Bourgeois Decadence, Klobigieg, and Bloomberg Keynesianism

If Bloomberg wins the nomination, two Republicans who advocated stop and frisk for New York City would be running against each other.

— Ukrainian Jake (aka The Uke)

Here on the heels of Senator Sanders’ win in the delegate-rich state of New Hampshire (20 out of 4,760 nationally), the candidates and their supporters find themselves facing the next phase of the contest where the electorate isn’t nearly as low on melanin. As things stand right now, that is not good news for Buttigieg or Klobuchar regardless of how much the DNC-media nexus hypes them by turns as the Bernie-slayers. Buttigieg is hauling around bags from his days kowtowing to racist cops and funders in South Bend; and Klobuchar is on record boasting about putting a black teen in prison for life on bullshit evidence.

The DNC-media nexus has become a barometer of the more general rot in American society — that thing the old Reds just called bourgeois decadence. Let’s do the inventory. The President of the United States, with access to nuclear launch codes, is a carnival barking fascist reptile; and the so-called opposition has let him walk all over them. The Resistance (TM) is itself so morally compromised it can’t go after Trump’s real vulnerabilities, and that “resistance” is being led by political incompetents with a fifty-year-old playbook. These are not the signs of a healthy society, but one that is in a process of collapse.

This has been good news for Sanders and his movement. In the DNC-media nexus’ flailing attempts to stop the Sanderistas slow, steady accumulation of mass and momentum, the nexus set up a situation where the battle for the fictional center became a cage fight between a shrinking pool of centrists. Bernie just strolls past the cage.

There is some comic relief in all this. Last night, the ever more unhinged Chris Matthews said Sanders was beaten soundly by Buttigieg and Klobuchar . . . combined. So fearful of saying it aloud — that Sanders now has the most plausible path to the nomination — he had to combine two candidates into one to speak his own reality into existence. Klobigieg — where you can get two kinds of liberal racists in one, one that locks up black teens and another who fires black public officials . . . and locks up black teens. A real juggernaut heading into Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday.

Where will the DNC-media neoliberal nexus go when Klobigieg hits that melanin wall in Nevada and South Carolina? Biden’s campaign is bleeding out. Even the Warren fallback position has crumbled.

Enter the racist Republican oligarch, Michael Bloomberg.

Bourgeois decay=Democrats running a Republican oligarch with fascist tendencies against a Republican reptile fascist.

The thin reed of hope here for the establishment is for Stop-and-Frisk Mike to hang in for the Convention, where — presumably — superdelegates can come to the rescue against the Sanderistas in a “brokered” convention.

Will it work? Who can say? I seriously doubt it. But Bloomberg’s run is unprecedented, given that he has spent more than a third of a billion dollars on slick, content-free ads, and he promises to spend a billion “if necessary.” Bloomberg cash-bolus has bent space around the whole political ecology, with him hiring an army of propagandists, technicians, artisans, and professional organizers — often doubling their pay as he raids other campaigns. One Bloomberg hire said he still supports Bernie. He just couldn’t afford to pass up a Bloomberg campaign job that pays the equivalent of $100K a year. Bloomberg Keynesianism, albeit with a limited lifespan. Organizers’ brain-drain. Double-agents everywhere. What could go wrong?

The handwriting was on the wall for the Democratic establishment almost four years ago. In the wake of Trump’s 2016 victory, Trump’s fascist lurch was met by a new coalition of Clinton Democrats and Bush neoconservatives (never far apart in the first place). Once again, the Democratic Party establishment shifted further to the right under the ratchet effect. Trump turned against his own state-security apparatus in serial tantrums. The Democratic establishment became security-state neocons pumping up public paranoia about Russia in a bad remake of the Cold War.

Now, they’ve become an Orwellian self-satire. Last night, they said Sanders’ winning in New Hampshire was a loss because he didn’t win by enough. You really cannot make this shit up.

Bernie Sanders is now running against a Democratic establishment that is effectively the pre-Trump Republican Party. Meanwhile, the actual Republican Party has become a craven cult of personality. Both parties are rotting from the head.

Mike Bloomberg, fifteenth richest man in the world with $58 billion, has swooped in like a carrion bird to literally buy the Democratic National Committee. This is an intermediate purchase, because what he really wants to buy is the Presidency. Just when we believed that no one could match Donald Trump for sheer narcissism.

I believe Bloomberg will fail, but it’ll be an interesting social experiment to see exactly what percentage of the electorate is credulous enough to believe the horseshit he’s peddling in his slippery ads.

Bloomberg may already be in trouble. Two days ago, the independent African American journalist Ben Dixon unearthed video clips suppressed by Bloomberg showing him delivering a speech to the Aspen Institute in 2015 in which — in a flurry of racist ranting— said, “ “Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, sixteen to twenty-five. That’s true in New York; it’s true in virtually every city . . . And the way to get guns out of the hands of kids is throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”

That’ll play well, eh?

It gets worse, and there are other accounts of Bloomberg’s racism out there, buy long story short, Ben Dixon may have already put a torpedo through the bow of the USS Bloomberg.

This, as the Democratic nominating process heads quickly into Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday (Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Democrats Abroad, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia).

With 1,901 delegates needed to win on the first ballot, 1,357 will be awarded after Super Tuesday. California alone has 475, and Texas has 262.

As this is written, Biden and Warren appear to be in freefall, and Klobigieg is about to leave the safety of white affluent liberalism and enter those territories demanding real accountability.

Sanders, on the other hand, is projected by Nate Silver’s 538 to win Nevada, California, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota. Colorado, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, Maine, and Vermont. With Biden flagging, Sanders can now even contest for South Carolina.

Sanders may still fall short of 1,901 on the first ballot, we don’t know yet. But if he has the greatest plurality and the DNC steals it with superdelegates, the Democratic Party will collapse into an historical footnote.

Yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted Mike Bloomberg’s racist rant, facetiously calling it all-caps RACIST. Is this the guy upon whom the DNC-media nexus is hanging its hopes? Will they call for “unity” as Bernie Sanders and his massive misfit army march toward the nomination?

Attack Bloomberg with no quarter. He is the embodiment of the parasitic class at which we aim. And keep marching.