Slow day on the contrarian beat, Katie?

Uh Katie, we've moved into Cancer season now. Keep up.

The only thing that would have made her more of a time capsule would be Donald Trump RAPING HER IN THE DRESSING ROOM OF A BERGDORF GOODMAN.

There. Fixed it for you.

herzog SUCKS

She's vastly more qualified than Don the Con is.

Here mid-Atlantic accent is amazing, I picture Edward G Robinson running her campaign.

Nothing wrong with skepticism. Everyone should be a skeptic actually. Demand evidence and be a critical thinker.

Once the evidence is in though, the time for skepticism is over.

The real substance here is that we need to reassess the power invested in the executive office. The founders never intended it to have imperial powers. It is congress that created that situation by creating so many bureaucracies and handing them to the executive to manage instead of passing laws to address the issues these bureaucracies are tasked with solving. By doing so Congress has passed the buck to the executive (and, with it, much of its power).

If Biden doesn't win the nomination, America is doomed for another four years of Trump. It's that simple.

We had us a Movie Star President
(Ronny Raygun,* who sold Unions AND the American Middle Class down the river [for a couple million pieces of silver])

and now, we got us a "reality" Teevee "star"
to finish Ronny Raygun's incomplete
evisceration of the American Dream.

So, why not Mary Jane Williamson?

Or, even Better (possibly), let's go with a Martin
Sheen ("fake" President) (from REAL Teevee)
or even a Jimmy Smits.

Oh, what the Hell

Let's try Elaine Benes (OR Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
(I'd be just as Pleased with either one):
she's already been Madame Vice President
And (for a short while) PRESIDENT, ffs.

It IS a beauty contest and
She does look fetching in a snug little dress.

After Bernie, let's play another Joke on America
and 'accidentally' install her.

She's gotta be better than ANYone Rs put up.

*Bedtime for Bonzo, baby!

Nah, I figure she's not going to win the nomination but foreign powers are going to fund her to run third-party to spoil the liberal fruitbat vote.

@14: Go ahead and rewrite history if you want, but lack of union worship did not dissolve the middle class. The 50's and 60's could last forever. By the time the 80's came around we were entrenched in high inflation and interest rates.

@15,

Haha, that's a comically depressing (and actually plausible) scenario.

@17,

Did you mean 50/60's could NOT last forever? Having trouble parsing your comment either way.

@6: She doesn’t have a Mid-Atlantic accent, she has a “I can’t move my face so I end up sounding like Bernadette Peters” accent.

Just get rid of the comments, Stranger.

In fact, just get rid of everything. Fuck me, I remember when this site had a live blog of the debates AND the elections. No, now we get a halfwitted article and halfwitted comment section as well.

Just fire everyone and start over. Seriously, want a good article, I'll write you one for free. Fuckin A.

@18: Yes, it's missing the 'NOT' - thanks for catching that.

@3 Max Solomon and @14 kristofarian: Tied for the WIN, and 'nuff said. That is all.
@9 Doofus in Shoreline: Take off that silly MAGA cap before your head caves in.
@13: How are your triglycerides lately, sugarlips? Biden would not be my pick for D-2020.
Try again.

I read this whole article, not super carefully but I read it, and I'm still not sure who she's maybe a threat to?

There's no possibility she will win the nom, so the threat can't be that we might face either a Williamson presidency nor a loss leading to another Trump presidency. I can't take seriously that Katie thinks this could happen.

She might take a few spoiler votes away from other Dem primary competitors. I think it's fair to consider that field is sort of a spectrum (the old establishment vs the fresh young people saying basically the same thing as the old establishment only without the racism vs the leftist side) and you can arrange the candidates along that line Biden to Buttigieg/Castro/Harris to Warren/Bernie. Alright, so for Marianne to be a spoiler, she'd have to be pulling from one of those groups more than another right? Well believe it or not, she has a pretty diverse range of 'fans' including Oprah type old people and granola type back-to-the-lands and green type nuts and leftist irony bros, etc. I don't think there are enough people who earnestly like her enough to pull her votes significantly from any old or young establishment side, and most of the irony types aren't going to vote for her in large enough numbers so long as they have Bernie (or Yang or Gravel). My guess is that she would pull a teeny number of votes at about the same rate from all of them. So who cares?

So bigger picture, I think Herzog is trying to make the point that she's a threat TO AMERICA- that our discourse has gotten to the crazy point in which someone like this could even be up on that stage and no one even really thinks it's absurd enough to notice. The nuttiness has become business as usual and no one will even remember a week from now. And people are so dissatisfied with the system that they support charlatans and gurus- some of them even so invested in their defensive irony that they can't even properly distinguish between it and real life- to which I say, sure dat but where have you been? As usual with libs, it's frustrating when they get so close to seeing the larger truths of our system but then can't take that next step.

(EL smokes pot and whispers in Katie's ear: the system you believed in was a hall of mirrors. It just hadn't collapsed on you personally yet. We're all out in the carnival now- there's no going back to normal. What are we going to build in response? Or are we just going to keep riding the merry-go-round and acting surprised at all the freaks?)

@23: Good analysis.

Herzog is probably the best that The Stranger has. However, this. "Clickbait achieved."

