With Wednesday’s election-shifting announcement that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (D/I-VT) is ending his bid to become the next president sending the internet into an even more insufferable tizzy than usual, Stephen Colbert managed to get the Senator on the line for an interview. Sitting in his chessboard-at-the-ready study, Sanders may have looked understandably disappointed, but—as has been the case in his many Late Show appearances over the years—quickly seized the opportunity in this moment of resigned defeat to get right back on message. And while that message has plenty of moving parts, Sanders stressed to Colbert that, regardless of the way the Democratic primary went, “I will do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump is not reelected.”
Colbert—as is the case whenever you give Bernie Sanders some valuable airtime—mainly let Bernie talk throughout the three segments that formed most of Wednesday’s Late Show (at-home edition), but did press Sanders on when his endorsement of last candidate standing Joe Biden will come—and how “full-throated” it will be. Sanders brushed past Colbert’s reference to the fact that many Hillary Clinton supporters thought his throat wasn’t quite as full is it needed to be when he dropped out in 2016, claiming, “I worked as hard as I could to see that Trump was not elected.” (And calling out Trump’s “narcissism” and “ignorance,” for good measure.)
Stressing that he considers Joe Biden “a very decent human being,” Sanders did hint that the extent of his enthusiasm for a Biden presidency will hinge on certain conditions. “He’s not going to come to where I am,” Sanders conceded, although the volubly progressive now-former candidate did say that he is impressed with Biden’s stance in opposition to special interests (like Big Pharma, an industry Sanders called “properly detested”). As to other issues that formed the foundation of the Sanders campaign (free public college tuition, universal healthcare, ending mass incarceration, a livable minimum wage, meaningful climate change legislation, non-racist immigration reform), Sanders expressed optimism that former Vice President Biden will—if for no other reason than electoral necessity—adopt positions a lot closer to his as the November election looms nearer. “I hope to be able to work with Joe to move him in a more progressive direction,” said Sanders, nimbly.
Colbert, paraphrasing poetically of his 78-year-old guest, “You may not make it to the promised land, but you have been to the mountaintop,” asked Sanders what practical steps he can now take in the Senate, especially in response to the unprecedented and multifarious COVID-19 crises going on. Sanders, unsurprisingly, had some ideas (picking up the paychecks of those laid off, stopping equipment shortages and price-gouging via the Defense Production Act), but saved his sharpest criticism for the Republican Party’s recent life-threatening power-grab in Wisconsin. Calling the GOP’s decision to force voters there to cram into a tiny percentage of the state’s polling places in person during a highly contagious pandemic, “the ugliest thing that I have seen from a political perspective in my lifetime,” Sanders stressed that it’s such Republican machinations that the rest of us have to work to stop. Sanders wasn’t reticent in implying that the shrinking-based GOP cannot be trusted when it comes to ensuring all Americans can actually vote, since (to paraphrase again) Americans increasingly think conservatives’ ideas are hot garbage. Signing off, Colbert asked if Sanders had broken the news to SNL guest impersonator (and unexpected relative) Larry David yet, ending a sad day for Sanders and his supporters with a laugh, at least.
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If that was Bernie’s goal he was at the wrong end of the fire stick. Politics is not like magnets and simply being diametrically opposed in polarity is not enough to offset the attraction an opponent has. In contrast, it is good enough to make a small deflection at an early enough point to prevent hitting a target, but Bernie did not go after Trump directly, at least not enough to be noticed; instead his supporters were quite vocal about being anti-Biden. I think that, yet again, by lifting the hopes of his supporters against Biden, they will once again react with indignity that Bernie was not the Democratic party’s sole candidate, having excluded all others from any consideration. One thing the Democrats need is to hire a bunch of psychological warfare experts to target Conservative mouth pieces such as Limbaugh and Hannity, to expose them as the cowards and con men they truly are, and take out any uprising replacements over the next decade. Without addressing the guerilla warfare that they have been using for over 30 years, there’s not much leverage. Had the Democrats simply bought the radio stations Limbaugh was on years ago and shut him down, President Clinton would likely be dealing with the current crisis.
