• Home
  • Perspectives
  • Articles
  • Columns
  • Platform
  • Poetry
    • Literature
  • Shop
    • Cart
    • My account
  • Support
    • Donation Confirmation
  • Write for us
Search
51.6 F
Los Angeles
Friday, March 24, 2023
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Privacy Policy
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Media Monitors Network (MMN)
  • Home
  • Perspectives
    • Jerusalem Israel Palestine Dome of The Rock Golden Dome

      The Abraham Accords undermined much-needed peace with Palestinians

      World Map

      Global disturbing disparities

      Globe Algeria Niger Mali Africa

      There is always a price to pay for befriending the Zionists

      Illegal Israeli Settlements

      Antisemitism claims mask a reign of political and cultural terror across…

      The Flower - Pakistan Monument at Night

      Israel in the vanguard of India’s mounting conflict with Pakistan

  • Articles
    • Man studying religious book

      Ishmael and Isaac: An Essay on the Divergent Moral Economies of…

      Mahmoud Abbas

      May Your Home Be Destroyed

      Netanyahu Lighting Hanukah Candles with His Wife and Sons

      Bibi’s Son or: Three Men in a Car

      The Map of Greater Israel

      The Man Who Jumped

      West Bank - Palestine

      Cry, Beloved Country

  • Columns
    • Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle…

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Grassroots Organizing Should Dump Biden and Clear the Path for a…

      Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race -- and Dodging Class

      Biden Refuses to Mention the Worsening Dangers of Nuclear War. Media…

  • Platform
    • Hanukkah Lights

      Hanukkah is not hypocrisy

      The Washington Post

      “Preemptive war could risk millions of casualties. But….”

      When they shout: "We strongly condemn…"

      68

      Why Iran won’t attack Israel

      Is One Iraqi’s Self-Hatred Newsworthy?

  • Poetry
    • Literature
  • Shop
    • Cart
    • My account
  • Support
    • Donation Confirmation
  • Write for us
Home Columns Trump’s Mass Negligent Homicide Doesn’t Let Democratic Leaders Off the Hook
  • Columns

Trump’s Mass Negligent Homicide Doesn’t Let Democratic Leaders Off the Hook

By
Norman Solomon
-
March 31, 2020
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
WhatsApp
Linkedin
ReddIt
Email
Print
Tumblr
Telegram
Mix
VK
Digg
LINE
Viber
Naver
    Donald Trump

    In the last few days, New York and Pennsylvania postponed voting in presidential primaries from April until June. A dozen other states have also rescheduled. Those wise decisions are in sharp contrast to a failure of leadership from Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

    Just two weeks ago, the party establishment was vehemently pushing back against efforts to delay several mid-March primaries in response to the coronavirus emergency. DNC Chair Tom Perez issued a statement that The Hill newspaper summed up with the headline “DNC Calls on States Not to Postpone Primaries.” Perez put out the statement on the day that three states were holding primary elections.

    Ohio was also scheduled to have a presidential primary that day, but at the eleventh hour it was postponed thanks to the state’s Republican governor. Incredibly, Perez quickly criticized the prudent delay of Ohio’s election, saying it “only bred more chaos and confusion.”

    In Illinois, with the DNC’s encouragement, Governor J.B. Pritzker — a billionaire whose billionaire sister Penny Pritzker was Barack Obama’s 2008 national campaign finance chair and later became his Secretary of Commerce — refused to reschedule the March 17 primary. Just three days later, he announced a “stay-at-home” order for the whole state.

    Think about it: On Tuesday, the governor enables an Illinois election that draws about a million voters and thousands of election workers to voting sites that day. On Friday, the same governor orders everyone in the state to stay home.

    Perez — who became DNC chair three years ago as the candidate of the party’s Clintonite so-called “moderate” (corporate) wing — is clearly aligned with Biden, as Perez’s appointments to key committees for the party’s 2020 national convention have underscored. Postponing primary races in states where Biden was way ahead in opinion polls, as in Illinois, would risk slowing his momentum against Bernie Sanders.

