Luke Savage is a columnist at Jacobin. He is the author of The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History.
Despite the strange circumstances and urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, last night’s debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders highlighted two visions of our political crises that largely haven’t changed: Biden arguing for a return to normalcy, Sanders insisting that something is deeply wrong in our society.
Joe Biden emerged victorious last night, but his disastrous interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last week was yet another indicator of why Biden’s handlers have been trying to keep their candidate out of public view. Even in friendly exchanges, Biden can’t help but perform terribly.
Although last night’s Super Tuesday results were a blow to the Bernie Sanders campaign, the contest has now been radically clarified: it is finally a one-on-one clash between Joe Biden’s corporate centrism and Sanders’s class-conscious populism.
With his epic MSNBC meltdown over Bernie Sanders’s landslide win in Nevada, Chris Matthews became the anguished spokesman for a Beltway media scene that has been plunged into a world it can’t understand.
Bernie Sanders’s command of the agenda was on display again last night in South Carolina, as his challengers exhausted themselves trying to make their stale centrism seem compelling.
With a billionaire onstage and every candidate but Bernie Sanders open to unelected and unaccountable superdelegates choosing the nominee, last night’s debate showcased clearly the choice facing Democrats: rule by the majority or rule by plutocratic elites.
Remember when Bernie Sanders supporters went berserk and “threw chairs” at the 2016 Nevada Democratic convention? The widely reported incident never happened — but the originator of that myth will be co-moderating tonight’s debate.
Bernie Sanders’s victory in New Hampshire served a warning to the forces of the status quo in the Democratic Party: the era of empty personality politics is coming to a close.
Joe Biden loves to insult skeptical voters and suggest that they go vote for somebody else — all while telling Wall Street donors how badly he needs their support. It’s the Democratic Party establishment’s strategy in a nutshell.
At last night’s New Hampshire debate, Pete Buttigieg said he was courting billionaires to be inclusive. It’s just the latest grotesque rhetorical gesture from Mayor Pete.
Despite a fierce and well-funded campaign by special interests, a strong majority of Iowa Democrats support a single-payer, Medicare for All system.
Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union was, unsurprisingly, depraved. But the speech showcased the kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric we can expect from his reelection campaign in the fall — rhetoric that a weak-tea centrist liberal candidate won’t be able to defeat.
“Electability” is the public rallying cry of the Stop Bernie campaign. But look a little closer, and the real issue becomes clear: the establishment fears having a democratic socialist in the White House.
If the establishment got this nervous about Donald Trump in 2016, then imagine how much they’ll meltdown with the rise of democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders in 2020.
Pundits love to narrate progressive politics as a story of “dreamers” like Bernie Sanders versus “realists” who understand the political constraints they face. They may be right about those roles — but they’ve got the casting backward. Sanders is the realist in this election.
In an absurd interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Hillary Clinton — one of the least popular politicians in modern memory — trashes Bernie Sanders, one of the most popular. Yet again, Clinton has showcased the elitism and cluelessness that cost her the 2016 election.
Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on Bernie Sanders show that he’s starting to realize something that still escapes most pundits: Sanders would be his toughest opponent to beat in November.
Listening to Joe Biden at last night’s Democratic debate, you would’ve thought he was a staunch antiwar activist in the lead-up to the Iraq war. But don’t let Biden rewrite history: he was one of the invasion’s biggest backers.
Mainstream pundits have recently realized what the rest of us have known all along: Bernie Sanders could actually win this thing. Don’t be surprised that every institution invested in the status quo will soon do everything possible to prevent both a Bernie Sanders nomination and a general election victory.
The much mythologized Republican resistance to Donald Trump is, and has always been, a media creation. Its only purpose is to perpetuate Beltway fairy tales of American exceptionalism and high-minded bipartisanship.