Dr. Jill Biden on supporting her husband Joe Biden for US President in 2020

Dr. Jill Biden: Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care, than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election. And maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘OK, I sort of personally like so and so better,’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.

Former Vice President Joe Biden currently has the most delegates backing his campaign and we’re told that is a critical factor in deciding whom the DNC corporation will offer up as their candidate for the 2020 US Presidential race. So, in light of recent developments, let’s look at what endorsing Joe Biden means for the two most allegedly progressive Democratic Party candidates, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) who has endorsed Joe Biden, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Both have previously pledged support for whomever wins that party’s primary.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)

Gabbard endorsed drone bombing in a 2018 Intercept interview describing the extrajudicial assassination campaign as “surgical strikes” (more on this from Digital Citizen). Despite this hawkish language which attempted to conflate the pinpoint accuracy of a surgeon wielding a scalpel with the extrajudicial and indiscriminate assassination power of a drone bombing, by the time she launched her 2020 US Presidential campaign she was labeled an “anti-war” candidate by supporters and opponents alike. What an unpleasant surprise it must have been then for her to later endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for POTUS despite his repeated support for the US/UK-led 2003 invasion of Iraq authorizing the invasion with his Senate vote and when he doubled down on his support for that war well afterwards despite his claims to the contrary.

Wikipedia’s entry for Joe Biden included

Photographs and videos exist that show Biden in what some consider inappropriate proximity to women and children, including kissing and touching. Biden has described himself as a “tactile politician” and admitted that this behavior has caused trouble for him in the past.

Some of the “trouble” this “tactile politician” faces includes a reiteration of a years-old allegation from Tara Reade, a former staff assistant for then-Senator Joe Biden, who said she was the victim of Sen. Joe Biden holding her against a wall and vaginally penetrating her without her consent. Reade told Democracy Now:

Tara Reade: And then he — it was one, as I described, fluid moment. He was talking to me, and he said some things that I don’t recall. And I was up against the wall. And he — I remember the coldness of the wall. And I remember his hands underneath my blouse and underneath my skirt, and his fingers penetrating me as he was trying to kiss me and I was pulling away. And he pulled back, and he said, “Come on, man. I heard you liked me.” But he was angry. It was like a tight voice. And he tended to smile when he was angry. And he isn’t like the Uncle Joe like everybody talks about now. He was younger. He was my dad’s age at that time and very strong. And he looked insulted and angry. And I remember feeling like I had done something wrong when he said that statement. And then I was standing there when he said — he was still near me. He said — pointed his finger and said, “You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing.” And he walked away.

That allegation was not taken seriously by the Democratic Party years ago or now. This despite the anger Democratic Party supporters displayed against Donald Trump for his own description of working with women in an interview with Access Hollywood with Billy Bush which included saying:

Donald Trump: I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Billy Bush: Whatever you want.

Donald Trump: Grab them by the pussy. [Billy Bush laughs] You can do anything. [Billy Bush laughs]

On March 17, 2020, Joe Biden encouraged people to vote in the DNC corporation representative selection procedure despite widespread calls for everyone to stay home and engage in ‘social distancing’ in order to stop the spread of the highly contagious and remarkably lethal COVID-19. Two days later on March 19, 2020 Gabbard wrote and released a video statement (transcript) which included:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: Although I may not agree with the Vice President on every issue, I know that he has a good heart and is motivated by his love for our country and the American people. I’m confident that he will lead our country guided by the spirit of aloha — respect and compassion — and thus help heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart.

So today, I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together.

Apparently whatever disagreements Rep. Gabbard had weren’t enough to stop her from endorsing Joe Biden.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Sanders behaves in a manner that suggests endorsing Joe Biden is a foregone conclusion. Sanders reiterated to the New York Times what he told the public repeatedly throughout his campaign:

He has reiterated his belief that Mr. Biden can beat Mr. Trump and tempered his criticism on the trail, saying that “Joe is a decent guy” and referring to the former vice president as “my friend.”

Law Professor Zephyr Teachout (billed as a “leading anti-corruption activist and expert” in Huffpost) endorsed Sanders’ 2020 campaign in a December 27, 2019 video where she said:

Prof. Zephyr Teachout: Bernie Sanders is constitutionally incapable of sucking up. He can’t do it. And he especially can’t suck up to the wealthy or the glamorous or the people who run big companies.

By January 2020 things would change between Sen. Sanders and Teachout as Teachout wrote about Sen. Biden and his corrupt dealings involving Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden’s job with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In January, he [Sanders] sought to distance himself from Zephyr Teachout, an ally from New York, who published an op-ed during the impeachment proceedings that accused Mr. Biden of contributing to a “transactional, grossly corrupt” political culture at a time when Trump supporters were hitting Mr. Biden for failing to stop Hunter Biden from joining the board of an energy company in Ukraine.

These choices are indistinguishable from stumping for his opponent Joe Biden.

By April 3, 2020 Sen. Sanders sent his “Bold 6-Point Program For Tackling the Coronavirus Crisis” (archived copy) to his supporters which included “Guaranteeing Healthcare to All”. In that section Sanders wrote that “Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured” but Sanders also clarified that this did not include supporting Medicare for All, the chief policy issue his campaign was previously known for supporting:

Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future.

Sen. Sanders reiterated this message of not being able to pass Medicare for All now in a video around 41m44s saying “This is not Medicare for All, we can’t pass that right now.” which means the candidate most known for formerly supporting Medicare for All is now effectively joining Biden in rejecting Medicare for All (Biden has said he’d veto Medicare for All due to cost).

What won’t progressives accept?

Perhaps Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan should be “Swallow It!” Biden 2020.

Update 2020-04-08: Sen. Sanders ended his campaign, called Joe Biden “a very decent man”, and said he wants to “assembl[e] as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions.”. The party platform is a powerless distraction, it’s not clear how Sanders has any influence to wield because he gave it all away to the neocons & neolibs in that party, and it’s not clear if the Democratic convention will be held in-person (continuing the shameful consistency Biden called for).

The threat to Julian Assange is indeed a threat to all journalists everywhere and the American people. The US indictments (both preliminary and expanded) are against an non-citizen (Assange is an Australian citizen) for journalism he did outside the US.

The US government is clearly upset that WikiLeaks, under Assange’s direction, published clear evidence of war crimes the US committed. But what WikiLeaks published isn’t illegal (see the Pentagon Papers) and the US government knows this so it’s claiming illicit computer access instead, a case for which there appears to be no more evidence now then there was when the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs were initially published. The indictments are a matter of seeking revenge against Assange to punish him for his truth-telling and a warning to us all that we must not do similarly.

The charges against Assange relating to his journalistic WikiLeaks work must be dropped. If any other charges are pursued, we can evaluate their merit as we learn what those charges are. So far the only charges published are those having to do with what WikiLeaks published.

Tulsi Gabbard has been called variations of “anti-war” or “anti-establishment” because of her “positions on war” by supporters and critics alike:

