The Nation: Joe Biden: An Anti-Endorsement

[JoeOtterbein]

[link:https://www.thenation.com/article/biden-2020-trump-nafta/|

His long record of poor judgment and cozying up to bankers make him the wrong candidate to take on Donald Trump.

By The Nation

n recent weeks we at The Nation, like many other progressives, have come under increasing pressure to choose between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. We’re going to resist that pressure to endorse—for now. Not just because we find much to admire in both candidates’ programs and in the way both have conducted their campaigns (especially their rejection of corporate cash and wealthy funders in favor of small donors) but also because we continue to believe the presence of both candidates on the ballot widens the left lane in our politics, exposing the broadest possible public to Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and measures to rein in corporate power.
We also believe vigorous public debate is the best way for the strongest progressive platform to reach and be embraced by a majority of voters. Progressives may not agree with centrist Democrats like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, but engaging with and answering their criticisms now is essential—not merely to win in 2020 but also to build public pressure on a Congress whose members have proved reluctant to defy their corporate benefactors.

Yet that very debate has been stifled by the continuing candidacy of a man whose chief rationale for running—that he alone can defeat Donald Trump—has become increasingly threadbare. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden offers the promise of picking up where the Obama administration left off: a restoration of business as usual for the K Street lobbyists and Wall Street speculators whose prosperity the 2008 financial crisis did little to disturb. Indeed, as Joseph N. DiStefano reports in this issue, the man posing as “middle-class Joe” has built his career and his family’s wealth on an eagerness to serve not the many Americans crushed by credit card debt but the very banks whose hands are around their throats. The candidate who insists Medicare for All is too expensive for Americans is also the candidate who, like Clinton, endorsed NAFTA, China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership—all of which have savaged US manufacturing and workers. Clinton’s record cost her the industrial heartland (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan) and, with it, the election.

snip

more at link

[Drunken Irishman]

1. meh

[highplainsdem]

2. LOL!

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. This is the kind of VILE crap that got us where we are today when it was done

about you know who a while back.

People actively engaged in making that HAPPEN AGAIN right here in river city.

[highplainsdem]

7. It's absolutely idiotic, with the Nation's editors marching toward irrelevance. What are they going

to do if Biden is the nominee? Promote a third party candidate? Advise Dems to stay home (which this lunatic editorial in effect will do if Biden is the nominee)?

They can't choose yet between Sanders and Warren because they're not sure if one of those two might somehow win and they're afraid to be seen backing the wrong candidate there.

But they launch this disgusting attack on the current front-runner, who IS a liberal.

And I'd guess they want Biden out because they know damn well Warren and Sanders can't beat him in the primary.

The Nation's editors apparently really don't care about beating Trump, unless a progressive candidate they can salivate over is our nominee.

Shame on them.

[George II]

15. It's unbelievable that The Nation doesn't even have the guts to post a byline for that trash.

[highplainsdem]

20. Oh, it's believable that they're cowardly enough not to have a byline. It's a cowardly position to

take: Get out of the race, front-runner, so our more progressive but weaker candidates have a better chance!

Pathetic.

I hope The Nation loses a lot of subscribers over this.

They've lost all credibility.

[redqueen]

26. Editorials do not have bylines.

They are published by the editorial board.

[thesquanderer]

29. The lack of a byline in a publication's editorial is its biggest endorsement of the position.

It means it's not the position of one person, but the official position of the publication. Similarly, the New York Times editorial never tells you which member of the editorial board wrote it. For better or worse, it is the strongest endorsement of a position that a publication can give.

[George II]

30. The link calls it an "article".

[thesquanderer]

35. Ah. The site calls it an editorial, though.

If you click the "author" you can see what else they have presented under that authorship:

https://www.thenation.com/authors/the-nation/

I don't think it's designed to be a smokescreen.

[Eliot Rosewater]

66. Why is this FUCKING CRAP

still on the site DEDICATED to support Democrats?

[Blue_Adept]

68. I know! Echo chamber material only!

[Gothmog]

51. I also laughed at this editorial

It is funny. I got an e-mail earlier today asking for donations and/or subscription for this publication. That is not going to happen

[50 Shades Of Blue]

4. I don't trust The Nation.

[pfeiffer]

8. Me neither...

And I never thought Rudy Guliani could grammatically write that well...

