The Missing Candidate in California: Joe Biden

The Missing Candidate in California: Joe Biden

David Dayen on the primaries, Bruce Shapiro on Julian Assange, and Ezra Levin on the Indivisible pledge.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
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Joe Biden was the only leading Democratic candidate who did not go to the California Democratic Party State Convention last weekend in San Francisco—David Dayen, the new executive editor of The American Prospect, reports on the biggest of the Super Tuesday primaries. 

Also: The United Kingdom should extradite Julian Assange to Sweden for the investigation of rape charges against him, but neither the Swedes nor the Brits should extradite him to the United States because the new espionage charges against him are a political threat to freedom of the press and to all journalists and publishers—Bruce Shapiro explains.

Plus: Every Democratic primary candidate with more than 1 percent in the polls has signed the Indivisible pledge to support the Democratic winner, with one exception: Joe Biden. Why not? Ezra Levin comments; he’s a co-founder of Indivisible, a nationwide network of grassroots progressive groups.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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