dreamnightwind
dreamnightwind's JournalCould be used as leverage against superdelegates not respecting the popular vote
The Green Party will be on the ballot in most if not all states, correct?
If I were Bernie and I was going to win the elected delegate count for the primary, and the party was considering allowing superdelegates to overturn the vote of the electorate, I would use a possible 3rd party run on the Green ticket as leverage to prevent the superdelegates from giving the election to Hillary.
The Greens, with Bernie on board, could indeed keep Hillary out of the white house.
I don't want to see us go down this road, but superdelegates are inherently undemocratic, the people should be the ones who decide. If the party feels otherwise, they need a very strong incentive to do the right thing. A credible third party threat is about the only such incentive that would have enough leverage to prevent a superdelegate coup.
Interesting development.
My state (CA) was safely blue in 2012, and I was beyond disgusted with how Obama campaigned as a change candidate and governed as Republican lite, so I voted for Stein in 2012. That's a luxury of living in a very blue state, I suppose. I would never want to tip an election to a Republican. But I would want to do everything possible to force the Democratic Party to live up to its name.
If the party establishment wants our support...
it should pony up with something we can get behind, such as a substantive, detailed plan to wean the party from corporate money, or to remove health insurers from our health care system and rein in big pharma.
Until that happens (especially getting large corporate donors out of the puppeteering role for Democratic politicians), it's just the kinder face in big money's good cop - bad cop game. We've been played too long, only to see "our" representatives sell us out to suit the whims of the large donors.
Two tools of the same forces
The other elephant in the room is that Citizens' United is only the latest layer of a thoroughly corrupt campaign finance system. If we succeedd in overturning Citizens' United (and we must), we will still have a dysfunctional campaign finance system that serves the interests of the wealthy, just like we had before the Citizens' United decision.
One thing I love about Bernie is that he actually gets this, and talks about it. Most politicians are throwing up flags for people to rally behind, such as "repeal Citizens' United", or "reinstate the assault weapons ban", and are not invested in actually solving the problems these flags are symptomatic of.
Bernie, on the other hand, says that, in addition to repealing Citizens' United, we need 100% public financing of elections.
He also said. in one of the earlier debates, that his dream job would be to be president of CNN, because it would cover the news far differently if he was running it. I'd love to see that!
Yes, I and many others are in the same place you are
Still working, thanks to Bernie's campaign, to do this within the party, against all odds and against every bit of the party establishment.
But us Sanders supporters are serious. The party has to represent us, not corporations, or we'll be forced to make a new party. The better outcome would be for us to succeed in retaking the Democratic Party.
They sure aren't making it easy, they'll fight us every inch of the way, with billions of dollars and an entrenched media establishment on their side. We have the truth on our side, amplified by the urgency of war, poverty and climate change.
I can't wait to see what comes after the Sanders campaign, this movement will morph, either as an empowered new wing of the party or as a competing external entity.
I keep pushing for the Progressive Caucus (which Bernie co-founded) to change its rules, allowing no candidates in their caucus who accept corporate money. They could. with our help, and maybe that of some of the large progressive NGO's (MoveOn, PDA. etc), provide an alternative people-funded campaign financing infrastructure to allow progressives to actually govern as progressives by making sure they owe no favors to corporate America.
Damn, well said, my sentiments exactly.
Most all of the people I've run into who support Hillary know very little about issues and who has supported what over their careers.
They know even less when it comes to any kind of system analysis of what has brought our country to its current situation, the dynamics of globalism verses populism, mass incarceration, drug policy, health policy (our uniquely american (corporate) solution), dismantling of regulatory structures and social safety nets, and the extent to which empire and its managers influence the Democratic Party as it is currently constructed.
We are the Democrats
Make the corporatists find their own way, by joining Republicans, by starting a 3rd Way party, or by demostrating to us why their views, policies, and beliefs have any place in the Democratic Party.
We need to completely divest ourselves of corporate campaign money, and not support any politicians who accept it.
Start a caucus within the party (I've suggested this be done with the Progressive Caucus, which Bernie helped found) that requires members to gain election without corporatate money, or doesn't acccept them in the caucus.
Develop an infrastructure, using Bernie's campaign as the model, of people-funded campaigns, so truly progressive politicians can give up corporate money without unilaterally disarming in the ccampaign finance race.
Develop a pipeline of new candidates who are already on our side of the issues, and primary corporate Democrats with them.
I agree with you that the split in the party is real and irrevocable. I disagree that we should be the ones who leave.
Take it back, and never give up!
But it IS the truth
Propaganda and marketing often obscure the truth and win out. Most marketing campaigns are geared to create a more appealing brand and walk right up to the edge of the limits on acceptable false advertising to entice someone to buy their product. The relative merits of their product verses the competing product hardly enter into the equation.
