A recent Bernie Sanders rally in Minneapolis, MN, held on May 31, 2015. (photo: Sanders for President Campaign)
04 June 15
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
n a recent Washington Post
op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing
version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland
scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the
loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”
He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia,
expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a
desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant
positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good
partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a
positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of
Americans.”
Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open
discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a
Republican president.
Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors
multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement
programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s
compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy
and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are
Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats
simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a
Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions
saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.
The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone
using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The
progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending
segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security,
the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income
inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract
America out to the US Chamber of Commerce the National Association of
Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.
At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great
Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent
education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent
retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence
and the Preamble to the Constitution.
But such is the level of what passes for discourse
inside the Beltway these days. The cushioned political and media elites
who eat, drink, and make merry with each other at the annual White House
Correspondents & Celebrity Ball are so cozy up there in the
stratosphere that they dismiss as the lunatic fringe any voice from
below that challenges the status quo.
And by the way, John, the “loudest voices in the room”
aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers
selling our government to the highest bidders.
Can you believe this? Rep. Delaney even thinks that
progressives are too engaged “in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks
that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts
from far more consequential areas of economic risk…” Yet his words come
on the heels of another round of billions in fines against the big
banks for perpetrating fraud, an ongoing attempt by Republican Senator
Richard Shelby and his Wall Street-funded colleagues on the Senate
Banking Committee to eviscerate the reforms of Dodd-Frank, and an
updated report from the University of Notre Dame and law firm Labaton
Sucharow that says, “Nearly seven years after the global financial
crisis rocked investors’ confidence in the markets and financial
services in general, our survey clearly shows that a culture of
integrity has failed to take hold. Numerous individuals continue to
believe that engaging in illegal or unethical activity is part and
parcel of succeeding in this highly competitive field.”
(And why not,
when the chances of going to prison for your blatant misdeeds are
virtually nil?)
But Rep. Delaney seems to think any objection to these
behaviors and other misdeeds just jams the works and keeps the grownups
from taking care of business.
So does former Mitt (“47 percent”) Romney
advisor and George W. Bush (slash taxes on the One Percent!)
speechwriter Peter Wehner, who recently warned in The New York Times that many Democrats “are placing a very risky bet that there are virtually no limits to how far left they can go.”
How about far enough left to reach Main Street?
Just take a look at the initial press reaction to
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacy. As Steve
Hendricks observed in the Columbia Journalism Review,
“For not going with the flow, and for challenging Hillary Clinton, the
big fish many elites have tagged as their own, Sanders’s entry into the
race was greeted with story after story whose message — stated or
understated, depending on the decorum of the messenger — was ‘This crank
can’t win.’”
Hillary Clinton’s “corporatism,” Hendricks writes,
“wed to her social liberalism and her imperial hawkishness appeals to
those in the moneyed Second and journalistic Fourth Estates who would
embrace Republicanism but for its misogynistic, homophobic, racist,
science-denying core.” And so Sanders was tarred at the outset as a
doomed crackpot candidate, followed then by article after article that
fixated not on ideas and policies but on various idiosyncrasies,
Sanders’ age and hippie past, the ideology of democratic socialism, and
for heaven’s sake, his flyaway hair.
But if Senator Sanders is a crackpot, so are the
majority of Americans. The ideas and policies he espouses have far more
public support than the journalist habitués of Capitol Hill and
Pennsylvania Avenue would have you believe.
Juan Cole of the blog Informed Comment pulled together some of the figures:
Some 63 percent of Americans agree that the current distribution of wealth is unfair. And in a Gallup poll done earlier this month, a majority, 52 percent, think that government taxation on the rich should be used to reduce the wealth gap… A majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, one of a number of such rulings that have increased the ability of the super-wealthy to influence politics. A good half of Americans support federally financed political campaigns so as to level the playing field… Some 79 percent of Americans believe that education beyond high school is not affordable for everyone. And some 57 percent of people under 30 believe student debt is a problem for youth… According to a very recent Yale/Gallup poll, some 71 percent of Americans believe global warming is occurring, and 57 percent are sure that human activity (emitting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide) is causing it…
There you have it: Far from being an outsider, Sanders
is paddling his way along the mainstream of American public opinion.
Look at the crowds that are gathering to hear him speak: More than 3,000
in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday, standing room only in Ames,
Davenport and Iowa City, Iowa. Reporters can’t help but take notice now.