• Huffingtonpost.com: “Tulsi Gabbard Claims Anti-War Credentials After Accepting Over $100,000 From Arms Dealers—Lockheed Martin and Boeing were two of Gabbard’s largest donors during the 2016 election cycle.”
• Shadowproof.com: “Such positions on war and U.S. foreign policy effectively make her a pariah to establishment media pundits and the political class.“
• Jimmy Dore’s show on Tulsi Gabbard’s announcement where she says she’ll end the cold war and end regime change wars, and another episode of Jimmy Dore’s show reviewing a 2019 CNN “Presidential Town Hall” with Rep. Gabbard where you can also hear sharp criticism of the US drone program (“Did you know that our drone program is the biggest terrorist program in the world? Kills mostly innocent civilians?” at 15m05s) which left out that Gabbard endorsed using drones, and later Gabbard is called “a candidate who is principled” (16m42s).
• MintPressNews.com: “Tulsi Gabbard Interview Turns Ugly as MSNBC Hosts Assail Her Anti-War Positions: Instead of allowing Gabbard to relay her vision, MSNBC and company hounded her, opting to shoot the messenger for advocating against the designation of a foreign leader as an “enemy” of the U.S.”
• RT’s “CrossTalk” program had a discussion on Tulsi Gabbard (formerly also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2rQQbvYYxo) calling her a “peace candidate” and a “real antiwar candidate”.
• Glen Ford wrote an essay rightly criticizing the Social Democrats as “hav[ing] no principled objection to the military-political-economic structures of global capitalism — a system most people in the world call imperialism” and noted that “Of the Democratic presidential contenders, only Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii anti-war congressperson who does not call herself a socialist, was emphatically anti-intervention” against Venezuela.

When describing Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, how accurate is that language—anti-war—and what does that mean she’s for?

In 2016 she told West Hawaii Today:

The congresswoman has taken a hard line against terrorist groups, but opposes military conflicts justified in part as serving national security interests down the line by installing more cooperative governments.

“In short, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” Gabbard said. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

In January 2018 she told The Intercept starting around 28m43s: (emphasis mine)

Jeremy Scahill: I’m wondering what your position, I know that in the past you have said that you favor a small footprint approach with strike forces and limited use of weaponized drones. Is that still your position that you think that’s the — to the extent that you believe the U.S. military should be used around the world for counterterrorism, is that still your position?

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: Well, when we’re dealing with the unconventional threat of terrorist groups like ISIS, al Qaeda and some of these other groups that are affiliated with them, we should not be using basically what has been and continues to be the current policy of these mass mobilization of troops, these long occupations and trillions of dollars going in, really abusing the Authorization to Use Military Force and taking action that expands far beyond the legal limitations of those current AUMFs.

So, with these terrorist cells, for example, yes, I do still believe that the right approach to take is these quick strike forces, surgical strikes, in and out, very quickly, no long-term deployment, no long-term occupation to be able to get rid of the threat that exists and then get out and the very limited use of drones in those situations where our military is not able to get in without creating an unacceptable level of risk, and where you can make sure that you’re not causing, you know, a large amount of civilian casualties.

“Quick strike forces”, “surgical strikes”, “in and out, very quickly”, “no long-term deployment, no long-term occupation”

“Quick strike forces”, “surgical strikes”, “in and out, very quickly”, “no long-term deployment, no long-term occupation” are all pro-war propaganda. This vague language (how long is “long-term”?) is indistinguishable from what any neo-con would say to make war seem more acceptable.

“a large amount of civilian casualties”

As for “a large amount of civilian casualties”: It’s hard to know what would constitute “a large amount”. The US drone war is a secret war and the US Government doesn’t keep official statistics on those it kills. But the US doesn’t know whom it is killing. As Marcy Wheeler told DemocracyNow about so-called “signature strikes”:

[A signature strike] means we’re shooting drones at people whose identity we don’t actually know. We’re shooting at them because they look like terrorists from the sky, because they seem to have certain levels of security. In other words, Brennan was not telling the full truth when he said that these are targeted killings. What they are, in fact, are not targeted. We don’t know who we’re shooting at.

Therefore estimates are all we have to go on as this Wikipedia article paragraph describes:

Leaked military documents reveal that the vast majority of people killed have not been the intended targets, with approximately 13% of deaths being the intended targets, 81% being other “militants”, and 6% being civilians.[1][2] According to a journalist at the Intercept, the source who leaked the documents stated that the 94% militant deaths included some “military-age males” only assigned the label of militant because they were in a militant facility at the time and hadn’t been specifically proven innocent, though the source offered no actual evidence of this and none of these assertions were confirmed in the documents themselves.[2] Estimates for civilian deaths range from 158 to 965.