[The Mouth]

37. You owe me

A new keyboard

[Ilsa]

33. Me neither. If Vanderhueven comes on tv, I change the channel. NT

[comradebillyboy]

5. Ah yes, Putin apologist Katrina Vanden Heuvel calls on Biden to

drop out.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/07/19/katrina_vanden_heuvel_media_rhetoric_disproportionate_to_what_we_saw_they_lost_their_bearings.html

[hlthe2b]

6. Taking a pause from their Russia worship i see. Was this written by Katrina V-H's husband

as well? Putin-approved.

[George II]

12. Even The Nation didn't have the guts to say who actually wrote it.

[awesomerwb1]

9. I'd be embarrassed to post that crap

and I'm not even a Biden guy yet.

So what's next? On op ed from Nina Turner?

[mcar]

63. You mean there hasn't been one yet?

[George II]

10. A stealth attempt to attack Biden, "it's not MY opinion!" But it doesn't even say who wrote it.

[LongtimeAZDem]

14. Maybe someone is branching out from Politico

[NurseJackie]

17. ...

[George II]

31. ...

[Gothmog]

52. LOL

[LiberalLovinLug]

40. The editorial board of The Nation

[evertonfc]

11. the Nation,

has a circulation of about 130k and it's political views, although align with mine, DO NOT represent the vast majoirty of America. It just lost a reader after this hit piece on our former VP. Joe Biden was good enough for Obama. I, for one, am done with this rag. Endorse whoever you like but an "anti endorsement" on a true and blue Democrat is disgusting. Luckily, no one much cares what The Nation thinks. Adios Amigo.. ( making a donation to Biden as we speak)

[George II]

13. But for some untold reason this found it's way onto DU.

[The Mouth]

38. We need to be aware of crap like this

I doubt this editorial will change the mind of a single person on this forum, except in how they regard The Nation.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

16. K and R!

[LeftTurn3623]

18. I have a concern with these issues as well

Biden’s long record of poor judgment—on everything from the 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration to his botched handling of Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas to his defense of Bill Clinton’s brutal welfare cuts to his support for the Iraq War to his role as cheerleader for Wall Street deregulation—renders him an even weaker opponent for a president whose reelection poses a clear and present danger to America’s survival as a constitutional republic.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

19. Yep.

[loyalsister]

24. Yep

A lower dose of the toxicity that brought us here is not what I want either. If we have any questions about whether it will be more of the same, we need only observe the decision to not discourage Superpac formation.

[OldRed2450]

27. What was Elizabeth Warren doing in the 90's?

When Biden voted for the crime bill? Defended Big Chemical and Insurance Corporations.

[MarcA]

42. What's Joe Biden doing Now with those corporations? n/t

[treestar]

58. They should have balanced the positives

that would make the opinion more credible. If you mention only negatives, you are open to the charge of demanding perfection.

[beastie boy]

21. What is "anti-endorsement"? Is this what people say when they are too embarrassed to go full

"anyone but Biden"?

[Cha]

23. lol.. the Nation's "anti-endorsement" is actually an Endorsement

for Joe Biden! so Yay!

[Cha]

22. This is Good for Joe Biden.. the Nation has gone way down

hill since I first got it in 2001.

[OldRed2450]

25. I just donated $50

to Biden.

[trueblue2007]

45. Good for you. I've only donated 10 bucks so far. When I get my SS this month, I'll donate again.

[DBoon]

28. I don't care

I would vote for a dead tree stump if you could convince me that it would deliver the swing states to the democratic party.

Once when I was much younger, I would make derogatory statements about "corporate liberals" as though they were the enemy.

After decades of Reagan/Bush/Bush/Trump, I have come to appreciate that there are far more horrific alternatives to "corporate liberals".

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. I sure wish certain candidates' supporters would support their candidate

instead of trashing the others.

[Peacetrain]

34. when its all you have.. you do what you have to I guess..

[NYMinute]

36. The Nation is fast becoming irrelevant and divisive nt

[Katalino]

39. That's the pro-Sandees magazine that once denied Russian involvement in DNC hacking

the nation, also known as Katrina vanden Heuvel.