    Biden’s interest in going ahead with the March 17 primaries — public health be damned — was expressed by his campaign’s spokeswoman Symone Sanders during a March 15 interview on CNN. “I encourage people to get out there and vote on Tuesday,” she said. The spin included upbeat, patriotism-tinged rationales like: “In times of war, in times of strife, our country has always upheld our need to uphold our democracy. We have voted in war time; votes were held many times in this country after times of strife.”

    In their zeal to boost the number of Biden delegates as fast as possible, the Biden campaign and the DNC chair ignored or distorted the guidelines that were in effect at the time from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Deeply disappointed that the DNC is willfully choosing not to listen to scientists during one of the most critical moments in recent history,” biologist Dr. Lucky Tran tweeted on March 17, when voters in three states were casting Democratic primary ballots.

    By then, as CBS News noted, even the White House had “issued new guidelines designed to slow the rapid spread of coronavirus, asking nearly every American to stay home from work or school for the next 15 days.”

    (An excellent account of this egregious saga is Katie Halper’s recent article for the national media watch group FAIR: “Media Silent as Poll Workers Contract Covid-19 at Primaries That DNC, Biden Campaign Claimed Were Safe.”)

    Looking ahead, the postponements of primaries in some states may give enough time to implement widespread voting by mail. As Charles Chamberlain, the chair of Democracy for America, wrote over the weekend, “The public health risks from gathering in large numbers are real and volunteer poll workers, who are typically in the highest risk age group for getting the virus, should not be expected to spend hours on end helping neighbors vote. We must move immediately to establish automatic vote-by-mail procedures nationwide so elections can go forward safely with minimal risk to the general public.”

    Trump bears the overwhelming responsibility for the deadly governmental negligence as the Covid-19 pandemic has spread in the United States. But that reality in no way made it okay for the Biden campaign and the DNC to forcefully advocate for retaining a primary schedule that was certain to expose people to the virus.

    Even with the new heights of the coronavirus emergency in late March, mass emails from the Biden campaign and the DNC have been stale pitches for donations, often leaving the coronavirus unmentioned. At the same time, Biden’s TV interviews have ranged from uninspiringly passable to stumblingly embarrassing.

    Meanwhile, along with raising millions of dollars for care-giving charities, the Sanders campaign has been energetic and creative online — with efforts such as championing health protection for Amazon workers, calling for comprehensive healthcare for everyone in the country during the pandemic, fighting huge corporate rip-offs of the public, and providing strong progressive populist messages during TV interviews.

    The anemic response to the Covid-19 emergency from Biden and his allies is another ominous sign that he is ill-equipped to rid the country of the vile Trump presidency. Another straw in the wind is a new Washington Post / ABC News national poll that shows an enormous voter-motivation gap — with Trump supporters far more “enthusiastic” about their candidate than Biden supporters are.

    The political strategy of reliance on emphasizing how bad Donald Trump is — without offering dynamic progressive leadership — was a catastrophic failure four years ago. Providing feeble alternatives, while reminiscing about real or imagined glory days of the Obama administration, is apt to prove woefully inadequate in 2020.

