Quick, which animal best suits a politician? More often than not, the choice would come down to a fat smug cat, with a shit-eating grin and a snappy tuxedo and top-hat ensemble. Some may opt for a pig if they don't want to be too cliche, while others may choose the slithering, suspicious ways of a snake. If one is really conspiratorial, they would honestly assume that politicians are actually lizards rather than characterize them as such. Rarely however is the politician shown to be a crab, whom it is said that if several of them were to be put into a bucket, they would all pull whoever was trying to get out rather than work together to get each other out.
With the 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination taking place before 2019 can reach its half-point, we are all being subjected to an aggressive competition to hog all the attention between a group of candidates that could populate a modest roster for an independently published fighting game. It makes sense that they would all claw at each other in the hopes of coming out the victor but the idea is that after the process they will all rally around the winner. They may pull each other down but they expect to get out of the bucket eventually, and hope that they may accompany the winner into office if the two see eye to eye enough. However, there is one candidate whom many hope would die in that metaphorical bucket, left to be gutted rather than resuscitated. However it might strike him as odd to be made into a non-kosher animal in this scenario.
Bernie Sanders continues to be seen as a thorn on the side of politics that the mainstream can't find a way to get rid of, with his growing influence prompting melodramatic screams of how he's making things worse. Some members of the Democratic Party have little faith in him, like Pete Buttigieg, who sees fit to run with no policies but eager to shoot Sanders down if he were to win. It may appear to be part of the usual oratorical fisticuffs of a competitive campaign, but it's more of a reaffirmation of the establishment's position. One need only to look to Nancy Pelosi when she winces with a mirthless grin when candidates or voters of the more progressive wing make a suggestion or query of any sort. The media also seems ready to throw him under the bus as a variety of polls would always talk about Joe Biden being ahead in them before he ever uttered the phrase, "I am running for president of the United States of America". Even more galling was how they recently skewed the town halls to frame Sanders's ideas as being more wicked than they are. Rather than put all the candidates into the bucket and let them go at it without intervention, they would rather tie one of them with weights and declare another who hasn't even gone in as being the one most likely to get out.
It's naive to assume such neutrality from politics, and more so when it comes to Sanders. The current narratives merely retread those from 2016, the year that should have popped that delusional bubble that the media were in. Back then, liberals were rushing to crown Hilary Clinton as the presumptive nominee, with conservatives gleefully foaming at the mouth to take her down. Then out of nowhere, Bernie rose as a formidable opponent to her, carrying a charisma with him that probably made Clinton fume at the idea of 2008 happening all over again. Her worries would have been exacerbated once Sanders had robbed from her that same label that Obama did of being the more progressive candidate. She could deal with a senile socialist with a horrible haircut, but to lose the flair of being the bolder, more innovative candidate? That would be too much to bear. Of course, she needed not to worry as the game was rigged thanks to her friend Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and she could happily claim to have been pushed to the left thanks to Bernie's efforts only to be exposed as a cold and corrupt corporate puppet. If she couldn't be the progressive nominee, then no one could.
Her elitist indignation would prove further that she was not willing to make the move that needed to be done. This is especially evident when it comes to the focus of the 2016 campaign. Sensationalism was rampant and there was more concerned with personality than policy. Hilary Clinton and her ardent supporters would like to say that her passions lied with the latter, but one could never see that appetite when the conversation shifted to the latest scandal on character. They might argue that she was cornered into such discussions but one can easily do that themselves if they run towards where the walls intersect. Adding on her dismissal of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as if she was about to be inaugurated tomorrow, and it makes sense how she lost despite having won. Donald Trump may have not been the better candidate but even critics have to admit that he was better at being a candidate.
Speaking of which, the existence of Trump shows a facet of the political crab mentality in the view of that old saying, "the lesser of two evils". Many people rejected Trump with an intensity that seemed to signal that they could never be converted to his side. Yet, a slew of shifty characters that have made more offensive remarks towards him than his opponent act as cheerleaders and cabinet members pushing for his agenda. As terrible as he was, they'd rather see him burn down the country than Hilary. The sentiment would be echoed on the other side, as focus would be less on dejectedly sighing under their breath to vote for Hilary and more for passionately crying out into the airwaves that Trump must be stopped. Analyzing the candidates closely though, with their approval among the populus being tantamount to those that enjoy the smell of gas station bathrooms, it would have served better to repudiate both and pick another pair from the 300+ million people that would come to be ruled by one of them.