"We're all out in the carnival now- there's no going back to normal. What are we going to build in response? Or are we just going to keep riding the merry-go-round and acting surprised at all the freaks?" --EL

Like Jimmy Stewart's character Elwood in 'Harvey' -- "Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it."

gee dubya/CHENEY claimed they made their own reality* -- and they've since proved correct, nearly destroying the Middle East.

trumpfy learned his 'craft,' fittingly, on the Apprentice, a "reality teevee" show where he got to practice inventing the World as he demanded it be.

"What are we going to build in response?"

Wouldn't it be funny (not ha-ha) if we happened to elect a (nother) Nutcase (not to say Maryjane is, what do we know?), who actually Improved America? I might could get behind that...

"'That's not the way the world really works anymore.' He continued, 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're History's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" --attributed to Karl 'Turd Blossom' Rove, the brilliant Cheney/bush strategist/yellow-cake traitor

*"'That's not the way the world really works anymore.' He continued, 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're History's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" --attributed to Karl 'Turd Blossom' Rove, the brilliant Cheney/bush strategist/yellow-cake traitor

@20: No thanks. Trolling 24/7 does not constitute a good article, however free of charge. Avoid eating at McDonald's and you won't be so bloated.
@27 & @28 kristofarian: Author Aldus Huxley (born July 26, 1894 Godalming, United Kingdom--died November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles, CA---eerily the same day JFK was fatally shot in Dallas!) was indeed, decades ahead of his time with A Brave New World. Here's a chilling quote from Huxley: "Maybe this world is another planet's hell."

Katie, your arms. You are a human, Preying Mantis. I mean that in a good way.

The primary is rigged by the DNC in collusion with corporate media, so you have nothing to worry about as far as free and fair elections are concerned.

The quote is Nelson Mandela. Or were you pulling our leg.

Don't forget Trump didn't win because of free and fair elections. He won in a big way because the DNC colluded with corporate media to make him, as a longshot, GOP nominee. They put him more than 1/2 way. He'd otherwise be long forgotten by now.

@14 The difference with so many in the GOP and the DP is that the Republicans abolished superdelegates.

The high number of entrants in the DP this time is because they want to defeat Bernie. Williamson and some others would never have gotten on stage otherwise. Or be getting the publicity. They are trying to water everything down, and then have superdelegates decide in case Bernie wins and by a close enough margin.

i.e.I have a statistical confidence in the outcome of truly free and fair elections. You don't usually get anomalies, i.e. like Trump who isn't the result of such a process. But more like the results of kids playing with matches and burning down the house.

I don't think Williamson is anything like Trump, but she would be odd, an anomaly in other ways.

I don't believe in superdelegates and see them as a form of rigging on top of the other corruption and fixing. So if you're heading towards the idea that we need these disgusting interests to protect us from Williamson, or ourselves, I think you're greatly mistaken.

The real concern in this election is that they want to rig out Bernie again. And using Warren and a large number of candidates to water results for superdelegates with lots of boring and uninspiring 50s style (including Buttigieg despite him being gay, he's very conservative) white men, as seen on night 2. There are lots of them planted as possible anomalies.

So if you wind up with anything weird, it would be more likely one of them. And, they'll lose to Trump. Probably Williamson would too for other reasons.

Keep in mind, the DNC which represents corporate interests is more concerned about beating Bernie than Trump. They can live with Trump just fine. We're watching a big show, folks.

In my opinion, people should be concerned about getting Bernie through, who would beat Trump. That would be taking back our elections.

Harris is a sell-out. Glitter and cake and ice cream identity politics for the masses while she flip flops on Medicare for All, saying totally different stuff the very next day, and posing with insurance companies, and going fund raising with Wells Fargo after she grandstanded about holding them accountable.

You can expect Warren to sell out if they even let her through. She's try to burn the candle from both ends, and she's far weaker than some may think, as a result. Plus, she may be corrupt than people realize with her Reagan roots and applause for Trump's National Socialist rhetoric. I think progressives are making a big mistake if they choose her over Bernie. That's what the corporate interests want you to do. To bite these little donuts they're swinging out there for you.

Bottom line, a real shit show.

Over and out.

@33 Is not wrong.
My prediction...
Hillary swoops in at the last minute to save the day and takes the nomination in a brokered convention.

To anyone who dismisses Marianne Williamson as being anti-scientific or whatever, I would ask them this: Why be ignorant when you could be informed? A serious and sincere question. Be careful in who you listen to and what you repeat. Calling Williamson's positions woo is precisely what the corporate media is saying. That is the narrative they want you to believe.

Williamson isn't anti-science. Nor is she anti-vax. She is actually advocating for more independent science to inform public policy, rather than our political system being controlled by big biz interests. She has vaccinated her own daughter and she states that she is in favor of vaccine mandates when the science supports them.

Whatever you think of her position, it is less woo than the mainstream corporatists who push anti-scientific and anti-democratic corporate propaganda. Williamson, instead, wants to bring genuine science back into public policy. That would require government increasing research and regulatory funding, rather than relying on corporations to police themselves.

This is where we need an informed public. Anyone who has researched GMOs, for example, knows that there is much mixed results. Some studies show evidence of harm, not necessarily from the GMOs themselves but because they are being genetically modified for heavier use of herbicides and pesticides.

Any rational person would be skeptical. But sadly, there are too few rational people. It's funny that the new agey Williamson is one of the most rational voices being heard at the moment.