Just a quickie today, to pass on this fine piece by Eric Alterman, following up on my recent post on Bernie Sanders. The main thrust of it is that Bernie is too vulnerable to GOP smear attacks and therefore too risky a candidate to oppose Trump in 2020.  I agree with pretty much everything Alterman has written here.  I’m not happy to say it, but I am now convinced that progressives should not support Sanders for the presidential nomination.

With two other stalwart progressives–Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley–having declined to run, we are left with Elizabeth Warren as the remaining progressive champion.  Not a bad fallback! Except…Warren has come out in favor of some form of reparations for African Americans. However defensible from a moral and policy standpoint, I think that advocacy of reparations would be politically suicidal for a Trump opponent.  Reparations is overwhelmingly unpopular among whites and is not correspondingly popular among blacks.  Warren has already walked back some on the reparations issue; I hope she succeeds in re-stating her position in a way that is both credible and politically viable.