Bernie Vs. Lindsey July 21, 2022July 20, 2022 From the Economist: The Democrats need to wake up and stop pandering to their extremes. “For the good of America, the governing party urgently needs to take on its own activists.” Or put another way: the perfect is the enemy of the good. No one should be thrown under the bus; but in order to make progress for the most vulnerable — not least by taxing billionaires at rates as high as dentists pay — we need to win. So it may seem odd for me now to post this Fox News debate between the admirably honest, consistent Bernie Sanders and the by-now-truly-pathetic Lindsey Graham. Yet it’s well worth watching, with these caveats: (1) I couldn’t find a link to the full debate, so these are six snippets stitched together by David Doel, an eminently well-meaning liberal Canadian; (2) I agree with most of what Bernie says but only some of what Doel says (so maybe skip his riffs?); (3) I don’t see Bernie as Joe’s replacement if Joe decides not to run. Leaving aside his age — 81 this coming September — I think we have a better chance of winning with someone who won’t scare independents and moderate Republicans (who are by now, essentially, moderate Democrats). If we had such a nominee, my hope is that our outstanding left-wing leaders, like Bernie and Elizabeth — and so many others, less well known — and young climate and gun-safety activists and pop stars and rock stars and preachers and maybe even (who knows?) Ralph F—ing Nader — will help our nominee persuade everyone on the left that the whole world is at stake, so it’s urgently better to win with someone good than to lose with someone perfect. UKRAINE From Russia’s to-me-very-odd point of view. What a mess. TEXAS Mothers Against Greg Abbott. What an opportunity. Millions have already watched this 90-second clip. BOREF WheelTug inches forward. MYM Fred C.: “Loved your column today. I still use MYM. Much better than Quicken and the greatest piece of software I have ever used. Between that and your book you have meant a lot to me during the years. Now if you could just tone down the political rhetoric…” Ken R.: “I was amused by your posting about MYM. I still use it, running in a program called vDOS. For what I need it for it works wonderfully still. I was a little concerned if it was going to run on my new Win-11 computer (it certainly worked under Win-8 and Win-10.) But I just ported the entire vDOS folder from the old D drive to the new computer’s D drive and didn’t alter anything and the program just worked the same on both computers. Easy peasy. Thanks. Enjoy the select committee hearing upcoming. I’m about as committed a Democrat as they come (I stayed up all night to listen to Truman win on the radio at age 7); but I just can’t help feeling that the crazies are increasingly in charge and this wonderful experiment in democracy is going to fail despite everything one can do. I’d love to be proved wrong…after all so much depends on it surviving.” → Amen. TONIGHT Here’s how to watch.