1. https://theintercept.com/document/2015/10/15/operation-haymaker/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20151016074325/https://theintercept.com/document/2015/10/15/operation-haymaker/#
2. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush and https://web.archive.org/web/20151015203119/https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush/#

What does it mean to be pro-drone war?

The drone war kills mostly innocent people (sometimes politically labeled as “militants” to help let the attackers off the hook for their murder), and everyone killed is killed extrajudicially: no charges, no evidence, no opportunity for reviewing evidence, no opportunity for debate.

According to the New York Times, one person (the US President) decides whom to kill. The President makes the decision in a Tuesday meeting (known as a “terror Tuesday meeting”) by reviewing a set of dossiers (“baseball cards”). Missiles are fired from a drone remotely-controlled by the US Government. The zone of destruction is so wide that attacks typically kill many more people than the US will admit.

The US Government is remarkably indiscriminate about whom they kill in this way. The US has killed children and US citizens in the drone war, a clear violation of their due process rights. The US citizens killed in the drone war include Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman (both killed in the Obama administration), and his 8-year-old daughter Nawar on January 29, 2017 in a drone-led Navy SEAL raid under the Trump administration. We’re told that Anwar was recruiting for al-Qaeda but this claim comes without evidence. We were given no good reason for killing Anwar’s minor children. Shortly after learning that the Obama administration murdered 16-year-old Abdulrahman in a separate drone strike 2 weeks after the drone strike that killed his father, that administration was asked why they killed the minor. The Obama administration’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs replied that children like Abdulrahman “should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children“. The Atlantic rightly added:

Again, note that this kid wasn’t killed in the same drone strike as his father. He was hit by a drone strike elsewhere, and by the time he was killed, his father had already been dead for two weeks. Gibbs nevertheless defends the strike, not by arguing that the kid was a threat, or that killing him was an accident, but by saying that his late father irresponsibly joined al Qaeda terrorists. Killing an American citizen without due process on that logic ought to be grounds for impeachment.

Who benefits from objecting to Tulsi Gabbard in this way?

It seems that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is at best against some wars, but other wars are okay. What she opposes are technical details: methods of warmaking any of which could easily be used to help the US invade countries, foment regime change, and create enemies. But the methods she approves of could be used for the same goals. The establishment media is complaining (or remaining silent about her campaign) possibly to use her as the next sheepdog for their preferred establishment candidate like Bernie Sanders was, according to BlackAgendaReport.com. Contrary to how her objections are framed Gabbard doesn’t have a principled stance against war.

Her supporters have been overwhelmingly silent on this issue so far. Whenever I could find a contact point for those who claim Rep. Gabbard is anti-war I’ve pointed them to the Intercept’s January 2018 interview asking them to cover this discrepancy between their description and the available evidence from Gabbard herself. So far nobody has replied to me and I’ve seen nobody address how this view of extrajudicial assassination squares with calling her anti-war. Exhibiting the kind of silence they eschew when Gabbard is left out of election coverage from mainstream media (such as what Jimmy Dore’s show recently released) is simply progressive hypocrisy.

In the 2016-02-28 episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”, John Oliver had a well-researched segment against Donald Trump.

(Another copy is online at YouTube, I recommend using youtube-dl to download from video sharing sites so you don’t fall prey to proprietary software.)

Despite Oliver’s “come get me” attitude (particularly in the latter part of the piece), Oliver is really punching down by remaining silent about how real power behaves.

The piece builds to Oliver replaying a clip from Donald Trump’s call into a Fox News show where Trump said

…the other thing with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. They say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.

to which Oliver followed up

That is the front runner for the Republican nomination advocating a war crime.

Yes, it is, but the real problem with Trump’s words on Fox News is how well he describes the apparent policy undertaken by the current Democratic Party president, Barack Obama, and his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who happens to also be a front runner for the Democratic Party.

