal government, equivalent to 98 percent of what they now spend on their employees’ health care. Some companies would be exempt, and companies with unionized work forces would be able to lower this payment if they increased workers’ wages. Currently, companies vary greatly in the cost and generosity of their health benefits, so this fee would vary substantially by firm. ($8.8 trillion)

• States and local governments would be required to make payments to the federal government, similar to what they currently spend on government employee benefits and their share of Medicaid expenses. ($6.1 trillion)

• Corporate taxation would be increased. ($2.9 trillion) 

• Tax collections would increase through improvements to I.R.S. enforcement, which Ms. Warren believes could raise a lot of money. ($2.3 trillion)

• The top 1 percent of individual earners would pay new taxes on their capital gains; they would pay taxes on increases in investment value annually, instead of waiting until assets are sold. ($2 trillion)

• Income tax collections would increase, since workers would no longer pay part of their salaries for insurance premiums, which are not taxed now. ($1.4 trillion)

• Billionaires would pay a higher wealth tax than the rate Ms. Warren has previously proposed: 6 percent, up from 3 percent. ($1 trillion) 

• A new financial transactions tax would be imposed on stock trades. ($800 billion) 

• Pentagon spending from an overseas contingency fund, often criticized as a slush fund, would be eliminated. ($800 billion)

• Income earned by immigrants, following the passage of her immigration overhaul plan, would provide new tax revenues. ($400 billion)

• A risk fee on the liabilities of banks with more than $50 billion in assets would be introduced. ($100 billion)

It's the most radical, substantial attack on the U.S. oligarchy by a viable major-party presidential candidate in my lifetime.

So what is Wall Street going to do?

First, the financial industry will keep doing what it has been doing: scaremongering and funneling money and media attention to Mayor Pete.

The problem for Wall Street is if they are seen as the source of the attacks the attacks will actually boomerang. That's how unpopular Wall Street and its neoliberal political creed are. I'm sure right now a suitable cutout -- small farmers, public housing mothers -- is being hunted up to deliver the anti-Warren message.

Another problem for Wall Street is that its preferred candidates -- Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar -- are all unpopular with voters. This leaves Joe Biden, who is not viable, and Pete Buttigieg, who is not electable.

Buttigieg's principal shortcoming in the Democratic primary is that black voters don't trust an LGBTQ Harvard elite who as mayor can't even control his own police force. Young people don't trust him either, while older voters who support Biden are just as likely to transfer their allegiance to Warren because Mayor Pete makes loves to a man.

By early March, if Wall Street can't somehow transfer all of Biden's supporters to Buttigieg and Warren and Sanders are left standing tall, the Democratic National Committee will do everything in its power to hobble its front-runners, and Mike Bloomberg will begin his quadrennial talk of a third party challenge.

Chicago Teachers Back in Class Today

The Chicago Teachers Union strike is over. Though the contract vote ended up being close, Mitch Smith and Monica Davey (see "Chicago Teachers’ Strike, Longest in Decades, Ends") conclude that it's a win for the union:

In the end, the clash between the teachers and Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, appeared to have brought mixed results. The city agreed to spend millions of dollars on reducing class sizes; promised to pay for hundreds more social workers, nurses and librarians; and approved a 16 percent salary increase over the coming five years. But not all union members were satisfied; a vote to approve a tentative deal was noticeably split, and some teachers wanted to press on to seek steeper reductions in class sizes, more teacher preparation time and aid for special education.

Still, the strike in Chicago, which followed a series of major teacher walkouts in conservative states like West Virginia and Oklahoma as well as liberal cities like Los Angeles and Denver, reflected a renewed wave of activism from teachers.

The reporting on this strike has been negligible in the mainstream national media. The Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2012 was more closely covered, probably because it featured Democratic Party big-shot mayor Rahm Emanuel battling no-holds-barred against a principal constituency of the Democratic Party, organized labor.

The 2012 strike spotlighted the abject neoliberal worship of the Democratic Party leadership. Nothing has changed in seven years, and this despite the fact that Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned explicitly on promises to enact the very changes the Chicago Teachers Union were willing to strike for -- smaller class size, more nurses, librarians and social workers.

Once again the voting public is offered up an example of the death grip of neoliberalism on representative democracy. You can be black; you can be a black woman; you can be a black LGBTQ woman; you can be a black LGBTQ woman who won a historic election by campaigning against neoliberalism, but none of it makes any difference once you enter government. Neoliberalism -- austerity, market orthodoxy, a tax code that favors the wealthy -- must be defended at all costs.

The 2019 Chicago Teachers Union strike is more fodder for another Blue Wave in 2020. It is bad news for Trump and bad news for Buttigieg, but also a warning for what is in store for Elizabeth Warren should she manage to find her way to the White House.