The Odd Idea That Someone Who Succeeds In Gaining Elective Office And Holding It Knows More Than Yackers And Scribblers

People who follow my blog, and there are some, will know that in the last year I've been following Sam Seder, Michael Brooks and the others in the Minority Report orbit this year.  I have some major disagreements with them, at times but agree with them about a lot of things, too.

One of the most important things I disagree with them on is their devotion to Bernie Sanders, seemingly on the basis of him being a socialist.  I can think of nothing more deluded in 2019, more than two years into the Trump regime, than anyone in middle age or older being a fan of another never-will-be-president lefty mounting, yet another futile, stupid Quixotic quest that will end as those always have, in enabling the actual hold on power of Republican-fascism.  After the history of the past two decades which they certainly know and going back through that entire, century long, insane, stupid, self-indulgence of the white-college-credentialed, generally middle-class to affluent left that disagreement is a definitive parting of the ways.  I can't believe that someone as smart as Michael Brooks or Sam Seder is willfully promoting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in 2019, perhaps on the basis of the election of the one and only other self-defined socialist in the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, if she endorses Sanders at least has the excuse of youth for such a stupid decision. 

One thing that I think is increasingly obvious is that even really smart guys who spend their lives running their mouths or typing articles or blog posts and who have no experience in running for contested offices, winning such offices, holding them against real, well-financed opposition and having the hard experience of being an office holder, especially as a member of the Democratic minority during a Bush II or Trump regime, under such corrupt leadership as that under a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan - might know less about how to do that than people who actually have succeed in doing that. 

The foremost example of that is when people like Seder or Brooks or - well name your lefty blogger or blog rat - slams Nancy Pelosi who has an unparalleled record of defeating Republican-fascism. Especially her realistic choices on such things as a futile campaign to impeach Trump.  ESPECIALLY as they, my fellow lefties,  hold up the totally ineffective, totally bumbling, far from honest and really not demonstrably bright Jeremy Corbyn in Britland at the same time.  I assume that's on the basis of Corbyn being on team Socialist as well as Bernie Sanders.   I suppose I would be classified as a socialist, though I'm really far to the left of that, but I would not think it wise to settle for supporting a bumbler on the basis of him having that label.  I prefer politicians who actually win and build governing majorities.  Corbyn is incapable of doing that.

When I hear them criticize the Democratic candidates for president, the ones who don't clearly deserve mockery and derision and calling out, like Gabbard,  their act gets really old, fast.   That's something they are doing just about every day to Democrats who fall short of the Majority Report purity test.  They do it to politicians who have a career in electoral politics that neither of them have - and Seder and Brooks are two of the best of such yackers and scribblers.  But they are critisizing the players in a game they can't get into, themselves. Even Seder and Brooks are not only on the bench, they're way, way off in the bleachers.  I have to ask my self if maybe a Cory Booker or a Kamala Harris or someone else who has successfully gained public office through election and held public office and, actually, did the job for years might know something more about how to do that than they do.

One of the most eye-opening things I ever did was participate in SUCCESSFUL elections of Democratic candidates and talking with them, the ones who actually gained and held office and  have experience.  Their actual experience has made them into rather hard-eyed realists about what is possible and what has all the signs of being pie-in-the-sky bull shit sold by those who will never, ever win office or hold it.  Quite often they have very good reasons for what they will try to do and what they decide is unattainable, even what some on the left might like the idealistic idea of but which they can see problems with in reality.

I don't have any problem with someone who points out that one or another of the Democrats who are running might have some issues that would lead you to not support them over another.  Even some of the Democrats I like have issues that would lead me to not support their candidacy for president.  THE FOREMOST REQUIREMENT ANYONE SHOULD HAVE OF ANY CANDIDATE IS THE POSSIBILITY THAT THEY WILL ACTUALLY WIN AND HOLD THE OFFICE.  Really, Bernie Sanders' age and the utter futility of the idea that he is going to be elected in 2020 makes their support of him over even a Beto O'Rourke the height of lunacy.   I have extreme doubts about Beto, he's too affluent, too young and callow with a surfeit of charisma and a deficit of specifics, AND his wife and family is too invested in the fraud of Charter Schools, his too frequently empty rhetoric.  I think I could come up with a better critique of Beto based on the similar use of PR babble that he shares, for example, with Ivanka Trump than I've heard on Majority Report.  But Beto has a better chance of being elected AND PLEASANTLY SURPRISING US than Bernie Sanders.   I doubt Bernie Sanders could have had his political career in any other state than Vermont, a colony of lefty, hippy, New York, which is hardly typical of even Northern New England.  I think Sanders' career is best seen as a fluke, not something to base your hopes for national office on.

I still like a lot of what Sam Seder and Michael Brooks say on their shows, but when they start in on this I know the way they're going, an all too recognizable avenue of regrets that the American left seems to always turn down imagining that this time it will lead anywhere else than where it always does.  That is the signal lunacy of the American left, especially the Marxist and quasi-Marxist left.  If they can't break that habit, it's time for the real left to totally get shut of them.   If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to ask my advice, I'd tell her to avoid having anymore to do with them than she absolutely can't avoid.  She's got too much potential to go that route.