My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

BAD NEWS


I go to bed quite early – at 8 pm or before – so I turned off the TV just as the first New Hampshire results were coming in.  As a Bernie supporter I hoped to wake up to good news, so you can imagine how disappointed I was when I turned on MSNBC and discovered that  the big winners in New Hampshire were Pete Buttigieg  and Amy Klobuchar, with Sanders performing poorly.  But politics is for grownups and there was no arguing with the hard facts.  Buttigieg got roughly 24% votes, Klobuchar got 20%, and Bernie limped in with 26%.

I am afraid it going to be like this all the way to the Convention.

14 comments:

Jordan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jordan said...

The coverage is ridiculous, to be sure. Though it was admittedly a disappointment not to see Sanders win by more. Warren really underperformed, and yet her voters seem not to have migrated en masse over to Sanders. Still, a win is a win. On to the next one.

(PS -- It was 26-24-20 in terms of percentage. I think Sanders got something like 74k votes.)

Anonymous said...

So even though Bernie literally won, you're letting the main stream news set the narrative that he didn't? Hell of an anarchist!

Robert Paul Wolff said...

You know, there are times when it is really disappointing to try to write witty, ironic posts for one-dimensionally literal minded readers.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I enjoyed your post! On behalf of all those that do, please don't let this person stop you.

No idea what motivates people to take the effort to chime in with such nastiness. I have to assume anonymous is part of an ingenious disinformation plan to reinforce the narrative concerning "bernie bros"...

David Auerbach said...

I hoping Wonder Boy will disintegrate as the primaries move to non-white states. I am mystified by the Klobuchar uptick. But hoping that as people get to know her....

s. wallerstein said...

Leiter believes that the final primary battle will be between Sanders and Bloomberg.

https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/02/more-reason-to-think-the-democratic-primary-contest-will-come-down-to-sanders-and-bloomberg.html

Ludwig Richter said...

If this were a plot for a political novel, it would just be too obvious: an old Brooklyn Jew, railing against the billionaire class, faces a showdown with another New Yorker, of the billionaire class. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings, the corrupt president from New York . . .

s. wallerstein said...

And the billionaire is also Jewish. They didn't grow up together in the same synagogue, but you could have them grow up together in the novel.

Anonymous said...

Leiter's reasoning is bizarre. Does he really think stop and frisk Bloomberg can win over black voters? Does he really think Sanders has no chance at doing so, despite having the most racially diverse base, including a huge majority of all Latino voters and young black voters?

From the NH exit polls:

Nonwhite voters:
Sandrers 32%
Biden 16%
Buttigieg 15%

s. wallerstein said...

Leiter did not say that Sanders could not win over black voters. He said that Bloomberg was trying to do so. I note that Biden and Buttigieg split the non-white vote in New Hampshire according to the exit poll above and that their total of non- white voters is more or less that of Bernie. If Biden and Buttigieg fall by the wayside, as Leiter predicts, then many non-white with the profile of those non-white voters who voted for Biden and Buttigieg in New Hampshire may well opt for Bloomberg instead of Sanders.

It's Leiter's theory, not mine, but it's far from bizarre.

Anonymous said...

Ah, I see it now. I thought "that he'll easily lock up over Sanders" was referring to the beginning of his sentence.

Still seems bizarre to expect black voters to go in substantial numbers to the author of an extremely high profile racist criminal justice policy over literally any one remaining in the field. Yes, Biden and Pete voters are moderate and Pete has his own problematic past on racial issues, but there are lines even moderates won't cross.

On a related note, a North Carolina poll released today:
Sanders 25%
Biden 19%
Bloomberg 13%
Warren 12%
Buttigieg 6%
Steyer/Klobuchar 3%

Anonymous said...

I very much enjoyed your tongue-in-cheer "sorrow" over Bernie's poor showing. A tragedy!

I too find it very odd that he is held to a very different standard than all the other candidates. I can't imagine what would cause this. The other's are so honest about their connections with big dollar donors and their affiliation with Wall Street and big corporations. Poor Bernie, he is keeping everybody in suspense by failing to reveal just how deep he is into contemporary corruption with dark money and seedy and nefarious obligations to his "campaign angels", you know, those self-abnegating generous souls who provide unlimited cash both above the table and under the table to deserving candidates. Clearly Bernie needs to sit down with the Democratic party insiders and spell out his case as a dutiful and respectable representative of "the Establishment".

I've lived a long life and watched how news outlets have always skewed "the news" to appease the powers-that-be. It has only gotten worse with the "social media" which an unleashed "weapons of mass destruction" upon our civilization.

While my heart is firmly on the left, I find that as I get older I've become more cynical and far less optimistic about "people power". I read stuff from left and right as well as so-called "mainstream" and I find them all lacking. I was quite impressed with this diagnosis of contemporary social ills put forward by Yuval Levin, a right winger, but an intelligent guy with a viewpoint that I find interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEpccGpKpu0
I would appreciate it if you took a look and provide you analysis/response. I'm especially enamored with Levin's attempt to fault both right and left excesses and see the problem in failing institutions.

In my youth, the failure of institutions (the mindless & evil Vietnam war along with the studied indifference to the struggle for civil rights) caused me to read widely in anarchist literature and I very much appreciated it as a critique of the modern nation state and heavy-handed religious institutions. But the failure of anarchists to have a clear vision of a workable society always bothered me.

Yuval Levin has now got me thinking that I stupidly overlooked the true role of "institutions" as a lodestone to guide collective living and keep us from the Scylla and Charybdis of unbridled/unmoored "freedom" and the oppressive/deadening hand of "tradition" and "authority" and the cynical manipulations of "the elites". I'm enough of a realist to realize there is no perfection with regard to the human condition and our society. But the idea of using institutions as a technique to glue the disparate parts together is having greater appeal to me as I age and watch populist politics devolve into mob action while the elites are using ever more corrupt and oppressive "state action" and subtle "control" to suppress rights and individuality... and even the "happiness" that the authors of the Declaration of Independence had the audacity to include in their suit against King George.

Anonymous said...

More good news that undermines Leiter's prediction:

https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-leads-all-democratic-candidates-support-non-white-voters-new-polls-show-1486807?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

In only a little over a week since Iowa, Sanders' support among black voters has gone up 10 points to 27%, while Biden's has dropped to 35%.