PSUsarge wrote:Interesting interview by Phila Magazine with Ed Rendell - https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/02/ ... =instagramEd would, in fact, become a master of hardball politics as mayor, wheeling and dealing with John Street and Vince Fumo and John Dougherty, just the sort of old-school players the progressive wing of his party now wants dead and buried.
I challenge Ed on how he justified working with Dougherty back in the ’90s. “Nobody is all good or all bad,” he says. “John and the [electricians] union were very helpful in getting things Philly needed. Now, it might have been in their self-interest, but it gave us political clout in Harrisburg we wouldn’t have had on our own. That’s why a lot of well-intentioned progressives don’t get stuff done. You take your allies where you find them.”
It's funny how much this reporter seems to miss the drift of the current zeitgeist, and how perfectly he encapsulates it in this exactly, inversely wrong sentence/question. The question being asked by millions upon millions of progressives and workers is not, "Why did you, politician X, choose to work with Union leader Y?" It is exactly the opposite: "Why did you, Johnny Dougherty (or Union Leader Y), choose to work with obviously bought-and-paid-for by the investor class/monied interests Ed Rendell (or Politician X)?"
Not, "Hillary Clinton, why did you choose to work with Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO?"
But, "Richard Trumka, why did you work with tool-of-Wall-Street Hillary Clinton, after her husband had sold us down the river with NAFTA?"
The question he asks is top-down. The moment is bottom-up. The elite media, the elite members of the DNC, the GOP, etc. - this is what they fail, utterly, to grasp. The GOP gets it now - only because they were made to.
On another matter:
I do wonder exactly how this cycle will go, assuming Sanders closes the deal. Wall Street will be jittery. If Sanders is leading polls throughout the summer, do stocks prices and futures drop as fears among investors increase? Does this become a self-fulfilling prophecy and drive the beginning of a recession that spooks the electorate? If it does, do they go out-party in response?
If Wall Street holds it together, but Bernie wins anyway, I assume the stock market tank and the recession will begin forthwith. The rich can't stand to see the peasants in charge.
Uncle Milty, I think Bernie can win PA. Will he? Time will tell. Biden certainly probably would win PA. Would he win MI and WI? Eh. It is too bad he lost so much off the fastball.
