How weird is the Democratic Party establishment?

For more from Hightower, check out The Hightower Lowdown, where you can find monthly in-depth newsletters, and twice-a-week short podcast takes on the news of the moment.

Just when you thought this political year couldn’t get any weirder, along comes the entire Democratic Party establishment rushing en masse to the cliff’s edge, hurling themselves head-first into the presidential contest. What has spurred this gaggle of political operatives, fat cat donors, and former presidential hopefuls is a collective impulse to unite behind the very worst candidate the party could possibly put up against Donald Trump in November’s election: Joe Biden.

While practically everyone in the political swirl admits privately that Joe’s pretty slow, awfully corporate, and practically bent over double with a bag full of very bad political positions he’s taken during his decades-long career as a Washington insider — his establishment cohorts are now resurrecting his dormant campaign by ecstatically proclaiming that he’s a “winner.”

When pressed, their main pitch for Biden is that he’s “decent.” Well, probably even Melania Trump would like to see something better than Donald’s in-your-face, gross-out indecency in a president, but every contender for the Democratic nomination met this minimal threshold of suitability (and before the establishment hoists “Gentle Joe” onto a pedestal of decency, they might check with Anita Hill about his ugly political abuse of her).

A “winner”? How enthusiastic will seniors, low-income families, and others be when they realize Biden has spent 30 years (including during his vice presidency) trying to cut spending for the people’s crucial safety net, declaring: “I meant Social Security as well; I meant Medicare and Medicaid; I meant veterans’ benefits… I tried it once… twice… a third time… a fourth time.”

Also, how excited will young voters be to find that kindly old Joe has constantly backed efforts by big bankers to make it harder for students to get out from under their price-gouging loan payments? And how thrilled will hard-hit manufacturing workers be that Biden has been a constant cheerleader for NAFTA and other job-killing, wage-busting trade scams?

At a time when big majorities are clearly sick and tired of business-as-usual politics and are demanding bold policies for grassroots progress, why would Democrats put up the poster boy of corporate-purchased, inside-the-beltway, status-quo-ism? Not only would Biden be uniquely vulnerable to Trump this fall, but he’ll also lose the political future for Democrats by turning off voter turn-out — especially among young people and others who feel abandoned by the establishment.

Cynically, the Democratic Party’s moneyed and political elites have rushed to hug-up Joe Biden, not because he’s the best the party’s got, but because of what he’s not: He’s not Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The party powers are not only ganging up on Bernie, but specifically ganging up in a political panic against the growing grassroots insurgency of young activists, women, Latinos, Asian-Americans, working-class whites, and others, who’re fed up with the Party’s same-old-same-old politics that’s knocking down the middle class and holding down the poor. Funded by the uber-rich, the elites are colluding in a blatant power play to cut off this rising democratic majority inside the Democratic Party, pushing old Joe forward not because he has any appeal to those they’re trying to shut out, but simply because he’s one of the inside clique — a trusty who’s no threat to the corporate order that’s suppressing America’s democratic possibilities.

Of course, they don’t have the integrity to say this. Instead, they claim Sanders and his supporters are advocating free healthcare-for-all and other ideas that, “scare” voters — even most Democrats. Hello — in the 12 states where it was specifically polled in this election, that overdue reform has won handily, including getting 94.3 percent “Hell Yes” support in the recent Democratic primary in my state of Texas!

Still, the money boys are pressing a Bernie Panic Button, saying he’s too hot, too progressive — too Democratic — to beat Trump. The clueless plutocrat billionaire, Mike Bloomberg (who even stooped to calling Sanders a communist) has set up a one-man SuperPAC to enthrone Biden as the Nominee. Yet, recent polls in key swing states, and in supposedly red states like Texas, confirm that the Vermont anti-establishment populist is the strongest candidate of all Democrats against Trump.

What if the people had a candidate in November who was not controlled by big campaign donors, who has the authenticity to stand unequivocally for what he believes in, and who will fight the corporate powers — as Franklin Roosevelt once put it — “to restore America to its own people”? It could be a landslide for progress.

For more from Hightower, check out The Hightower Lowdown, where you can find monthly in-depth newsletters, and twice-a-week short podcast takes on the news of the moment.