My First Night Out On The Town Since COVID Started

One of the greatest moments of rock'n'roll history. RIP George Harrison. RIP Tom Petty. Bob Dylan will be 81 in May. Roger McGuinn will be 81 in July. Eric Clapton will be 78 this month. Neil Young will be 78 in November. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Please give your miserable and mostly undeserving people Bernie. [And I juyst realized that that's my neighbor Jim playing drums.]

Last night I drove the 10 minutes over to Glendale and went to my first indoor mass event since the advent of COVID— a sold-out show for the release of It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, Bernie new book. Bernie will be 82 in September. Biden’s a year younger but seems like over a decade older… or even more. Bernie bounded onto the stage of the Alex Theater on Brand last night—after sparring with racist asshat Bill Maher for a live TV audience— and he was not just as mentally sharp as ever, but seemed absolutely vigorous physically. Biden appears in all ways to be a man in his 80s. Bernie doesn’t. Biden is tired and fragile. Bernie is neither.

As Bernie— alone on the big stage in front of a sold out audience— launched into one of his well-honed attacks on the billionaire class, I asked my friend Dorothy if she could imagine Biden having the physical and mental stamina to ever be able to do anything like what Bernie was doing. A Democratic Party official, she laughed… wistfully, I thought.

Bernie was polite to Maher, even if Maher has purposefully turned himself into a stinking pile of runny dreck. The audience was on Bernie’s side… and as the discussion went on, even Maher started coming along with Bernie’s populist message. Watch; it’s less than 6 minutes and much of it was what Bernie talked about in Glendale a few hours later:

Ed Kilgore penned an interesting piece about Biden’s triangulating on DC home rule, Biden Chooses Crime Messaging Over D.C. Home Rule. He decided to let the GOP get away with a resolution overturning a new Washington, D.C., criminal-sentencing law. 3 right-of-center Senate Democrats up for reelection next year— Joe Manchin (WV), Jon Tester (MT) and Bob Casey (PA)— announced they were with the Republicans on this one. It had passed the House February 9 250-173, 31 mostly cowardly, conservative Democrats— garbage Blue Dogs and New Dems like Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Don Davis (NC), Jared Moskowitz (FL), Jim Costa (CA), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Jared Golden (ME)— joining every Republican in favor. Kilgore reported that Biden’s decision “annoyed many D.C. statehood and home-rule advocates, as well as their House Democratic allies, while relieving electorally vulnerable House and Senate Democrats… Congressional Republicans eagerly seized on D.C. to show their crime-fighting zeal and put Democrats who oppose federal interference with home rule in a bind. The latter goal seems to have been reached, as House Democrats voting against the resolution lashed out at the White House for blindsiding them— and fucking them over, having told them that he would veto the resolution if the GOP passed it.

Forbes reported that “Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the president’s decision on Friday, telling reporters that vetoing the bill ‘won’t make D.C. a state,’ referring to Biden’s pledge that he would back a D.C. statehood bill, while also noting that the D.C. crime reforms reduce maximum sentences ‘for offenses like murders and other homicides, armed-home invasion, burglaries, armed carjackings … armed robberies, unlawful gun and some sexual assault offenses.’”

D.C. congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton hit the nail on the head in her statement calling the development “a sad day for D.C. home rule and D.C. residents’ right to self-governance”:

We had hoped that with more Senate support, we would have been able to ensure that neither disapproval resolution pending before the Senate would reach the president’s desk, but with the nationwide increase in crime, most senators do not want to be seen as supporting criminal justice reform.

To be cynical about it, criminal-justice reform is a 2018 issue. For 2024, it’s all about being tough on crime.

And there you have far more of a difference between a man like Bernie Sanders and a man like Joe Biden than a year and 2 months on an actuarial table.