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Not learning from Elizabeth Warren’s recent faux pas, Joe Biden has leveled an attack at Bernie which is similarly ill conceived.
He’s bitching at campaign Sanders for spreading a ‘doctored’ video of him saying he agrees with Paul Ryan that cuts should be made to Medicare and Social Security. Specifically, that it’s a 20 second bit taken out of a longer speech, so there was context.
There are a few problems with this. For one, it’s his use of the word ‘doctored.’ The video was edited. It was not altered. The words coming out of Biden’s mouth were not changed or rearranged.
If he wants to show a longer clip for context, he could go ahead, but that would be opening up a can of worms that he does not want opened. There are longer clips of him speaking, in public, like this and this and this. They may not technically prove that Joe Biden is as senile as Abe Simpson, but they certainly indicate it. They definitely show that he is a rambling, unfocused, shambles of an old fool.
Also, there are lots of other videos of Joe Biden saying similar things. They are in the congressional record, and they are live, on the internet, part of our collective, retrievable memory. Yes, that’s a part of the political landscape now. Collective, retrievable memory.
Like Bernie Sanders himself, Biden has been in public life a long time and there is a lot of video evidence of positions he’s taken over his lifetime. This can be either a positive or a negative for an old candidate.
With Bernie, it makes him look good, even when his opponents are trying to make him look bad. When Trevor Noah showed that clip of Bernie Sanders telling a boy he thought he was dumb, and laughed and laughed and laughed, it took the cybermind about 2 seconds to find not only the extended version of the clip, but the whole darned TV show, “The Mayor Speaks” which is an absolute treasure trove of Bernie being cool back in the 80s.
With Biden, not so much.

Heckling is one of those things that most people approve of, or at least dismiss, when it’s their side doing it, and object to when the other side is doing it. Politically, it can be effective, but it can sometimes backfire, too.
Like comedians, a politician has to have a few heckler disarming tools in their arsenal.
I was just watching a video from a Pete Buttigieg town hall in New Hampshire where he was being heckled. It looked like most of the audience were holding signs that said ‘Pete takes money from oil billionaires’ or something like that, and there were some people singing an anti-Pete song, but he seemed to be handling it well and was getting big applause, so the audience wasn’t entirely against him.
Bernie and Trump are almost immune from heckling, because of the huge size of their crowds. Sure, there might be an occasional loudmouth, but they are drowned out. Joe Biden, with his inability to get more than 200 people to show up anywhere, is particularly vulnerable. Even legitimate questioners sound like hecklers, and he handles them so badly.

So, the way I feel about heckling is sort of the way I feel about graffiti. I generally disapprove of it, but can’t say I’ve never done it. Also, while I think it’s mostly vandalism (or rude and disruptive) I occasionally see a bit that is well done and artistic and I have to applaud it. Also, with heckling and graffiti, they are both unnecessary in our modern, high information society. There are lots and lots of other ways of getting your message out.

I hate to write about the same thing three blogs in a row but everybody’s still talking about it. And deservedly so.
Sure, it’s not as important an issue as global warming, or raising the minimum wage, or ending college and medical debt, or giving everybody free health care and free college, or closing all the private prisons, or legalizing marijuana, or creating jobs, or getting big money out of politics, but all of those things will be affected by the outcome of this controversy, so there you go.
I saw comments from a few people today to the effect that we should just put this behind us, that we are being divisive and all our arguing only hurts the progressive cause. But, apparently, this has not yet been argued out, and without a resolution, it will hover over the nomination process like a dark cloud, like a malignant wart, like a shameful secret that everybody knows about but no one wants to say.
Elizabeth Warren said the things she said, and we need to talk about it until things are resolved, preferably by her withdrawing her name from candidacy. An apology would be good, too, but unless it’s accompanied by her dropping out of the race, we could be pretty certain of its insincerity.

