The Economist The false narrative Biden lackeys-- like former Delaware governor Jack Markell, a shady conservative very much like Biden-- are working ceasely to create is that Democratic voters "know him. And they don't know just his name. If it were just name recognition, these polls may look different." That's false; as voters get to know Biden better, they flee to other candidates. Polling has shown that the more closely people have followed the primary, the more likely they are to move away from Biden. He began his campaign in early May with an average polling number of 41.4%. The most recent poll, by YouGov last week for shows him at 22% . As voters see how feeble he is, how conservative he is, how racist he is, what a liar he is... they start looking for other candidates. "Biden's campaign," reported Julie Pace and Bill Barrow of the Associated Press, "is eager to focus more on his eight years as vice president than the decades that preceded his time in the White House. Advisers believe his years serving as No. 2 to the nation's first black president resonate particularly well with African American voters, one of the most powerful segments of the Democratic electorate."





New York Magazine columnist Ed Kilgore asked the pertinent question of primary season: really want to beat Donald Trump and are willing to sacrifice other goals if necessary to send the 45th president to the dustbin of history," he wrote. Polling bears out the assertion. YesterdayMagazine columnist Ed Kilgore asked the pertinent question of primary season: Is Beating Trump The Best Democrats Can Hope To Achieve In 2020? "One of the fundamentals of the 2020 presidential nominating contest is that rank-and-file Democratswant to beat Donald Trump and are willing to sacrifice other goals if necessary to send the 45th president to the dustbin of history," he wrote. Polling bears out the assertion.





Conservative campaigns, particularly of right-of-center Biden surrogates John Delaney, Frackenlooper, Steve Bullock and-- don't flip your lid; I know her far better than you do-- Tulsi Gabbard are threatening "that progressive policy proposals will feed Republican claims that Democrats are a wild band of socialist baby-killing America-haters who want to open the borders and register criminal aliens to vote while they are signing up for their free health-care coverage."

Kilgore admits that there’s a counterargument from the left, that nonvoters and even some 2016 Trump voters crave single-payer health care and free college and other progressive proposals and have only voted Republican or not voted at all in the past because corrupt conservative Democrats like Biden and Delaney, et al don’t offer them anything to improve their lives or any kind of real change or-- as Biden himself put it-- "fundamental" change.

But what Kilgore's column in about is The "what Democrats can realistically hope to accomplish after beating Trump... Is ejecting this terrible anomaly from the White House enough?" When combined, the two serious progressive contenders in the race, Bernie and Elizabeth, consistently out-poll Biden. They are offering Americans a realistic roadmap to fundamental change. Bidenis basically offering nothing but his decrepit stench-ridden political corpse and his ugly, vile over-sized ego.

Limiting Trump to one term (assuming, as is prudent, that there is zero chance he will be removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate before that term ends) would remove his stubby fingers from the nuclear trigger, and thrill most of our allies. It would calm financial markets constantly roiled by this unstable man’s gyrations in economic policy and his taste for trade wars. It would stop the Federalist Society’s shockingly successful campaign to stuff the federal courts with conservative ideologues, which a second Trump term could bring to a crucial and almost irreversible tipping point. And it would halt the more radical policies that Trump has implemented by executive order and that Republicans have tried to enact via legislation. Perhaps most important, beating Trump would reduce the likelihood that one of the nation’s two major political parties would become wedded for the foreseeable future to a radical right-wing populism that depends on racist appeals and efforts to subvert democracy for survival.



But anyone who thinks, for example, that addressing climate change is a generational, or perhaps even biological, challenge that can no longer be delayed cannot be satisfied with just avoiding a 2021 hellscape. And Democrats really do need to internalize the fact that they haven’t been in a position to advance their policies in a serious way since 2010.



To be very specific about it, Democrats entered 2009 having won two straight landslides, with a supermajority in the Senate, a big majority in the House, and a popular and charismatic president claiming a mandate for “hope and change.” Yes, those managing the Democratic “trifecta” in Washington had to deal with the aftermath of the financial meltdown and the advent of the Great Recession. But in theory, at least, they had the power to get big things done-- until a handful of moderates in their ranks objected to elements of the original Affordable Care Act that in retrospect were essential to Obamacare’s success. And then the whole dream collapsed when Republican Scott Brown destroyed the Senate supermajority in a shocking special election in deep-blue Massachusetts.



In retrospect, Democratic prospects for anything like fundamental change went steadily down from that point, creating a lost decade of dashed hopes and gridlock interrupted only by those two years when Trump and a GOP trifecta won its own half-measures.



Yes, in 2020 Democrats could end the threat of a permanent conservative counterrevolution-- a job they started by retaking the House in 2018. But if all they do is to beat Trump, they will be at the very best where they were when it all started going bad in Massachusetts.



Can they aim higher than that? Yes. They can begin, of course, by defending their control of the House and retaking the Senate along with the White House. The latter will not be easy, given the landscape, even if they win the presidency. Without the Senate, though, the new president will be helpless to put together the administration it wants or to begin to reshape the judiciary in a more progressive direction. Big legislative “reaches” like major new health-care reform measures or climate change actions or steps to address income inequality would be dead on arrival. And even with Senate control, the filibuster will make legislative action all but impossible.

Kilgore then goes off the rails entirely-- into an anti-Bernie/anti-Warren rant-- drawing the perfect example of why so few progressives bother reading his persistently narrow-minded, elitist, right-of-center negativity. He wants Biden to win and doesn't understand that that is likely to equate to 4 more years of exactly what he doesn't want: Trump. Kilgore would have counseled against provoking the British by starting the Revolution. He would have have said to ask the plantation owners to feed the slaves better. Kilgore would have opposed public education, labor rights, civil rights, Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection. Big things take a lot of work. That's Bernie; that's Elizabeth Warren. That's certainly not Biden, Delaney, Frackenlooper, Gabbard, Bullock, Mayo Pete or Kilgore. And, by the way... this is Texas, not Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Michigan or even Ohio; TEXAS:





A new national poll of registered voters from SurveyUSA shows Bernie and Biden each beating Trumpanzee 50-42% and Elizabeth Warren beating him 46-44%. But the most important finding is among independent voters where Bernie trounces Trump by ten points. Biden also beats him but just by 6 points. Elizabeth Warren and Trump are even among independents. Among profoundly ignorant and extraordinarily stupid people who aren't equipped to deal with the 21st Century, Trump rules and beats every Democrat. In that demo, Trump beats Mayo Pete and Kamala by 30 points each, beats Bernie and Status Quo Joe by 21 each and beats Elizabeth by 18 points. In households with at least one family member who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, Sanders leads by 50 points, Biden leads by 46 points, Harris leads by 45 points, Warren leads by 44, Mayo Pete leads by 38.