+Mother Jones is known for it's bold, fearless, investigative journalism, at least most of the time. I appreciate (though don't always agree with what they report) what they do so much that I have been a monthly donor to Mother Jones for years. This is one of the times I do not agree with their slant in their reporting. There seems to be a bias in favor of hillary clinton vs Sen Bernie Sanders I VT. Generally if their reporting on Bernie isn't negative and disparaging it is condescending. It almost seems they are endorsing the status quo, the control of the American political system controlled by corporate interest, the bank financial-cabal, the military-industrial complex, the 1%. This article from Mother Jones is basically a notice to Bernie Sanders and his supporters to give it up. It is not true the Democratic primary process is over. Maybe hillary clinton will be the Democratic nominee. If that is the case the vast majority of Bernie's supporters will support her campaign. But until the Democratic convention is over we will not give up on Bernie, his campaign, nor will we give up our chance to shape the ultimate candidates' campaign platform. We will insist corporate welfare be ended, the bank-financial cabal be broken up and strictly regulated, the military-industrial complex loose the obscene share of the federal budget they receive and the taxes of the 1% be increased. We will insist Social Security benefits be increased and expanded, that the ceiling on Social Security taxes be raised significantly, that the ACA / Obamacare be protected, that the government protect our right to clean air and clean water and that the American social contract and the American social safety net and fully funded so that the needs of all Americans, individuals and business, can be met. Here is a list of articles on Bernie Sanders' campaign from +The Guardian followed by the articles from Mother Jones and +The Huffington Post ....
Now what?
| Tue Mar. 1, 2016 11:52 PM EST
For months, Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has counted on a big performance on Super Tuesday, when delegates were up for grabs in 11 nominating contests. After it racked up a big win in New Hampshire and came away with virtual ties in Iowa and Nevada—and lost disastrously in South Carolina—the senator from Vermont was quick to point out that on March 1, voters "will pick 10 times more pledged delegates on one day than were selected in the four early states so far in this campaign." And on March 1, his campaign got shellacked.
In five Southern states, where African American voters made up a large portion of the electorate, Hillary Clinton left Sanders in the dust. Three days after conceding the South Carolina primary by 48 points, he lost by overwhelming margins in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arkansas. In Texas, where the majority of Democrats are nonwhite and 252 delegates were at stake, he lost by more than 30 points. Sanders banked heavily on strong performances in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, and Oklahoma, and he was counting on winning at least three of them. (He'd left South Carolina behind last week to campaign with Iron Range workers in Bob Dylan's hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota.) He did win three, along with his home state of Vermont, where just 26 delegates were at stake. But a loss in Massachusetts was a setback, and the enormous margins down South set him way back in the delegate count.
Tuesday's results put Sanders in a difficult position as the campaign shifts into high gear this month, because they challenge the underlying theory of how he can win. The premise of his underdog campaign was that he could score a few early victories and build momentum for states down the road. Once voters in those states saw he was the real deal, the thinking went, they'd give his candidacy a second look. Those early victories were essential to expanding his coalition and, to a lesser degree, to convincing at-large superdelegates to join his side. To put it bluntly: If Sanders can't win a white liberal state like Massachusetts, there aren't too many other states he can.
Things will get worse for Sanders before they get better. Because of the way the primary map is drawn, Clinton's best states—basically, Southern states with high African American populations—will all have voted by the middle of March. After Kansas, Nebraska, and Louisiana vote on Saturday (where the prospects are good, good, and very bad for Sanders, respectively), he'll hit a brutal two-week stretch in which 980 delegates will be awarded in Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. Clinton is the clear favorite in almost all of those states.
But while Tuesday's performance might usher in the chorus of Clinton allies calling on him to drop out (as if they needed the excuse), Sanders' campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, pledged that the campaign would push on to the convention. And he has the means to fight on if he wants. Money, the perennial candidate killer, is not an issue—at least not for now. Sanders raised an absurd $42 million in February—$6 million of it on the Monday after the South Carolina blowout. Because he relies so heavily on small-dollar donors who haven't hit the $2,700 limit, he can in theory keep circling back for more money to buy ads and build organizations in every state that comes up. And if he can roll with the punches, he just might make it to the sweet spot of the schedule, a four-week, 15-state stretch that represents his last best shot to turn things around, starting with Idaho, Utah, and Arizona on March 22. If he can't reel off a winning streak then, it'll be over quick.
