March 5, 2020: Gathering Moss, The Snake Pit, Shame Fuels Rage

South Carolina should not be allowed to decide anything. It was here, one may recall, that 'Ol' Two Cows' ambushed John McCain back in the day spreading rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate bi-racial child. It was here that Hillary, despite pillaging Obama eight years later with rhetoric just this side of George Corley Wallace, salvaged her primary campaign against Bernie Sanders. And it is here that, despite his despicable handling of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill imbroglio, Joe Biden was somehow seen walking despite all reports that he has long since shed his mortal coil.

The Democratic Party, in full panic, has come to his rescue. Beginning with James Clyburn, the black congressman from South Carolina, and quickly joined by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the party mossbacks began gathering, much like flies gather around a steaming pile of dog shit, the walking cadaver that is Joe Biden.

After summarily dismissing the likes of Senator Kamala Harris, Governor Jay Inslee and over two dozen others, the party aparatchicks fell upon the good-ole-reliable corporate whore from Delaware. Of more than two dozen contestants, the party regulars have finally scraped the bottom of the barrel.

Such is the posture of the current Democratic Party that they would rather put up a cruel joke like Biden than embrace Bernie Sanders. You see, Bernie angers them. Bernie makes them uncomfortable. Bernie makes them ashamed.

For Bernie Sanders is more than a mere scold. He is more than a mere thorn in the side of the modern Democratic Party. Sanders is a measure of the distance between Democratic posturing and Democratic performance. Sanders is a walking, talking, animated reminder of what this party once was and is, therefore, a measure of how far the party has strayed. Sanders is to the Democratic Party what the garden of Eden is to Judaeo-christian theology, or a vacuum to physics: A standard that may perhaps not exist in pure form, but from which we measure all else—and in this case the measurement is our shortcomings. Sanders is, therefore, a standing reminder of Democratic failures, failures for which they should be rightly charged and for which they should be made, like Adam and Eve, to feel ashamed.

But shame fuels rage and the rage directed at Sanders is nothing but the rage of impotence on the part of a party that has neither the substance nor the courage to confront what we all know must be confronted.

As noted in these columns, the fossil fuel industry has mineral rights to five time the amount of carbon which, if burned, will destroy the ecosystem of this planet. I bring this up, when confronting friends and fellow Democrats on social media, and ask them “do you really think Joe Biden will stand up to the fossil fuel industry?” Does one really think that Biden, a corporate whore his entire life, will stand up to the oligarchy now in control of our national destiny? Of course not.

No matter, they rage on, claiming Bernie is unelectable, he being an avowed 'socialist'. They claim, given the results here in South Carolina, that Biden has greater broad based support and that Bernie does not. It is strange how perceptions twist in the wind.

A week ago, the argument went, Bernie was winning in all white states with all white, male votes. This despite the facts that Bernie's support is more female and that Latino voters were with him by large margins. Never mind, chanted the mossbacks, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada don't represent the nation. Neither does South Carolina. It never did.

Biden won South Carolina where two thirds of those voting in the Democratic Primary were African Americans despite the fact that blacks comprise a mere 12 percent of the national population. No matter, none of this was pointed out in the celebration that erupted at party headquarters when the results streamed in. Nor was it observed that over half of those voting were over 50 years of age, hardly a mirror to the nation.

The primary in South Carolina, coming as it does on the heels of the contests in the North is meant to be a block on any progressive challenge to the corporate shop at Democratic Party Central. It has served its purpose. South Carolina is where the nation goes to die. Ask Abraham Lincoln.

The mossbacks now swarm about the steaming pile of dog shit if, for no other reason, than to further attract attention and perhaps make the corporate whore from Delaware more substantial and intimidating. They cannot, however, mask the smell.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.