[MarcA]

41. Spot on article by the Nation.

All the denials, deflections and failed attempts at humor notwithstanding.

[George II]

43. Well whadda ya know:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287338749

[LanternWaste]

44. Great thing about editorials is they're under no obligation to provide objective evidence...

...to support the absurd conclusions they often reach.

Thanks for an accurate example of that very lack of journalistic integrity!!!!

[LiberalLovinLug]

46. Some here will have no liberal publication left to read. One by one they are deemed "trash"

If they dare not support their preferred candidate.

As one by one paper and website side with progressive candidates like Sanders or Warren, they are smeared and attacked. Do people realize just how much of a monopoly the RW has on our news media, especially radio? And how few papers or other liberal sources we have? (thank gawd for DU). How much we should help them survive. Because even if they don't support your particular candidate, they all agree with you and your priorities waaaaaay more than any RW publication. I'd go so far as to say even more than corporate false-equivalent toting MSM news networks.

Just recently ThinkProgress shut down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/business/media/thinkprogress-closing.html
But they put out a hit piece on Sanders, so maybe they were okay?

Link to tweet

I hated that piece that even the editor Jodi Enda, admitted later was "overly harsh". But I still lament yet another pro-Democratic pro-liberal site and their voices are now shut down. Because while I think they were wrong about Sanders, its more wrong to shut off yet another voice to promote Democrats/liberals in general against a sea of RW monopolies of news talk radio, TV, with Fox, Clearchannel, Sinclair group....

TYT is doing some great work lately. But they are also demonized because they support Sanders.

I really hope Sanders (or Warren) wins. But I wonder how that will all develop in here. When one by one paper or show endorses them if they do. And more and more journalists and papers whom you previously supported, are added to your shit list, until there are none left.

[treestar]

60. They didn't support Sanders

They specifically wrote against Biden. And for the usual dumb reasons and perfectionist, one-sided negativity.

[LiberalLovinLug]

64. One persons "dumb reasons and perfectionist, one-sided negativity."

Is what another person would call the uncomfortable truth.

[treestar]

67. there can be those about all the candidates

nobody's perfect. If you must nitpick, we can find stuff about all of them. We have to be positive.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

47. This is disqualifying.

[Green Line]

48. This crap is costing me money

Every time something like this is posted I have to donate to Joe.

[Gothmog]

50. I maxed out for the primary and so I cannot do this

I may to donate to the super pac

[Gothmog]

49. LOL-Biden is not going to withdraw due to a silly editorial

Link to tweet

[kevink077]

53. Nonsense

Biden has been a solid progressive the last 20 years. Trump knows he is the sure candidate to wipe him out necktie November. That is why Trump is staying so silent about Warren and Sanders. He goes after Biden daily.

[Downtown Hound]

54. And The Nation's constant downplaying and covering for Russia

and Putin repeatedly makes me glad I cancelled my subscription years ago. They've become a joke.

[Maven]

56. +1

[treestar]

62. I subscribed for years and then cancelled when

they started going on about Obama too negatively. I put up with their Clinton bashing in the 90s.

[emmaverybo]

55. The Nation will take you to The Kremlin. What a trip! Details here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212663714

[highplainsdem]

59. How pathetic. And their trip will "review the Gorbachev years" as if THAT has anything to do

with the thug currently running that country.

[Gothmog]

69. I got the same e-mail

I will not be supporting anything being promoted by this silly rag

[revmclaren]

57. The Nation is a Putin apologist publication.

Interesting how so many Russian hacking supporters continually bash Biden both on and off DU.

DUers can use the links in this post for a very eye opening experience...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212439167

Happy Russian enablers hunting.



ONLY!!! 2019 and beyond.

[myohmy2]

61. wow...

...who would have thought...

"The candidate who insists Medicare for All is too expensive for Americans is also the candidate who, like Clinton, endorsed NAFTA, China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership—all of which have savaged US manufacturing and workers."

"...savaged US manufacturing and workers..."...wow!

...Bernie's looking better and better and better.......


...I'm so excited, I can hardly wait to vote...

[revmclaren]

65. So in one post

you bash both Biden and Clinton.

Very revealing....





ONLY!!!! 2019 and beyond.