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Biden's Journey Left (Michael Tomasky, NYRB)
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/02/joe-bidens-journey-left/Excerpt:
. . . "But even as some of his supporters were digging in their heels, scrambling to knock Biden out, Sanders himself was suing for peace. Faiz Shakir, Sanderss well-regarded campaign manager, told me that, as the senator ended his campaign, he made clear that cooperation would be the order of the day. Senator Sanders asked me and [longtime adviser Jeff] Weaver to reach out to our Biden friends and see what would be available if we were to bring these worlds together, Shakir said.
The friends in question were Ron Klain and Anita Dunn, two establishment Democrats. There are actually two lefts within the Sanders orbit. One I would call the outside left, the hard-shell Bernie-or-bust contingent referred to above: younger, more New Yorkcentered, strident, and absolutist. The inside left, which includes people like Shakir, who has a Washington pedigreehe has worked for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reidsees value in urging the moderate (and elected) figures left. This group does have respect for people like Klain, a frequent and fierce critic of Donald Trump on MSNBC who, as Obamas Ebola response coordinator, showed the world a few short years ago that the United States of America actually knew how to contain a virus.
In fact, the lines of communication between the campaigns predated Sanderss dropping out. As the virus descended in the first half of March, the two camps negotiated the mutual canceling of events; they agreed before the last pre-lockdown debate, on March 15, to replace a handshake with an elbow bump. Through late March, as the toll of illness rose, they generally kept each other apprised of their actions. After Sanders withdrew, the discussions between the two turned more toward substanceand the extent to which Biden would be willing to adopt pieces of the Sanders agenda. Thus were formed the six task forces that the Biden campaign unveiled on May 13. These eight-member groups cover the economy, health care, immigration, criminal justice, climate, and education, and each is co-chaired by one Biden supporter and one Sanders supporter.
The left-wing presence on many of them is remarkable. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez co-chairs the climate panel with John Kerry. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Seattle, a major Sanders backer, co-chairs the health care task force with Obama surgeon general Vivek Murthy. The economist Stephanie Kelton, a top Sanders adviser and proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that the government should pay for major new investments like the Green New Deal by printing more money, is on the economic task force. The task forces, Im told, have a threefold mission: to publicly recommend the policy positions that Biden should run on, to guide the writing of the party platform, and to inform the transition, should Biden win the election (assuming there is an election, or an uncorrupted one). It stands to reason that some of the members of these task forces might also fill important slots in a Biden administration."
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Biden's Journey Left (Michael Tomasky, NYRB) (Original Post)
swag
Jun 2020
OP
George II
(67,782 posts)1. I don't think so.
Skittles
(153,148 posts)2. climate change and healthcare are considered LEFT-WING
let that sink in