Sanders seems determined to push forward, but he has given little indication he'll try to replicate the kind of scorched-earth approach his opponent employed against Sen. Barack Obama eight years ago, or that the Republican field is currently employing against Donald Trump. He's not running again in four years, when he'll be 78; he's not angling for a spot on the ticket; and he's made clear he plans to support whomever the Democrats nominate.
Moments after he lost in South Carolina last Saturday, his campaign blasted out yet another fundraising email, this time with a message from the candidate. "When I first decided to run for president," he wrote, "my greatest fear was that if I were to run a poor campaign or did not do well, that it would be a setback not just for me, but for the ideas driving our campaign." It was a glossier version of what he'd told a reporter last March, months before he ever entered the race—that "if I do it, it has to be done well, and that's not just for my ego." He's done all of that and accomplished a great deal, but the math is looking pretty grim.
The hard-bitten, corporatist Democrats are moving Hillary Clinton through the presidential primaries. They are using "Republican-speak" to beat down Bernie Sanders as favoring Big Government and more taxes and they may unwittingly be setting the stage for a serious split in the Democratic Party.
What is emerging is the reaction of millions of Sanders supporters who will feel repudiated, not just left behind, as the Clintonites plan to celebrate at the Democratic Convention in July. The political experience gained by the Sanders workers, many of them young, helped Sanders register primary victories over Hillary in Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Vermont and New Hampshire with their energy and votes. They came close in Nevada and Massachusetts and probably won in Iowa.
Hillary's rhetoric has outraged Sanders' supporters. She berates Sanders regularly for not being practical or realistic about his Medicare-for-all, breaking up big banks, a $15 minimum wage, a tax on Wall Street speculation and carbon and getting big money out of politics. Clinton's putdowns exemplify why so many people who back Sanders want to defeat her. Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, favored over all other candidates from both parties by the Wall Street crowd and quietly adored by the military-industrial complex who see Generalissima Clinton as a militarist who would maintain the warfare state.
Democrat Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, derided this "We Shouldn't Even Try" attitude common among many frightened Democrats. These are, in Reich's words, "the establishment Democrats - Washington lobbyists, editorial writers, inside-the-Beltway operatives, party leaders and big contributors who have grown comfortable with the way things are." These hereditary Democrat opinion-shapers tell their audiences that Hillary personifies experience and electability. They argue it is either Clinton or Trump or some other crazed Republican.
Here we go again. Every four years, the Democratic leaders define the Democratic candidate by how bad the Republicans are. This is designed to panic and mute their followers. Every four years, both parties become more corporatist. Sanders' voters want to define the Democratic Party by how good it can be for the people. And these Sanders voters may not go back into the Democratic Party fold.
Low turnout for the Democratic Party's primaries is being compared to a much higher Republican voter turnout for their candidates. Low turnout in November would dim Hillary's chances in an electoral college, winner-take-all system.
Such Democratic Party misfortune can become more likely should Bernie endorse Hillary at the Democratic Convention without any conditions or her acceptance of his agenda, assuming she is the nominee. Last year he declared that he would endorse "the Democratic nominee." Certainly, all the Democratic politicos in the Congress who endorsed Hillary set no conditions. The large labor unions that went with Hillary are known for giving their endorsements without receiving any benefits for workers. So, Hillary would have no mandate should she win the election. And you know that Clintons without mandates tend to bend toward Wall Street and rampant militarism.
It is doubtful whether Hillary will credibly adopt any of Bernie's agenda, considering where her campaign money is coming from and how unwilling she is to alienate her circle of advisers.
Where does this leave the Sanders people who see Hillary as experienced in waging wars, qualified as an entrenched pol, and realistic to suit the plutocracy's tastes, and not really getting much of anything progressive done (alluding to the ways she has described herself)?
The energetic Sanders supporters, including the Millennials who voted so heavily for Bernie, could form a New Progressive movement to exercise a policy pull on the establishment Democrats before November and to be a growing magnet after November with the objective of taking over the Democratic Party starting with winning local elections. This will have long-term benefits for our country.
To those who point to history throwing water on such a potential breakout, I tell them to look at the 2016 presidential primaries. All bets are off when political debates become big media business with huge ratings, and when a gambling czar and builder of expensive real estate, Donald Trump (a hybrid Rep/Dem), is overturning all the old homilies about presidential politics, and is in a primary contest with two freshmen Senators whose vacuous ambitions are their only achievements.
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