I am not saying this as some startling and unorthodox revelation. This is already plainly obvious to anyone during that hellish year. It is no bolder to state Trump and Clinton were both awful than to consider the two-party system as two sides of the same coin. However, both of them want to appear more like they are two coins that belong inside the same purse, as if that makes a considerable difference. It makes enough of a difference to them since they would be more willing to fake partisanship than admit bipartisanship. Clinton should know as well given how she and Bill amplified Ronald Reagan's agenda but proved to be marginally better at acting than him with their performance as "progressives" (though having a foil like Newt Gingrich could make anyone seem more rational and compassionate). Obama did much to denounce Trump as a divisive, reprehensible figure as Trump did to caricature Obama as a disgrace to the office. Yet if you wanted a president that deports illegal immigrants frequently in a manner that can be generously called careless, who champions himself as boosting the coal industry and who overzealously embraces the military industrial complex and corporations while uttering empty populist platitudes to the rest of the nation, you could find it in either one of them. Trump can both claim he's tougher on those issues and deflect criticism of his harshness by pointing to Obama as the originator, but he can never agree to them.
Is this inability to agree on enacting the same terrible policies a charade? The optimistic answer would be that it is. The truth however is that there does indeed exist differences between them, superficial as they may be. Most of what will differentiate them or motivate them will be personal, either rooted in their own alliances or how they behave. There may be many ideological contrasts but it will pale in comparison to what the two will agree on. Ironically, this serves to justify the media's sensationalist tendencies, though it does not excuse the quality and quantity of which those aspects are reported on. Can you honestly say that Trump was running on deeply held beliefs and principles? He was more motivated by ego, greed and pettiness, which some could very well find good if they are the type of people to stop Micheal Douglas on the street and tell them how Gordon Gekko got them into stock trading.
The Trump administration shows the same power struggles as everyone working there has some fundamental agreements with each other on either pushing for what's worst for most everybody or being malleable for their own malice, but where they're willing to stand firm depends on their own origins. Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, and every pundit on Fox News all shove one another to get the president's ear. But they can never hold on to it for too long once Trump wants to assert his own ability to be a leading authority. It's precisely that irrationality and that stubbornness that adds to the absurdity of the Russia collusion narrative. You can point to the cornucopia of Trump associates and Putin associates that partnered and canoodled with one another, along with the chummy relationship that the two leaders share with each other, but Trump's isolationist worldview, hostility to allies domestic or international and ambitions to make America's nuclear tippy-top seems less like bowing to the Kremlin more than showcasing that typical boorish American yokel attitude they've come to expect. Even if he did swear allegiance to Russia, as he does with Saudi Arabia and Israel, his loyalty only goes so far, even if properly bankrolled.
And yet such insanity continues, fitting perfectly with the post-truth, "satire is dead"era we live in. The media cannot admit to the error they made on Russiagate, much in the same way that the Democrats and Republicans can't admit they're closer to each other. They continue to have their own allegiances, clash with their personalities and argue over semantics and trivialities. For the media, those aspects stem much more from which corporations and organizations own them than they do for politicians. Politicians can wield their power more tangibly than the media can. All of them do share a common enemy with those that are truly more radical and hope to dismantle (or erode) the kakistocracy that they share a symbiotic relationship with. They may hold a truce, but it will falter the more they are unable to defeat their foe. Even with the desired victory, each individual in each faction of either the media or the establishment desires the same thing - to pull anyone attempting to get out of the bucket down to be torn apart by the rest and hoping they can get out and toss that bucket into an abyss of their own making. None of them will ever manage that, as in their clawing, they only subject themselves and the rest of us further into an chaotic darkness that will become less unavoidable the harder they fight.