I’d be very surprised if Biden could actually win against Trump, considering how Trump’s using his White House press conferences to replace his rallies. As a Bernie fan, go ahead and vote for Biden. I’m not American, so for once I just want you guys to elect a President who doesn’t have a dogshit foreign policy in the Middle East. You could’ve gotten that with Bernie, but hey since both Democrats and Republicans prefer continuing drone warfare over Yemen alongside sucking up to far-right Israeli parties to allow them killing more Palestinian children then I guess that will stay for another 50 years.
I remember bringing up Bernie pledging to end US involvement in Yemen as a reason to support him over Biden. I was met with a “yeah OK, but…” hand wave as if it’s not the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet and Bernie would be our only chance to stop it.
The Obama years showed most Liberals don’t care about changing our horrendous foreign policy.
Its because most Americans don’t care about foreigners (unless they’re “up to something”)
They passed a bill through the Senate even to end the conflict in Yemen and Trump vetoed it. It was Sanders and Murphy (D CT)I believe and it all looked good to go, but Trump had to appease Saudi Arabia so that’s where that went.
At this point, I say fuck foreign policy.Will getting Trump out of office make U.S. Foreign Policy worse? Nope.That’s enough for me.
“I’d be very surprised if Biden could actually win against Trump, considering how Trump’s using his White House press conferences to replace his rallies. “The only impressive thing Trump has done in his presidency is to successfully make himself look unbeatable despite the fact that he lost the popular vote by a significant margin, won the electoral college because of very few votes, was unpopular during the entirety of his mandate, was caught in multiple scandales, lost control of the Congress, and had his incompetency exposed multiple times, never more obviously than right now as we fight COVID-19.He is beatable, folks. Very beatable.
I’d be very surprised if Biden could actually win against TrumpI keep hearing this, and I don’t get it. It’s not like Trump has ever, ever been a wildly popular and beloved figure. It took a perfect storm of wildly stupid events for him to squeak in a win against Clinton, a woman who had two decades worth of political and public baggage to contend with.
Really, all Biden should need to do is say, “Remember Obama?” a bunch and he should win in a freakin’ landslide.
You might want to check Trump’s approval rating among Republicans.
Thats great—-but the die hard Repubs were never going to vote for a Dem anyways. All that matters in this election is the Independents/Moderates/Undecideds. Trump has made himself so polarizing in the last 3 years, he’s practically totally excluded those people from voting for him.The only candidate as polarizing as him was Bernie, and Trump might have rode the “Red Scare” to a victory, because even on the Dem side I feel there is a fairly decent amount of people scared (however laughably incorrect) of becoming “commies”.Really, all Biden needs to do in the next few months is avoid Crazy Rudy’s incoming “concrete Burisma findings!!!” and he should easily beat Trump.
Really, all Biden needs to do in the next few months is avoid Crazy Rudy’s incoming “concrete Burisma findings!!!” and he should easily beat Trump.Which means Biden would have to pray for Covid-19 to be a part of the news cycle until late October so that the media won’t have the time to cover stupid Ukrainian names.And by the looks of The DNC holding primaries in public during a pandemic, that’s pretty likely what the Biden strategy is.
“And by the looks of The DNC holding primaries in public during a pandemic, that’s pretty likely what the Biden strategy is.”Well, the election going on was primarily Supreme Court overruling the governor, so once again, the concern for virus transmission falls by the wayside in partisan governance.
I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion that Biden loses but I hope we’ve learned enough from 2016 to not go with this attitude again. Trump’s not as hated nationally as we like to think and Biden is far from inevitable.
Certainly not, but any issues are built-in and would be the same with any candidate. The whole discussion around “Bernie’s the only one who can beat Trump!” or “Biden’s the only one who can beat Trump!” are all kind of silly. ANYONE can beat Trump, he’s not some powerhouse political genius playing 4 dimensional chess.
Republicans would vote for literally anybody that lets them stay in power. I’m pretty sure Trump could shoot someone on camera and still get nominated. Meanwhile, all the democrats I know are lukewarm on Biden with some REALLY not liking him and I’m not sure there will be enough of a party unification to support him. I hope I’m wrong, but I really do think Bernie dropping out is the nail in the coffin for this election and that we are looking at 4 more years of Trump.
If the chance to get Trump out of the White House isn’t motivation enough to vote, the Democrats you know shouldn’t be calling themselves Democrats. If they’re ok with him staying in the White House for four more years they are Republicans.
