The Turks are ready for war – well, The Young Turks, in any case. Despite Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) brief stint as the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden made a stunning Super Tuesday comeback. Just days ago Biden’s campaign seemed doomed, but, as Liberty Nation’s Tim Donner explained, the March 3 verdict delivered by Democratic voters “has a lot more to do with who they don’t want at the top of their ticket than who they do.”
Leftist talking head and rabid Bernie Bro Cenk Uygur says a war is coming. “Since Biden is going to have a much stronger showing tonight than originally expected, going forward, we’re going to have trench warfare,” Cenk declared on Super Tuesday. “And it is about to get way, way uglier.”
Who Will Stand and Fight?
The question that should be on every Sanders supporter’s mind, however, is who will have to fight this battle? Progressives say the establishment wing of the party screwed Bernie in 2016. If so, then the self-avowed socialist, who couldn’t be bothered to even sport the Democratic “D” beside his name, rolled over and took it. Will he do the same this year, or will he stay in the fight?
If Sanders doesn’t call it quits and endorse Biden, he’s facing something of an uphill battle, as proven by myriad Democratic voters terrified of what it might mean for the party to feel the Bern. To once again pull from Tim’s insight, the spectacular surge in support of Biden was a cry for help. So who will back Bernie? Cenk Uygur, evidently, and he demands that all progressives stand with him.
What’s Reality Really?
To be sure, Cenk’s argument is appealing, and not just to his fellow progressives. He calls Biden senile or close to it – an assumption this writer feels more inclined to believe every time the former vice president opens his mouth. Liberty Nation certainly has no shortage of articles lambasting Crazy Uncle Joe for the ridiculous things he says. Jeff Charles hilariously dubbed him the Godfather of Gaffe.
Joe Biden recently said that 150 million Americans were killed by gun violence since 2007. He claimed to have negotiated climate policy with a man who had been dead for 23 years at the time of his alleged collaboration with Biden. He was even arrested with Nelson Mandela, apparently. Uygur asks what kind of person makes up a lie like that, then answers his own question: a stupid person, an immoral person. He goes so far as to accuse Joe of stolen valor.
But setting the man’s life of questionable integrity aside for a moment, are these more recent examples lies, or evidence of a mind losing the ability to recognize reality? Biden got his wife and his sister mixed up in California. He introduced himself as a candidate for the U.S. Senate and told folks that if they didn’t like what they saw, to vote for the other Biden. He seems to spend most of his time on stage confused about what’s happening around him. Is it so unreasonable for someone – even without any medical background – to look at all this, especially after at least two aneurysms, and ask if the 77-year-old politician may be suffering from some form of dementia?
The Pot and the Kettle
Establishment Democrats aren’t the only ones with integrity issues though. It’s easy to stand up and talk about Biden’s lies because many of them are so obvious. While the star of The Young Turks is right to point out that the media elites like to pretend their chosen one doesn’t say wholly irrational and demonstrably untrue things on a semi-regular basis, he isn’t entirely transparent either.
After the 2016 Clinton-Sanders debacle, Uygur co-founded Justice Democrats, a progressive group meant to oust establishment Dems in the primaries. They had some measure of success – with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) perhaps being their brightest star. But then Cenk was pushed out of the group for some sexist writings back in 2004. And deeper digging turned up even more. “Obviously, the genes of women are flawed,” he wrote back in 1999. “They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully.”
To make matters worse, when The Young Turks fired reporter Jordan Chariton over accusations of sexual assault, it was Cenk Uygur who uttered these words in explanation: “Here’s why we did it: to protect the people that work here and to make sure we have professional employment in place.”
But wait; there’s more. Cenk Uygur has always passionately supported unions – except for in his own company. After years of being pro-union, when his employees decided to take that route, he begged them not to. Why? He couldn’t afford it. If unions are such a great thing, then why is it a business leader with a net worth of $5 million can’t afford to adequately take care of his employees? Perhaps he has earmarked too much of his wealth to help Sanders thwart the Democratic establishment this election cycle.
A Bernie-Biden Conundrum
Does Biden have credibility issues? Of course! But so does Bernie. The man is a socialist who has long cried out for heavier taxes on the rich. The catch, of course, is that while his threshold for who is considered wealthy has changed over the years, it always sits safely above his own income. To quote Michael Bloomberg, “What a wonderful country we have. The best-known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?”
What Mike missed, right along with a slew of Sanders supporters, is that Bernie has had a very successful life in government. The state made him wealthy – that is, the American taxpayers did. Even his book deals only happened because of his political career. Without the public dime to support his life all these years, Sanders would be nothing. Why wouldn’t he champion socialism? It has worked like a charm so far for him. But it doesn’t seem to work for the general population, at least not in any nation in which it has been tried. That’s makes convincing people to support Sanders over any other candidate rather difficult.
There’s a delicious irony in Democrats attacking their opponents’ chances of defeating the president. Can Biden beat Trump? Almost certainly not – but neither can Bernie. Hell, Bernie can’t even seem to beat Biden.
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