CSI: American Carnage (Wednesday, March 11, 2020)
NEW YORK – The Times guy pushes into the Subway Inn late in the night. The Post guy is watching the teevee primary coverage replays. MSNBC is showing Steve Kornacki at the Big Board throwing his arms around and circling some obscure county on the Upper Peninsula. The county is girdled by multiple rings of digital red, plus lots of dots put on the board by incessant Kornacki finger jabs. NBC has just called the race for Biden. Steve holds a clipboard in one hand and makes more circles around the county with his finger. It’s a now a Biden county, but went to Bernie in 2016. The Times guy looks at the teevee. He says, There are lots of Michigan counties like that. The Post guy says, Yeah, they are highlighting all of them it seems. Hillary was not a good candidate, that seems inarguable. But that’s a lesson that could be used against Biden – why back the so-called centrist when the centrist failed so badly the last time out? Maybe the lesson to draw is that Bernie’s not able to effectively organize Dem primary voters. That’s an argument that says a lot about the South, for sure. Bernie clearly didn’t make his case to African American voters. Is it because he’s not a member of the party and people who are lifetime members are wary? I mean, and there are reasons they are Democrats, like, real life-preserving reasons. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, if I had four years to figure it out, I could probably do as well as Bernie. The Times guys says, I need a Brewdog. The Post guy says, Me too. The Times guy says, You can argue that Bernie didn’t reach out to African Americans in any meaningful way. You can argue that the Dem establishment moved hard against him. You can say that the billionaire class is protecting itself. You can say voters don’t think he can beat Trump, and that they’ve decided that’s the most important thing this cycle. You can argue that Bernie didn’t do a very good job of translating the enthusiasm of young people — who clearly support him across racial, class, gender lines — into votes. You can say he fell down in boosting the progressive the turnout, didn’t get his supporters to the polls. You can say all of that and pull out the charts and the data sets and all the other bells and whistles. But Bernie’s people know the real reason he fell short tonight, the real reason he’s underperformed since South Carolina, the real reason, he didn’t seal the deal on Super Tuesday. The Post guy says, What’s that? The Times guy takes a long pull on his Brewdog and leans back. He says, Warren. It’s all Warren’s fault. Oh they call her a snake and all that and dishonest and vindictive. First she entered the race. Then she didn’t drop out and then she did and she didn’t endorse Bernie. Time and again she’s undermined Bernie. That’s what they say publicly and online. But in private, she’s just plain old Jezebel. – Wednesday, March 11, 2020