I don’t think we should overstate Bernies importance in beating Trump when he’s lost two primaries in a row. The most important thing to happen in the next few months is going to be the VP.The Democracts need a VP that will appeal to white women and minorities. Full stop, if they could get Michelle Obama to run as VP it would be a slam dunk.But that’s what they need. They need to get back the women that voted for Trump despite his misogyny and will get minorities to come out in record numbers again.
“all the democrats I know are lukewarm on Biden”This is why I never understood the narrative that Biden was the best chance of beating Trump. I never heard anyone support him because they liked his policies or his ability to lead. It was always “Well, he’s the best chance of beating Trump.”
Trump is finished—-he was going to lose to Biden *before* he publicly botched the CV response, and now he doesn’t have his faux glowing economic numbers to even tout. And he knew it too—-why do you think he risked his entire presidency to try and extort information out of a foreign power?At this point, an empty chair with Clint Eastwood screaming at it would beat Trump in the election (btw, even Clint has publicly had it with Trump!). All Trump has at this point is his die-hard base, which is dwindling by the day thanks to his epic mismanagement of the CV response.
Despite what cable news or some on the Twittearti say, Bernie’s a good due. He was a chance to get a transformational political figure. Instead we’ll either get proto-fascism, or someone who wants to take us back to the period right before proto-fascism.
Just want to get out in front of the bad faith “but the Bernie Bros” posts.Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You
You seem upset. Bernie brothers shifted approximately 40% to Trump in the last election, casting more than enough votes to put Trump over the top in key states. Seems like they are bad faith voters who did not follow Bernie’s admonition to vote for Hillary.
I love Bernie, but anybody acting like a vote between Biden and President Fuckup is some kind of intolerable Sophie’s Choice is really not helping. Biden isn’t going to stack the courts with hundreds of right-wing psycopaths, he isn’t going to cut funding for clinics at home and abroad that also offer abortions, he isn’t going to his powers for personal gain and corrupt the government, he isn’t going to call neo-Nazis “very fine people” or throw brown kids in cages, and he sure as hell isn’t going to call a global pandemic a Chinese hoax and do fuck-all about it for 6 weeks. If we let perfect be the enemy of good we risk giving the GOP four more years to completely annihilate democracy.
The reason some people see a vote for Joe and vote for Donny as basically the same is because those cages were set up under the Obama administration. Neoliberalism gave us Trump, and if Joe Biden’s sticks true to his statement that “nothing will fundamentally change” and knowing that this nation is dumber than wet broccoli means we’ll likely set the stage for another worse version of Trump after Biden’s one term (according to him, he only plans to serve for a single term)
Pundits play up the divisions in the Democratic Party as much bigger than they are because they need drama to feed their narratives. Even in this interview Colbert was doing it — the truth is that Sanders did work extremely hard for Clinton in 2016, but the press downplayed it because they were sore that Sanders wasn’t giving them the storyline they wanted.Sanders is a politician in the best sense — he pushes hard for what he wants but then cuts deals for the best he can get. Pundits expect a much more cynical approach from politicians, who lie about their ideals and then sell them out at the drop of a hat for personal benefit. Pundits like to pat themselves on the back for recognizing this kind of “realism” in the typical hack, but they are too dumb to know what to say when someone comes along who has sincere beliefs but also makes compromises for the greater good.
They want to slot people into the role of starry eyed but doomed idealists, or cynical operators, and can’t handle someone who walks a different path.
I agree—-and add to that list that Trump’s victory in 2016 was due to several factors which do not exist at current.1. Unlikable, polarizing Dem candidate.2. Trump made a lot of great sounding promises that he could be taken at his word on since the country never got to experience 3+ years of his mismanagement, lying, and inaction.3. The economy was strong and Republicans typically repeal business regulations to make growth quicker (although most people are continuously blind to it mostly helping the rich).4. The incumbent political party wasn’t in charge when the economy went into the toilet.Actually, point #1 now directly applies to Trump and the GOP, at an even more extreme level. Its his own fault—if he wasn’t so blatantly and willingly polarizing, he might have won this general election, but I see very little chance of that happening even IF the economy is in recovery by November.