    • TAGS
    • about
    • account
    • administration
    • advocate
    • after
    • against
    • ahead
    • aligned
    • allies
    • along
    • alternatives
    • always
    • America
    • American
    • another
    • april
    • article
    • asking
    • ballots
    • barack
    • Barack Obama
    • bears
    • became
    • Bernie Sanders
    • biden
    • boost
    • called
    • calling
    • calls
    • campaign
    • candidate
    • casting
    • certain
    • chaos
    • charles
    • choosing
    • CNN
    • commerce
    • comprehensive
    • confusion
    • contrast
    • control
    • convention
    • Coronavirus
    • corporate
    • country
    • COVID-19
    • creative
    • critical
    • damned
    • deadly
    • decisions
    • deeply
    • Democracy
    • democratic
    • Democratic National Committee
    • designed
    • disappointed
    • disease
    • DNC Chair Tom Perez
    • doesn
    • dollars
    • Donald Trump
    • dozen
    • during
    • dynamic
    • effect
    • efforts
    • election
    • elections
    • eleventh
    • embarrassing
    • emergency
    • enables
    • enough
    • establishment
    • every
    • everyone
    • excellent
    • expected
    • expose
    • failure
    • fighting
    • finance
    • forward
    • friday
    • general
    • getting
    • glory
    • going
    • governmental
    • governor
    • group
    • guidelines
    • health
    • healthcare
    • heights
    • helping
    • history
    • holding
    • homicide
    • house
    • ignored
    • immediately
    • implement
    • interest
    • interview
    • large
    • later
    • leaders
    • leadership
    • leaving
    • listen
    • looking
    • lucky
    • march
    • meanwhile
    • Media
    • million
    • millions
    • minimal
    • moderate
    • national
    • neighbors
    • New York
    • newspaper
    • obama
    • often
    • Ohio
    • ominous
    • online
    • opinion
    • order
    • orders
    • other
    • Pandemic
    • party
    • patriotism
    • penny
    • people
    • political
    • polls
    • possible
    • presidency
    • presidential
    • progressive
    • Protection
    • prove
    • public
    • pushing
    • reality
    • recent
    • reliance
    • republican
    • response
    • responsibility
    • retaining
    • risks
    • saying
    • school
    • scientists
    • secretary
    • several
    • sharp
    • should
    • shows
    • silent
    • sister
    • sites
    • spokeswoman
    • spread
    • stale
    • state
    • states
    • strategy
    • straw
    • strong
    • supporters
    • t
    • thanks
    • the United States
    • their
    • there
    • think
    • those
    • thousands
    • three
    • times
    • Tom Perez
    • tuesday
    • united
    • United States
    • until
    • virus
    • voter
    • voters
    • votes
    • Voting
    • Washington
    • watch
    • weeks
    • where
    • while
    • white
    • whole
    • whose
    • without
    • workers
    • would
    • years
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Pinterest
    WhatsApp
    Linkedin
    ReddIt
    Email
    Print
    Tumblr
    Telegram
    Mix
    VK
    Digg
    LINE
    Viber
    Naver
      Previous articleNetanyahu uses coronavirus to lure rival Gantz into ’emergency’ government
      Next articleGovernments caught flat-footed in tackling the Corona Virus
      Norman Solomon
      Norman Solomon, the national coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org, is a member of the task force that wrote "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis." His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." He is a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).

      RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle of Militarism

      Google Search

      MMN @ Google Play Store MMN @ Amazon Appstore

      MMN @ TwitterMMN @ FacebookMMN Feed

      EDITOR PICKS

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      August 31, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      August 1, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle...

      July 25, 2022

      POPULAR POSTS

      167

      The Origin of Freemasonry: The Crusaders & Templars

      April 23, 2003

      Sharon to Peres: We Control America

      November 20, 2001
      Qibla - Kaaba

      Direction of Al-Qiblah

      February 23, 2003

      POPULAR CATEGORY

      • Perspectives13563
      • News6853
      • World6003
      • Asia4899
      • Columns1370
      • Africa985
      • Articles786
      • Australasia636
      • Health625
      ABOUT US
      Media Monitors Network (MMN) is a non-profit, non-partial and non-political platform for those serious Media Contributors and Observers who crave to know and like to help to prevail the whole truth about current affairs, any disputed issue or any controversial issue by their voluntary contributions with logic, reason and rationality.
      Contact us: [email protected]
      FOLLOW US
      • About MMN
      • Disclaimer
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms and Conditions
      • Contact
      Copyright © 2000 - MMN International Inc. All rights reserved.
      Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
      All other brands, logos, and product names are registered
      trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
      ResponsiveVoice-NonCommercial licensed under 95x15
      MORE STORIES
      Tajikistan has been leading for two decades international water initiatives

      Tajikistan has been leading for two decades international water initiatives

      March 23, 2023
      Southern Africa: Cyclone Freddy aftermath brings diseases, healthcare gaps

      Southern Africa: Cyclone Freddy aftermath brings diseases, healthcare gaps

      March 23, 2023