[Peace-discuss] Reminder: Joe Biden campaigned for Michigan Republican ahead of midterms

[J.B. Nicholson]

David Johnson pointed to 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/politics/joe-biden-democrats-2020.html which said:
> The New York Times reported that Biden was paid $200,000 to speak at a
> rally in Benton Harbor, and he and the GOP were successful in their efforts,
> as incumbent Fred Upton edged Democrat Matt Longjohn by four points.

Jimmy Dore has reaction to this as well in 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGeKIf8Sojc which I plan to recommend running on UPTV.

This also should put to bed the notion that Democrats and Republicans are opposed on 
the biggest, most important issues of the day. They're not opposed, they apparently 
work together (CARES Act business bailouts, wars, suppressing policies that would 
help the 99% like Medicare for All, homes for the homeless, and a national jobs 
program). What separates these parties is minuscule compared to what brings them 
together.

 From the aforementioned New York Times article:
> But Mr. Biden's appearance in Michigan plainly set his lucrative personal 
> activities at odds with what some Democrats saw as his duty to the party, linking
> him with a civic group seen as tilting to the right and undermining Democrats'
> effort to defeat Mr. Upton, a powerful lawmaker who in 2017 helped craft a bill to
> repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Which means Joe Biden was helping someone work against legislation passed in Biden's 
administration when Biden was Vice President; legislation liberals would have us 
celebrate even though it did nothing to prevent 30 million people from receiving the 
healthcare they needed and does not get us closer to Medicare for All.

This should quell any notion that the public should vote Biden into the presidency 
and then wait to pressure him on better legislation such as Medicare for All. Biden 
apparently goes where the money goes which means supporting HMOs when they draft 
legislation (such as the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare") and when HMOs don't 
make enough money under the ACA Biden makes money working with those who want to 
repeal the ACA.

Those who are throwing away their political legitimacy by pushing for Biden appear to 
be more interested in seeing the Democrat win the presidency[1] than the Democrats are.

The public at large will have to get behind struggling workers and the unemployed in 
order to accomplish things that will benefit us all:

- Medicare for All (which HMO funders alone are paying more for than a proper 
Medicare for All program would cost),

- Universal Basic Income (paid for with some combination of increased taxation on the 
wealthy like going back to 1960's tax policy, a Tobin tax, and reduction in military 
spending including reallocating money from that spending toward the UBI),

- homes for the homeless,

- and a national jobs program (again, both are cheap compared to what we spend on 
militarism). Keep in mind that the Dept. of Defense and Housing and Urban Development 
recently lost track of $21 trillion dollars in a widely under-reported outcome from 
the first federal audit.

I mention ways to pay for these things here but I also recognize that these questions 
weren't raised when the Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the CARES 
Act. Trillions were added to the economy and the overwhelming share of that money was 
handed to the wealthiest people with virtually nothing to individuals in need.



[1] I say this in this way, "seeing the Democrat win the presidency" because 
(recalling Biden's own speech) nothing has substantially changed for the Democrats 
since Hillary Clinton ran and lost her second attempt at becoming POTUS in 2016. So 
even if the Democrats swap out Biden and replace him with Clinton nothing will 
substantially change. Those who endorse voting for a Democrat seem to be fine 
switching their endorsement from one neocon, neolib, mistreater of women to another.