The US has killed a lot of people in various strikes including “possible bystanders” of intended targets. One such case involves the family of U.S. citizen Anwar al Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, whose family tried to bring a lawsuit against the US for the drone attacks back in 2011 only to have it dismissed by a federal judge who reportedly “[deferred] to executive branch authority over military targeting decisions“. Another set of killings involve the unspecific “signature strikes…in which the CIA kills people without knowing their identities“. Oliver doesn’t point any of this out.

Oliver gives no mention of a host of relevant counterpoints that could help the viewer focus on the more important issue of executing war crimes instead of one-sided jabs against belligerent speech such as:

• Obama’s “Terror Tuesday meetings” in which Obama hand-picks whom to assassinate by drone attack on mere suspicion of wrongdoing.
• Obama’s ongoing drone war (now extending the “Drone War deeper into Africa with [a] secretive base“),
• Hillary Clinton being Secretary of State during some of these killings (including during Obama’s first strike in Yemen on December 17, 2009)
• Senator Clinton voting to authorize invading Iraq despite what were widely known lies ostensibly justifying war, despite Joe Wilson warning Senator Clinton of how Iraq “has been bled to death” (local copy of email), and despite the world’s largest anti-war protests in the streets telling her and every other US Congressperson not to vote for war. Or how, ironically, Trump recently took some boos for pointing out that the 2003 Iraq invasion Senator Clinton voted for was based on lies.

Oliver’s staff researched Trump’s bankruptcies, his failed business attempts selling steaks, a travel agency, “Trump” magazines, a mortgage bank just before the 2008 collapse, as well as Trump’s flip-flopping on various political opinions, and Trump’s family former name of “Drumpf”. Oliver has good reason to be incensed about Trump’s words here, and Trump has plenty of other characteristics to disrecommend him for US President. But Trump’s speech can’t possibly be more important than authorizing war crimes as Obama and Clinton have.

It would be nice if Oliver were half as concerned about what’s actually happened as he is about Trump’s words. Oliver’s silence in the segment about what has occurred—real extrajudicial killings, real war crimes—completely undermines the power of the point Oliver built up to through the bulk of the segment. Viewers are left with some belligerent speech and a series of entertaining but ultimately significantly less harmful bad business attempts that in no way compare to the lethal horrors undertaken by the US government under President Obama and Senator and later Secretary of State Clinton.

This is not too surprising; Oliver has minimized the circumstances of actual war crimes before. There too he seemed more concerned with PR message than action on the ground.

If Oliver were at least as concerned with real killing as he is with advocated killing, he’d have to reach the conclusion that neither major corporate party is likely to make a choice against more belligerency. And that means criticizing the system on an important matter—recent extrajudicial killing by the US government—which I’m not convinced Oliver is prepared to take on in as thoroughgoing a fashion as he was with Trump’s failed business ideas and lies.

Oliver could have Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein on his show to point all this out and help him and his viewers understand that there’s a candidate on many ballots who doesn’t stand for any of this.

Update (2016-03-04): Glenn Greenwald has more on how the elite are not truly objecting to what Trump is saying, but objecting to the packaging Trump’s words come in by laying out extant policy in words everyone can understand:

Here we see the elite class agreeing to pretend that Trump is advocating views that are inherently disqualifying when — thanks to those doing the denouncing — those views are actually quite mainstream, even popular, among both the American political class and its population. Torture was the official American policy for years. It went way beyond waterboarding. One Republican president ordered it and his Democratic successor immunized it from all forms of accountability, ensuring that not a single official would be prosecuted for authorizing even the most extreme techniques, ones that killed people — or even allowed to be sued by their victims.

Many of the high officials most responsible for that torture regime and who defended it — from Condoleezza Rice and John Brennan — remain not just acceptable in mainstream circles but hold high office and are virtually revered. And, just by the way, both of Trump’s main rivals — Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — refuse to rule out classic torture techniques as part of their campaign. In light of all that, who takes seriously the notion that Trump’s advocacy of torture — including techniques beyond waterboarding — places him beyond the American pale? To the contrary, it places him within its establishment mainstream.