Los Angeles Times and Associated Press photos
Presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders is doing quite well, bringing in massive crowds, polling well, and recently having been endorsed by the nation’s largest nurses’ union, yet some still persist with the worn-out “wisdom” that he can’t win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination and/or that if he does, he can’t win the White House. (Perhaps especially if billionaire jackass Donald Trump does run as an independent, Ross-Perot style, Sanders can win the White House.) Sanders supporters are shown above at a gathering for him at a sports arena in Los Angeles on Monday.
Bernie Sanders is surging.
For the first time, a poll has him beating Billary Clinton in the critical state of New Hampshire beyond the margin of error, and New Hampshire is a purple state, only leaning Democratic a bit. So much for the “democratic socialism” thing being an insurmountable barrier.
Indeed, the conventional “wisdom” about Sanders being unable to win within our rigged political system is bullshit. While the corporately owned and controlled pundits continue to announce that he can’t do it, Bernie just keeps chugging along, doing it.
And as to Sanders’ electability, that should be up to those who actually cast ballots and participate in the caucuses beginning in February, not to the mediocre, soulless pundits whose paychecks depend upon their continuing to act as propagandistic guardians of the status quo.
Among other things, Sanders’ crowds just keep getting bigger and bigger. Again, Billary Clinton has yet to reach a crowd of 6K – and that was at her kick-off in New York – but within the past week, Sanders hit around 28K in both Portland, Oregon, and in Los Angeles.
I agree with this commentator’s view that it’s the Internet and social media that are behind Sanders’ surge. We, the sociopolitically disgruntled, are bypassing the gatekeepers of the corporately owned and controlled “news” media and are communicating to each other – by the millions. This explains why Bernie is actually doing what the corporate-whore mouthpieces are saying he can’t do.
I do credit much of the groundswell of support for Bernie to his fellow Vermonter Howard Dean, who pioneered the use of the Internet and social media to propel political candidates. Unfortunately for Dean, the wave that he created wasn’t large enough to propel him into the White House, but the disappointing, mostly milquetoast Barack Obama, by ubiquitously promising “hope” and “change,” certainly rode the wave that Dean created right on into the Oval Office.
But the Deaniacs never went away, and many if not most of those of us who weren’t with them at the time (myself included; in 2003 I supported John Kerry early on and I kept on supporting him all the way to the November 2004 presidential election) are with them now.
And because Obama punk’d us by apparently only pretending to be a progressive doesn’t mean that the values and desires of those of us on the left just went away. No, they just went latent, and Sanders has reawakened them.
Billary doesn’t excite a majority of Democrats because even the dullest Democrats and Democrats in name only recognize that Billary represents (at best) only more of the same. Only 35 percent of the Democrats in the New Hampshire poll that puts Bernie ahead of her said that they are “excited” about Billary, and I surmise that a sizeable chunk of those poll respondents were lying (or perhaps kidding themselves).
Vice President Joe Biden also apparently represents only more of the same to Democratic primary voters; he came in at third place in the New Hampshire poll, with 9 percent (to Sanders’ 44 percent and Billary’s 37 percent).
Bernie not only is drawing the massive crowds and is polling better than anyone had thought he would (perhaps even himself), but he also is proving himself amply able to adapt quickly to the demands of the campaign.
He has hired Symone Sanders (no relation to him), a black woman who has been a blacks-rights activist, as his press secretary – a hire that was in the works before “Black Lives Matters” idiots selfishly and aggressively refused to allow him to speak this past weekend at a scheduled event on the topics of Social Security and Medicare in Seattle.
Some would call the hiring of Symone Sanders pandering, but those very same people would criticize Sanders if he didn’t have any black American on his campaign staff, so with those people – who are haters and malcontents – Sanders can’t win anyway (usually because he’s white, because he’s not of the “right” race).
We progressives need to ignore these haters and malcontents (many if not most of whom, ironically, are much more racist than they accuse others of being); we progressives have a presidential election to win, and we cannot afford to waste our time and energy on these dead-enders.
Sanders also recently released his platform on racial justice, which also apparently was in the works before the “Black Lives Matter” morons commandeered his first of two appearances in Seattle this past weekend.
This isn’t pandering, either (and again, if he didn’t have it in his platform, he’d be criticized for not having it in his platform); this is responding to the demands of the campaign, and this demonstrates (or at least strongly indicates) that as president, Sanders would respond effectively to the demands of the nation’s highest elected office, which includes serving the interests of many different groups of people.
Bernie Sanders, to our knowledge, is heterosexual, but as a gay man, I have full confidence that as president he would represent the interests of and would fight for the rights of us non-heterosexual and non-gender-conforming individuals.
Why some apparently can’t imagine that Sanders would have their backs even if he’s not within their particular demographic eludes me. (Well, not really: it’s the result of an utter lack of sociological imagination and of empathy and it’s the result of of toxic identity politics, including misandry posing as feminism and anti-white racism posing as racial justice.)
Bernie Sanders could, I suppose, ultimately flame out, but because he has called himself a democratic socialist and because his fellow Vermonter Howard Dean flamed out doesn’t mean that Sanders will.
Nor is Sanders destined to be another George McGovern, the late darling of the left who, like Bernie Sanders is, was a U.S. representative and then a U.S. senator, and who then went on to lose the 1972 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon in a landslide. (Yes, the American voters sure got that one right, didn’t they?) That was then; this is now.
Little in politics is certain, but something that is fairly certain is that we progressives can’t win with Sanders if we don’t give it a serious effort.
The corporately owned and controlled pundit-whores and their conventional, “Surrender,-Dorothy!-And-crown-Billary-already!” “wisdom” don’t dissuade me from doing what I can do to ensure that the most progressive candidate (regardless of his or her demographics) emerges as the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential candidate.
That candidate, hands down, is Bernie Sanders.
He isn’t concerned about the naysayers, and the rest of us shouldn’t be, either.
He is rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.
So should we.
P.S. E-mailgate is getting even worse for Billary Clinton. Apparently, “top-secret” information was exchanged via Billary’s home-brewed e-mail server when she was secretary of state. See this and this.
As much as some bash Bernie, I can’t see Billary going into the November 2016 presidential election from a position of strength. If the Democrats stupidly make her their nominee, she’ll be a considerably tarnished and weakened general-election candidate at best.
Robert's Virtual Soapbox 