The Hillary campaign is little more then a corporate-funded marketing campaign. Using its success as evidence of poor marketing or a poor campaign by Sanders and his supporters is like saying might makes right, not buying that crap, ever.
She has vast financial resources from the worst aspects of ur society, who will call the shots after she is elected. Most of our so-called Democratic Party is in bed with the same forces, and they are not the types to speak truth to power, they got into power by sucking up to it, not by fighting it.
You really need to learn the history of third way politicians, who funds them, what they support, and why the solutions the people need are ALWAYS off the table.
It isn't our fault the deck is stacked against Bernie and against us, and we're doing our damnedest to elect an honest un-owned candidate who fights hardest for the least of us, not for the wealthy elites. Sorry you don't understand that.
There are too many other differences between us and Europe
such as parliamentary systems rather than strict two party like we have
Also their political races aren't, to my knowledge, so dependent on corporate money
Another rarely articulated part of the dynamic is that because the U.S. military is being used as the global strong arm to insure corporations access to cheap labor and physical resources, the corporations keep much tighter control over our elections, they are dependent on our military for their global industries and won't tolerate our own people having much say over things for that reason.
I didn't understand your point about unions stopping offshoring, though I tried. How many offshorings of factories have ever been stopped by a union? Using what leverage? I'm sure it has happened a few times, but I don't see any real power unions have when the owners can take their ball and play in another country. Labor has not been able to globalize the same way capital has. Foreign labor leaders are often assassinated by proxy forces of the U.S. government, this has been well documented in a great many cases.
Also with our politicians being owned by corporations, they make it easy to and even provide tax incentives for corporations to move elsewhere, instead of protecting U.S. labor interests.
Hillary is fully onboard with that whole dynamic, no matter what she claims, not that this was about Hillary, but I think it's important to point out.
anyway I just don't buy the approach of blaming U.S. labor, or white American males who vote Republican, for the massive transfer of wealth to the corporate overlords. We live in a Deep State, with captured regulatory agencies, and both parties have done their utmost to bring this about, starting in the late 70s and continuing to this day.
Well, I'm not so sure about that
I've watched Bernie for a long time now (many years), he is incredibly skillful in finding some way to reach out to the opposition to get some thing done that benefits the people. Since he was a congressman and senator, this came mostly in the form of amendments. As POTUS he would still have influence on proposed amendments (through proxies in congress) plus he will have other mechanisms specific to the presidency.
Saying who each Republican is owned by sounds more like someone else's job, I can't see Bernie doing that, and if he did, I can't see him limiting it to Republicans (and he should not limit it to them, IMO). NGO's are great at this, maybe he could partner with them.
He would certainly use his loud megaphone and stir up popular support for proposals, daring owned politicians to oppose the will of the people, with the threat of being voted out of office hanging over their heads. Some of them are so secure in their districts that this would have little effect, others are more susceptible to leverage.
I've always thought he would be able to turn congress blue again. Democrats, when they are Democrats, own congress.
We lost congress when the corporate triangulators took over our party, and the people just decided they're all crooks, hence the huge number of people who don't claim to belong to either party anymore, the low voter turnout, and the incredibly low congressional approval rating. The system is completely broken by corporate money, and the people know it, when they aren't being distracted by fear and wedge issues.
If we learn to elect Democrats without corporate money, everything will change. it really will. I hope Bernie will attempt to make eschewing corporate money a membership requirement of the Progressive Caucus (which he co-founded).
But in the meantime, before elections can change things, we'll have to more aggressively influence the process, through direct action of some sort, and I'm looking for Bernie to spell this out in some more detail, if he thinks he can speak openly about it.
I would also like to see him detail how we can help him get things done
He has stayed away from this for the most part, using some vague statements about millions of people rising up. I think it would be helpful for him to be more specific about this.
In today's college tour thing with Chris Matthews, he used an example of Mitch McConnell looking outside his window to see a million kids demanding no tuition, and he also mentioned emails.
Let's go deep on this aspect. I trust that Bernie is 100% sincere. But it isn't enough to just say we'll rise up. In what way? Mobilizing to vote out uncooperative politicians? Hitting the streets in protest? General strike? Emails, petitions and phone calls? Probably some of all of the above, but I'd like for him to articulate his vision of how it will work.
The powers that be have already demonstrated their willingness to ignore our demands. We need to focus on tools of leverage. With a leader who actually wants us to use our leverage to assist him in wresting concessions from power (we haven't had that, IMHO), it could be effective, I'm sure Bernie will hold up his end, but as he says, it won't be enough, nobody can do it alone.
Not only would I like to see him articulate this in more detail,, but it's a major line of attack by people who support the status quo, they say he's making empty promises, or he will just be blocked like Obama (I don't think Obama ever fought for much of anything I wanted him to). So it would go a long way towards getting voters on his side if he could flesh out the tasks, tools, and techniques he wants us to implement to bring about the changes he and so many of us so desperately want and need.