I was as surprised as anybody to find out that there was audio of what was said between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders after the debate. I figured if we didn’t hear it at the time, it means the microphones were turned off so nobody was close enough to hear the conversation except Elizabeth, Bernie, and Tom Steyer, who was trying to hang with the cool kids. Which is generally an acceptable thing to do, when you have billions of dollars.

But no, now there is audio of the infamous conversation, the confrontation when Elizabeth Warren refused to shake Bernie’s hand, and we don’t just have to guess about their body language and try to read their lips.
“I believe you just called me a liar on National TV” she said.
“Let’s not talk about this right now,” Bernie said. “You called ME a liar. But never mind. I’m outta here.”
At that point Tom Steyer stepped in, just to say hello to Bernie and shake his hand, and Elizabeth walked away.
Looking at the comments sections under the various articles and tweets, there are several people questioning the veracity of the tape, but I can’t take that very seriously. You hear a spliced tape, it sounds like Stephen Hawking. Either technology has taken a giant leap forward and nobody’s told us about it (possible -think of the explosions that brought down building 7) or it’s real. Occam’s Razor says real. A knowledge of both candidates personalities says it’s real. Reality matches their body language.
There are also lots of people blaming CNN for starting and perpetuating the feud, and maybe they aren’t completely wrong, but Warren has not, despite what she said, tried to de-escalate. That post debate confrontation was no more de-escalating than Pearl Harbor. With or without audio.
There are also Warren supporters, saying “I believe Warren” and not much else, so it’s a soundbite, with zero evidence, and comes from women who believe you should always believe the woman, because men do harass women and sexism and rape both exist. I can understand why these women distrust and hate all men, but they are completely wrong. Of all the candidates on that stage, Bernie was by far the most feminist.
Like so many events in current politics, this will be spun in a dozen different ways and people will choose the way that best suits them and go with it.
My take:
Bernie will survive, and goes into Iowa with a great deal of momentum.
Elizabeth Warren is finished, but may limp along even until Super Tuesday.
Although Bernie sounded kind of dismissive, Tom Steyer may have just got himself a cabinet position

The usual disclaimer: Did not stay up until 3 in the morning to watch the debate. This blog is just based on news accounts of the debate

Two big losers from last night’s debate, as I see it, and that’s not counting CNN, who I didn’t really have any expectations of fairness from. Elizabeth Warren, of course. If it comes down to a he said/she said (and it does), then Bernie, with his impeccable record of honesty and consistency as well as his long and noteworthy record of fighting for equal rights for women, wins. Elizabeth Warren, deserved or not, is noted for dishonesty and inconsistency.
But the capper was her refusal to shake his hand. That was just plain rude.
The other big loser, IMO, was Trevor Noah. I was just coming around to liking him. After all, he’s a comedian, he’s expected to make jokes. And when he’s telling stories of his life I find him very human and relatable. So, I’d kind of forgiven him for his earlier attacks on Bernie. O.K., he was a bit obsessive about the old man jokes, but they were jokes. Right? Well, now I’m back to thinking he’s a slimy, corporate owned attack comedian. Laughing like crazy about the ‘low energy’ of a video of Bernie backing out of his driveway. Admittedly, not the greatest Bern video ever, those show him saying beautiful things to huge crowds of adoring people, but it did show two things: Bernie lives in a normal house, and drives a normal car.
Then, he jokes about how you can’t believe the video of him saying a woman could be elected president was really from 1989 because he looks the same. Oh, that joke never gets old. (I am being sarcastic. That joke is so old it smells bad)
Last night’s big winner? Of course I’m going to say Sanders. I clicked on a couple of online polls this morning, which are, admittedly, not reliable polls, but…the DailyKos poll, which tends to go for centrist candidates, had Bernie with over 50%. And another one, Heavy.com, showed Bernie at near 80%. Obviously, I thought, this is from a Bernie group. But I read the accompanying article, and the winner of their poll last month was Andrew Yang. The takeaway? Eventually, Bernie’s going to wind up inheriting almost all of Yang’s support.