@hightor,
Interesting article. Thanks.
The once radical ideas put forward by Bernie Sanders have been taken up and magnified by a new cohort of Democrat leaders, and together appear to have been endorsed by most of the new wave of Democrat candidates for the Presidency. Perhaps fearful of the consequences with a majority of voters, Democrat Party leaders, quietly and generally without public endorsement, pushed for a Biden candidacy. The satisfaction and confidence that followed Biden's, well-accepted announcement appears to have been shattered.
The usual themes of the early debates, particularly those involving ao many candidates, are a clash of new policy proposals and a general struggle to attain prominence. In fact we saw very little in the way of conflicting policy proposals: all appear to have endorsed the new radicalism. However there was indeed a struggle for prominence and Biden was the main casualty. I could not help but sympathize with Joe Biden at the mean spirited and (in the case of Harris, rather contrived) assaults, but the fact is he handled it poorly.
I was reminded of some lines from W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming" also written in a period of such political turbulence;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
What now? Biden may recover, but I believe that prospect is far from certain. The other candidates appear to be the principal consumers of their own propaganda in so enthusiastically and uncritically pushing the new radical agenda. Just two of them raised any question or qualifications about the merits of elements in it - not a good sign in a campaign supposedly about issues.
In many ways the best things Trump has going for him include the characters of his opponents,