This will probably pay off in the short term, but more than anything it should extinguish any residual doubt about who the Dems are/want to be and who they are emphatically not. Some thoughts... https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1293280411150217219

Dems are proudly the party of the technocratic class. They don't give a shit about working people & I think they're happy to be rid of any sense of responsibility to pretend otherwise. But they'll also never admit that abandoning the working class has thrown the US into chaos

The real story of Trump's '16 win was always the working-class voters Dems hemorrhaged, especially after '12, less so the key pockets Trump picked up in swing states. The entire Dem strategy since then has been based on never, ever learning their lesson from those lost voters

It *is* a strategy — a detestable one, but a strategy nonetheless. Instead of winning back the great mass of disaffected working people, they've put all their chips on veering farther right, appealing to a sliver of "Never-Trumpers," & becoming the Republican Party of yesterday

Because that's honestly a better ideological fit for their establishment politics/economics. They don't have to pretend to give a shit about working people anymore — & they don't want to. In fact, they actually see 2016 as a perfect reason to NOT put any stock in us at all.

The only real lesson Dems took away from '16 was: the unwashed masses can't be trusted. The working-class voters they lost to Trump or the non-voting abyss only proved working people don't know what's good for them. Hence Dems' deep disdain for anything they see as "populist"

When they say left/right "populism" is a threat, what they mean is the masses are a threat, democracy is a threat. Bc their vision of governing society = technocratically managing a bourgeois synthesis from the top down. This is also why they *disdain* popular uprisings...

They'll try to coopt the message of these uprisings, sure, not bc they support them but bc they don't want anyone (including The People themselves) even thinking for one second that they have any power to change anything without going through the Party apparatus

That's how technocracy works. It has *way* less to do with advancing any enduring principles and way more to do with preserving that power structure for its own sake (& of course for the sake of those in power). Again, that's why, deep down, they loathe & resent popular uprisings

Once you understand that loathing, where it comes from, & why it's so central to the technocratic soul of the Democratic Establishment, their recent political moves, including #KamalaHarrisForVP, make a lot more sense.

They don't see popular uprisings like those we've seen all summer — or the Sanders movement — as something to learn from (the consequences of their bad governance). Their response, rather, is to treat people like children who don't know what's good for them.

That's exactly why a dinosaur like #Biden could see a world-historical public health catastrophe like #COVID19 & STILL wave away any mention of #MedicareForAll. It's why the Dems could witness an unprecedented uprising against the police state & choose a fucking cop for VP