Unlikable – with 53% of the popular vote. Yup. Totally unlikable. She lost by margins in key states smaller than the number of Bernie supporters who switched to voting for Trump.
She should have won by much more that, given the polls we saw going into the election. Trump’s entire modus operandi is putting on a show with little depth, and Hillary looked stilted and arrogant against him in the debates IMHO. Probably swayed the undecided/independents, added to, as you mentioned, some of the Bernie fanatics. Some probably stayed away because they felt the DNC screwed them over. Again, this was before Trump exposed himself as the great evil that he is, and I do think the Bernie fans will hold their nose and vote for Biden, rather than risk another 4 years of the Orange Clown.
On another note, if Hillary had been running against him now, I think she’d also easily beat Trump in November. Likable or not, Trump’s been exposed the last 3 years as all talk and lots of embarrassing, hypocritical action.
I agree with most of your post, but the Obama/Biden administration was historically aggressive about deportations, and built the child cages you all blame Trump for. There exists absolutely no proof that the situation on the border will change under a Biden administration.
While you are correct Obama/Biden being aggressive on deportations, your comment that they built child cages is misleading. In 2014 there was a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America showing up at the border, and Obama ordered some temporary housing to be built quickly while HHS looked for relatives in the US with whom they could place these kids. The facilities were never meant to hold large numbers of people or to do so for a long period of time, but that’s exactly what happened when Trump issued his psychotic family separation policy.
The cages were because unaccompanied minors were flooding in large number. Under Trump they were used to tear children from their parents and relatives. Not seeing a moral difference is a common failing among Trump supporters.
Well, the suggestion that all criticism of Obama/Biden represents tacit approval of the Trump administration is the kind of thing that obliterates the discourse. I’m hilariously far-left and live in a tiny meaningless navy blue state, but Biden will still get my vote. I’m still allowed to not be totally cool with Obama’s record on human rights.
As a big Bernie supporter, I’m angry and depressed. But more than that, I’m afraid that the democratic party and its voters have made a colossal mistake. Joe Biden is very obviously in cognitive decline and I have serious doubts that he can hold up in the grind of a general election. I don’t mean that to be mean or insulting, in fact I hope like hell that I’m wrong and that Biden wins a resounding victory in November. I’ll certainly vote for him and encourage my fellow Bernie supporters to do the same. But I cannot shake the terrible feeling that Trump will destroy Biden.
Fair point, but (recent heart attack aside), Bernie isn’t exactly a spring chicken.
But he’s still sharp and focused. Biden can barely get thru one sentence. If there are debates between Trump and Biden, they will be some of the most depressing of any in my lifetime of 45 yrs.
That may have been true, but COVID could trigger an extreme economic downturn. People are rallying around the president now because it’s a national emergency, but we’ll see if the unemployment numbers tick past 10%.
OH, they will. I assure you. Most projections are between 20 and 30 percent unemployment.
This is my exact feeling as well. I was a Bernie volunteer on both campaigns. It boggles the mind that the corporate media pushed Biden so hard from the beginning. I would honestly have preferred almost any other candidate than Biden., beecause of his horrible, neo-liberal, semi-racist policy positions. Like the bankrupt bill, the vociferous support for the Iraq war, his opposition to desegregating school districts, his crime bill which led to incomprehensible levels of incarceration for non violent crimes. Now we have his obvious cognitive decline and a sexual assault allegation. I would have preferred Mayo Pete or Amy Klobuchar even. Warren would have been my 2nd choice. . I really feel the Dem party with the cooperation from MSNBC made a bigger mistake this time than we did last time. We cannot go back to the ‘normalcy’ of Obama’s administration. It has led to our current crises. Now, more than ever, the idea of Med 4 All and paid sick leave are going to be more popular. I guarantee you that there are Biden voters who are having buyers remorse. I live in NM and our primary isn’t until June, but I will vote for Bernie because he’s still on the ballot.
I think it is incorrect to draw too much of a connection between the Democratic Party and the media. I think the party is too broken down to have much input into what the media does.. It was definitely the case in the 2016 election and it sure seems to be the case now.The party leadership’s response to Trump has been characterized by an allergy to doing anything to control the media narrative. They don’t know what they want, they don’t have a clue how to communicate a message, and they refuse to follow through on anything.
My wording might not have belied my intention. I think the DNC does what the media tells them to do, along with their donors. I agree with your sentiments, though.
Fair enough. I think the Democratic Party leadership isn’t even good at following the media’s signals.
I think they pay far too much attention to the media’s self-pandering about substance and issues, and forget that what they really want is sound bites and imagery. So Democrats get bogged down quibbling over the annualized rate of return necessary to make Head Start a budget neutral program, when the press really just wants a photo of a giant stack of dollar bills showing the cost of a single F-35 fighter, or better yet an animation of someone shovelling all of those bills in a furnace.
There’s one thing for sure, though. The corporate media despises Progressive values and interests. And they created, once again, the argument about ‘electability’. IF corporations like CNN and MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post didn’t argue against the idea of some kind of nationalized health care system, if they didn’t laugh at the idea of 15/minimum wage and paid sick leave, then even more people would have voted for Bernie. What’s upsetting to me, is that those ideas are actually popular – among all voters. Exit polls showed that. But people were scared into acting against those ideals because somehow moderates and incrementalism win the day? When they don’t, they didn’t last time and they may not this time. I truly feel Biden is/was one of the worst candidates in that regard. He has so many personal and political weaknesses and he is in obvious cognitive decline. Dem voters have to stop being manipulated by corporate media in all forms. The media are trumpeting what the donors want to the people and the donors and corporations are telling Dem politicians how to vote. We need to get money out of politics and get the electorate more informed. Sadly, it’s taken a crisis such as COVID-19 to even get MSM to start asking the questions about Med 4 All, paid sick leave, and more social welfare programs. Maybe this will wake people up. Maybe the fact that so many people won’t be able to afford cable, or subscriptions to NYT, then the corporate and Wall St mouthpieces won’t have the power that they do now. This is a critical time in our economy, and it’s only going to get way, way worse. When the danger of the virus eventually, in time, dissipates, and Americans will continue to suffer economic strife, there could be an true uprising. For good or for bad.
In addition to his mental health and the sexual assault allegation, Biden is going to get hammered over the Ukraine scandal, and I feel people are underestimating how much this will factor in. A friend of mine said that Trump wouldn’t want to bring attention to the impeachment, but why wouldn’t he? He was acquitted. In his mind and the minds of his supporters, that’s a victory. His claims of innocence are vindicated. It doesn’t matter if an investigation into Biden was baseless or that the impeachment trial was a farce. He controls the narrative on it now. And if Clinton’s emails were a tipping point in her loss, who’s to say Ukraine won’t be for Biden? Also, in what was probably a planted question, he was asked if the impeachment affected his ability to adequately prepare for a pandemic. And he managed to avoid admitting that he did anything wrong while suggesting that anything he did wrong was because of the impeachment. It’s going to be quite an uphill battle for Biden.
I concur, and I’m very concerned. I’m a die hard Progressive, but I will hold my nose and vote for him because of Trump specifically. But I fear all of these variables you mention here are relevant and alarming.
“Joe Biden is very obviously in cognitive decline and I have serious doubts that he can hold up in the grind of a general election. “I have seen literally nothing (that hasn’t been doctored by the GOP campaigns) which would tell me that. The laughable thing about this narrative is that nobody ever seems to point out that for every gaffe Biden makes, Trump has made at least the same number of slurred word salad speeches, packed with lies and ignorance.Maybe if Trump acted presidential at any point in the past 3 years i’d be worried, but literally every public appearance criticism of Biden can be applied 10x worse to Trump.
The problem is that Trump’s supporters don’t care. In 2016, it was clear to anyone with half a brain that Trump wasn’t mentally fit to be President. I don’t know if in the past four years, we’ve had any sort of significant increase in the number of people with at least half a brain.
Like I’ve said before, diehard Trump supporters are likely to never change their minds. Those votes are a lost cause, and if Trump hadn’t made himself so completely polarizing over the past 3 years, i’d be worried that he’d get a good part of the votes left up for grabs.But he did, so I’m not worried.Remember, even before Trump exposed himself as a corrupt, inept, consistently whining crybaby for 3 years to the entire nation, he still lost the popular vote by 3 million an unlikable opponent. Some of us knew who he was (especially in the NYC area) for decades before his Presidential run, but I’d say the majority of people knew him as “That rich guy from The Apprentice”. Couple that with his extravagant promises (which hadn’t been exposed as fantasy yet) and his natural showmanship, and those are things that aren’t the same right now as he runs for re-election.
