.. said Bernie Sanders speaking in an interview recently.
...“we can win this thing”.."I am used to climbing steep hills," Sanders told NPR's Ari Shapiro, host of All Things Considered
This country needs that political upset; that tipping point. And we can choose to make it happen.
About that choice. The establishment/party leadership has played an out-sized role in denying that there is a real choice. Instead we’re given false choices and narratives to constrain dialogue, limit questions and scoff at our preferred options as “unrealistic”.
One question that is less likely to be considered among the pundits and prognosticators including the corporate msm, who seem Hell bent on focusing on the electoral mechanics, playing as political scientists, using graphs and diagrams and talking about elect-ability as thee deciding determinant, is...
What are we Dems actually fighting for in the long run — for the future?
It seems to me that we should be asking about and fighting for the fundamental changes that are crucial for all of our futures and whether seeking “centrism” will continue to be the “mistake” that has pulled our party steadily to the right. weakening our platform, watering down every bit of legislation, and has resulted in the republican dominance in state and local legislatures, governors mansions, and control over both houses of congress.
November, 2014
Republicans now control state government outright in at least 24 states, one more than they did before the election. They control at least 66 of 99 state legislative chambers nationwide. And they cut the number of states with total Democratic control from 14 to seven — the lowest number since the Civil War.
Centrism, that seems to require our politicians to “move to the left” while campaigning for the primary elections with every expectation of moving back to the right for the general. It’s just “how things are done”. A political prerequisite
It’s bullshit, widely accepted pragmatic bullshit. This norm on both sides of the aisle of employing the — say-one-thing-to-get-nominated-then-say-another-thing-to-get-elected — is essentially just lying as the standard in politics, and has cost the Democratic party and this county’s people too high a price over the years. The trend towards an Oligarchy is undeniable. The ever widening wealth gap and 35 years of stagnating wages are but a part of this trend.
We are losing our voice:
So let’s get to what we need and want to happen..
Is this helping?:
“..don’t represent the people..”
Or this?:
...when DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who served as Clinton’s co-campaign chair in 2008, admitted, in a moment of candor, that superdelegates (whose ranks include Bill Clinton) exist to insulate party leaders from “grassroots activists.”
The “consensus” built over the years seems to be this false choice:
Either Democrats have to appeal to lost voters (like “the conservative Democrats of the South and Appalachia”) by moving rightward, or they will have to “wait for demographic and generational change” to win the seats for them. And maybe that makes sense, given the assumptions of the lame school of political science that D.C. types always gravitate to—the kind in which there are but two poles in political life and politicians of the left party can only win if they move rightward.
That “Dems can only win if they move rightward” — enthusiasm killing is what that is
Then to counter Bernie Sanders appeal to a blue-collar constituency, we have the establishment Dems warning us in this revealing example of what “centrism” actually means..’triangulation’..attracting republicans into the fold is preferable to attracting blue collar Dems (?)
The Clinton Camp’s response to this appeal is troubling to Bernie supporters. As former Pennsylvania governor Edward G. Rendell indicated:
For every one of those blue-collar Democrats he picks up, he will lose to Hillary two socially moderate Republicans and independents in suburban Cleveland, suburban Columbus, suburban Cincinnati, suburban Philadelphia, suburban Pittsburgh, places like that.
..not only is that sending a clear signal of establishment priorities — moving to the right — it is in contradiction to numerous rumblings made by Clinton supporters (who seem to be trying to have it both ways); claiming that Bernie Sanders’ successes are largely made possible when the primary/caucus elections were open to Independents and republican voters.
Whether true or not, it has long been the ‘centrists’ position that appealing to moderate and affluent republicans is a necessary strategy.
It is not. Appealing to blue-collar labor — Yes — to republicans — No — that is a recipe that perpetuates the status quo, continuing the trend towards an Oligarchy.
This is not the direction Sanders progressives think the Democratic Party needs to move—nor is it the direction the party or the country has been moving over the past eight years.
What we’re getting from the establishment machine is a narrative that Bernie Sanders can’t win. Sanders supporters have been labeled everything from naive to sexist.
After a Bernie win, machine gun like story after story are written warning people of the dangers to the country if Bernie Sanders is our nominee.
But very little about the danger posed by the status quo and the current direction this country is heading, that no one can honestly deny.
We as a people have already lost too much of our hard earned wealth and future opportunities. It is not a stretch to imagine we lose what little remains of our voice in this, our currently trending version of democracy run by a political machine that ‘insulates its affluent party leadership’ — from us
One last end note: It has been stated by many republican operators and strategists themselves that the GOP candidate can not take the Oval Office without at least 40% of the Latino vote and increasing their numbers among all minority groups. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. In a year this dominated by Big Money pouring into elections it’s hard to know, but it’s still a pretty convincing argument.
What is not in doubt is that without fundamental changes in the direction that both the Democratic party and this country is heading, we cannot afford not to elect Bernie Sanders for president.
This is the choice as I see it anyway; Without Senator Bernie Sanders vision of fundamental change championed by the every day person, there is nothing that will halt the trend that has been carefully and systematically re-enforced by the most affluent “interests” in this country
The “realist” bottom line of what’s at stake, and not something our elected leadership can be malleable about: