Sanders Hands Own Head to Fascist Warren

Whether Bernie Sanders intended it or not, he gave Elizabeth Warren the endorsement of her dreams last night on national television:

Image by Lawrence Jackson, via Wikipedia, public domain.

"There are differences between Elizabeth and myself," Sanders, I-Vt. [sic], said in an interview with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl. "Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I'm not."

Sanders was a distant third behind Senators Biden and Warren before his heart attack, and here appears to be taking a desperation swipe at Warren. Attacking from the left makes some sense; but doing so this way will not help him. And their far-left base will see this for what it is. The anti-capitalists who support Warren will correctly view her claim as a pitch to a more moderate base -- and about as cynical and credible as her well-known, fraudulent claims of Amerindian ancestry. This will not persuade them to shift allegiance. (And they are correct that Warren is not a capitalist: She is a fascist.)

The ones who might shift allegiance are those those who do not understand what capitalism actually is, emphatically including those who imagine that capitalism has to be "saved from itself." This is a large swath of moderate Democrats and independent voters -- who might remember what Sanders said as Biden's ship continues taking on water. As I put it some time ago:

[T]he nomination will go to (a) whoever succeeds in helping voters pretend everything is fine (Biden, so far), (b) helping voters pretend they are in the right (Warren, so far, but with Harris catching on; see also "Why the Left Can't Let Go of Racism"), or (c) both (possibly Warren, which makes her the most dangerous). [links omitted]

So here we have it. In his outburst, Sanders has made himself look desperate to their base -- and Warren palatable to voters outside their base. Many of the latter aren't really paying attention, so all they'll get is that Warren isn't some raving socialist nut like that Bernie. And being tired of histrionics already, thanks to Trump, they might see her as the moderate, calm, electable alternative that Joe Biden never really was.

-- CAV

P. S.: For anyone who isn't sufficiently alarmed at the prospect of a President Warren, I urge you to listen to Yaron Brook's analysis. When I called Warren "dangerous" back then, I was mainly thinking of the Green New Deal. That isn't the half of it.