Stop lying to yourself. Here’s a recent interview where a noted Bernie hater asks him the softest of softball questions. And it is absolutely painful to watch. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/biden-criticizes-trump-s-coronavirus-response-he-should-stop-talking-81153605838
He’s got a stuttering problem, and these types of gaffes have existed for the past decade. If this is about public gaffes, why on earth are you not pointing out Trump’s blatant ones nearly every day for the past 3 years?Now, lets go to a standard Trump rally playback on Youtube and point out the nonsense he rambles on about every day, without a single coherent thought.
You said: “I have seen literally nothing (that hasn’t been doctored by the GOP campaigns) which would tell me that” Biden is in cognitive decline. I presented you with a video of a friendly interview by an MSNBC stooge in which Biden appears confused and scattered. The interviewer has to step in and try to help him. It’s cringey as hell.
And your response: the stuttering problem?? C’mon. Go back and watch clips of the VP debate from 2012. Biden was sharp and focused, and he absolutely bodied Paul Ryan. I don’t think you can honestly watch that debate performance compared to ANY recent interview/debate performance by Biden and tell me this guy hasn’t lost several steps.Also, I’m not arguing with you whatsoever regarding Trump. He rambles incoherently and has the attention span of a goldfish. But as much as I hate to say it (trust me I really do hate to say this), Trump has this weird idiot confidence that allows him to just blunder his way through anything. Even when he has no idea what he’s talking about (often), he just keeps talking, repeating his talking points ad nauseum and somehow gets through it. Hillary ran circles around Trump in the debates, but nothing she did was a knockout punch because he just keeps rambling through. Also also, Trump is undoubtedly at his sharpest when he is on the attack. I think Biden from 2012 would have been great at countering those attacks. I don’t think 2020 Biden is up to it.
“I presented you with a video of a friendly interview by an MSNBC stooge in which Biden appears confused and scattered. The interviewer has to step in and try to help him. It’s cringey as hell.”And I stand by the original statement. I have not seen anything different out of Biden in the past decade—-he’s ALWAYS had this gaffe problem at times, and remember, the man has had a lifelong stutter problem which complicates communication.
What boggles my mind is that Trump does the same thing (and worse) every day, and yet nobody on his side feels ‘concerned about his ability to lead the country’ —- especially since he’s already actually CRASHED the economy and bungled the response to a pandemic.“Hillary ran circles around Trump in the debates, but nothing she did was a knockout punch because he just keeps rambling through.”
I disagree. Back then, Trump could make a lot of grandiose claims without repercussion or proof, because he hadn’t actually held any elected public office for people to say “well, you sure didn’t do that when you were mayor/senator/congressman”. Meaning, he could promise the world, and pretty much did, which made Hillary’s responses seem rather limited.
Trump is a showman; he has the advantage over Biden there, sure, but all of his other advantages over Hillary in 2016 are gone in 2020.Biden got through the Dem debates without collapsing, including against a guy who would mop the floor with Trump in public speaking (Corey Booker, one of the reasons I hoped against hope that he’d make it). That was like 10+ people all attacking Joe at the time because before Bernie made his run, Joe was the favorite.
The Daily Show did a great video of Fox News anchors talking about “Biden’s cognitive decline,” interspersed with Trump’s profoundly stupid comments. If Trump or the GOP really wants to make that one of the points of the campaign, they’re playing a war of severe attrition.
Seth Meyers interviewed him 2 days before he dropped out, and it was a much, much better interview. Meyers manages to ask him the Progressively minded questions that corporate media refuses to do. ‘How you gonna pay for that, you angry socialist?’ Was basically the defining line of questions from CNN and MSNBC.
Everybody is so dower and sure Trump will win. You sure about that? He always polled higher then Trump. Winning while acting like you have alzheimers has happened before with Ronald Reagan. Everyone keeps underestimating him, there were hundreds of Biden is finished articles written. There has been a blue way in some form every year since 2017. I’m still scared but I absolutely see a path.