“At campaign stops in early states and elsewhere, the firebrand from
Vermont is drawing enthusiastic crowds that are several times larger
than those that gather for [fellow presidential aspirant Martin]
O’Malley,” notes The Washington Post. And The New York Times:
“The crowds at Mr. Sanders’s Iowa events appeared to be different from
the state’s famously finicky tire-kickers. Many said they had already
made up their mind to support Mr. Sanders. They applauded his calls for
higher taxes on the rich to pay for 13 million public works jobs, for
decisive action on climate change and for free tuition at public
colleges.”
Oh, how the mighty tremble when they hear such
things! The murmuring crowd is their worst nightmare. So plutocratic
Republican apologists like Peter Wehner, the corporate Democrats of
Clinton, Inc., and killjoys like Congressman Delaney will double down
against Bernie Sanders, just as they have against all those in politics
before them who champion bottom-up democracy. If that means turning
“left,” so be it. For Democrats, it’s the way home. They would do well
to remember that apocryphal saying, usually attributed to Gandhi: “First
they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
+64
#
2015-06-04 14:42
The appeal of Senator
Bernie Sanders message is undermining the messages of Hillary Clinton.
The general voting populace, including Republicans, are agreeing with
Sen. Sanders’ message of campaign financial reforms among other of his
messages. Possibility: Hillary may NOT be the “shoe-in” many of Democrat
persuasion believes her to be.
+35
#
2015-06-04 22:56
Pikewich 2015-06-04 16:06
"I hope you are right."
Hope really has nothing to do with it. Bernie is doing his job and getting great response in money, turnout and his popularity is growing! And look how early in the campaign it is! Reality trumps apathy when it speaks in the people's voice and to the people's hearts!
It is up to us who understand and support his "New Deal" thinking to push for him hard every chance we get. Bernie is the best shot we have at real reform and change since the 60s.
It is no wonder he is being lambasted by the corporatists! They realize his strength and his unwavering support of the people and not them. As (the phony) obummer showed in 2007, an out of touch oligarch puppet can be defeated. And in my view she will be defeated again! Only this time by a real man!
"I hope you are right."
Hope really has nothing to do with it. Bernie is doing his job and getting great response in money, turnout and his popularity is growing! And look how early in the campaign it is! Reality trumps apathy when it speaks in the people's voice and to the people's hearts!
It is up to us who understand and support his "New Deal" thinking to push for him hard every chance we get. Bernie is the best shot we have at real reform and change since the 60s.
It is no wonder he is being lambasted by the corporatists! They realize his strength and his unwavering support of the people and not them. As (the phony) obummer showed in 2007, an out of touch oligarch puppet can be defeated. And in my view she will be defeated again! Only this time by a real man!
-60
#
2015-06-04 21:14
I don't see Sanders
winning the Democratic nomination, let alone the general election. I
suspect that he might win a primary or two and it'll look like he has
momentum, only for Hillary to eventually win.
I like some of his ideas, but I just don't think a self-avowed "socialist" is going to get enough votes to win. His being a "socialist" is likely a nonstarter with just too many voters for him to win in the fall.
I like some of his ideas, but I just don't think a self-avowed "socialist" is going to get enough votes to win. His being a "socialist" is likely a nonstarter with just too many voters for him to win in the fall.
+47
#
2015-06-04 22:42
Rain17 2015-06-04 21:14
Your difficulty in seeing reality, is that you "think in labels." Labels mean nothing. Period.
Socialist, Democrat, red, blue, southern, male, gay, preacher, president, coach, student, mother, teacher. None of those titles or labels means anything.
Look at the man's voting history, listen to his words. Match them to his actions.
Then compare all that to what the people, in their hearts, want.
Labels are a political tool used as propaganda to lead the lazy and uninformed around by the leash around their neck. Anyone who runs around judging a person by the label he wears is a fool.
Your difficulty in seeing reality, is that you "think in labels." Labels mean nothing. Period.
Socialist, Democrat, red, blue, southern, male, gay, preacher, president, coach, student, mother, teacher. None of those titles or labels means anything.
Look at the man's voting history, listen to his words. Match them to his actions.
Then compare all that to what the people, in their hearts, want.
Labels are a political tool used as propaganda to lead the lazy and uninformed around by the leash around their neck. Anyone who runs around judging a person by the label he wears is a fool.
