So, I'm sorta semi-blogging. (More than I was a year ago anyway.) And, being Canadian, I should be (and have been) posting about the waves of vile, self-pitying, hypocritical and murderous racism, that emerge from not too far beneath the surface of our collective psyche whenever people from the First Nations oppose anything that we want to impose on them. (Obviously, there's vicious, day-to-day racism going on in Canada, but it's things such as the Wet'suwet'en blockade or "Idle No More" or Chief Theresa Spence's hunger-strike, that gets Canadian fingers flying over keyboards about how we need to shoot Natives enmasse; or run them over with trains; or how their protests are "terrorism" and etc.)
But since my blogging doesn't influence things one way or the other, and, since the USA remains the most powerful, influential country in the world (with our sharing a border and many cultural commonalities with it), I think that Bernie Sanders' big primary win in Nevada is something I should comment upon.
Bernie should have won in 2016. He was robbed by a criminal psychopath who voted for the Invasion of Iraq (among other atrocities). He was robbed of primary victories in a process rigged by Hillary Clinton's stooges throughout the national Democratic Party apparatus. It was Hillary Clinton's insane level of entitlement that gave us Trump. Her and all of her disgusting, witless, amoral followers should retire permanently from the limelight and let us normal people try to repair the damage that they've caused.
I make up these posts as I go along. Because this is a hobby and I have stuff that needs doing. So nothing has been composed. And now I have so many observations coming to mind that it's overwhelming. Let me try to stick to three:
First of all, Bernie Sanders' victories are coming from the reality that more and more US-Americans are being completely abused by an inhuman, corrupt system. That reality was already evident to people like me in 2015 and it was why Sanders tried to convince Elizabeth Warren to run against Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Because eight years of Obama had produced very little in substantive change from eight years of Dubya, and eight years of William Jefferson Clinton, and four years of Bush Sr., and eight years of Reagan.
During those 35 years, unions have been decimated. This contributed to the hollowing-out of the middle income classes. Employment for more and more people became tenuous and wages stagnated or declined. As well, in the US of A, when health insurance is often tied to employment, the decline of unions and steady work in general led to more people being denied health care.
During this same period, perceptible progress of African Americans in the post-war period halted and was reversed. De-industrialization hurt Blacks first and growing economic insecurity led to more stupid people looking for scapegoats and more racist politicians encouraging that process. Bill and Hillary Clinton's drivel about "three strikes" and "super-predators" was just the tolerant, liberal version of this.
For US-Latinos, it was worsening conditions in Mexico, Central America and South America, that led to migration to the USA, which, again, increased racist fears and provided a platform for opportunist, racist politicians. Both Democrats and Republicans engaged in this behaviour. Both Clintons spoke of building barriers against illegals and Obama was the "Deporter-in-Chief" who tear-gassed migrants at the southern border.
Endless war and increased economic inequality was the legacy of this bipartisan effort. And Bernie Sanders sensed the frustration and when Elizabeth Warren declined to run, he ran against Queen Hillary himself. To the consternation of the Clinton-owned Democratic National Committee, Sanders turned out to be hugely popular, attracting stadium-sized crowds, while the arrogant, elitist, entitled, bitter ex-nerd Hillary Clinton found it difficult to fill high school gymnasiums for her rallies.
She cheated. She won. And then, to show just how much contempt she had for those people who had filled stadiums for Bernie, she selected a right-wing, anti-choice, corporate stooge nobody as her VP. And, make no mistake about it: the Hillary wing of the Democratic Party WAS FINE with telling those potential voters to go fuck themselves.
Senator Chuck Schumer said openly that for every blue-collar voter they'd lose, they'd pick up two moderate Republicans.
"We don't need you. Take your frustration and your outrage and go pound sand."
So, quite a few of those discarded voters stayed home. Enough to let Trump eke-out an Electoral College victory. And thereby bring ranting, spittle-flecked maniacs like Montreal Simon's supervisor "Jackie Blue" to enraged tirades about "purity ponies" and other garbage.
Of course, an entitled shit-head like Hillary Clinton can't accept the blame for her own failure. It all became the fault of the stupid voters who took her advice and stayed home. And they did THAT because their minds had been warped by Kremlin memes and a Trump-Putin-Wikileaks conspiracy to expose the Clinton-DNC financial fraud and political manipulation of the primaries, as well as speeches that Clinton gave to Wall Street criminals about how she'd tell the American people one thing while doing other things to serve her bankster audience.
Whereupon "moderates" and "centrists" and "liberals" and etc., let their brains turn to shit and they spent four years going after Trump for imaginary crimes (when his real crimes would have obviously been better targets) with the culmination being a Quixotic impeachment process over (of all things) Trump using illegal means to dig-up dirt on DNC presidential candidate Joseph Biden's libertine son Hunter.
Obviously it is an impeachable offense for a president to use public resources to pressure anyone for assistance against his political rivals. And, obviously, the Republican Party demonstrated total contempt for their sworn duties by refusing to call witnesses to testify on this illegal behaviour. But, after years of Russia-gate, normal people are sick unto death of this drivel. To use impeachment to defend Joe Biden and his corrupt son, ... it was hard to get excited about it. Besides, Barack Obama's "kill-lists" of US-American citizens to be murdered via predator drones was also an impeachable offense, no? Or bush II's deliberate use of torture?
Some centrist Democratic psychopaths are honest devotees of right-wing Amy Klobuchar. I suspect they see her as someone with a track record of straddling right-wing Democrats and moderate Republicans, in order to get very little done for ordinary people (those being the sorts of people who would find $125 prohibitive when it came to seeing the family doctor). Klobuchar supporters don't care, or simply don't notice the 50% of the population (mostly poor) who don't vote.
Peter Buttigieg is a scumbag.
Joe Biden is the senile leftovers of a lifetime of corruption and entitlement.
Elizabeth Warren has a good mind, a strong sense of social justice, both overwhelmed by an out-sized ambition. She showed herself too willing to play footsie with corruption, and, then, to cynically weaponize feminism to sabotage Bernie Sanders.
Tulsi Gabbard remains in the race to speak for people opposed to the "forever wars" of the Military-Industrial-Complex.
Mike Bloomberg just found out how toxic and scuzzy he is to normal people, unimpressed by his billions and not dependent upon him for employment.
It's pretty clear that Bernie Sanders will win at least a plurality of the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. But if he doesn't win a clear majority and the party insiders either try to steal it from him (perhaps arguing about "proportional representation") or foist a right-wing platform and VP candidate on him, ... they should realize that decent, sane, normal people have had more than enough of their bullshit. Psychopathic, ranting dullards like "Jackie Blue" need to be put on notice that they're playing with fire. And the "purity ponies" will burn the Democratic Party to the ground if corporatist vermin goad them into it.
2 comments:
I've always maintained the change that was going to happen was going to be a sea-change. It was going to happen underfoot to establishment figures, who'd wake up one day in a world they couldn't understand.
As Clinton and Bush-era castoffs joined forces, they'd find themselves still outgunned on whatever side they attempted their triangulation.
Now, either these establishment figures will either figure this out—cast off their "wilful ignorance" (as Kyrstal Ball termed it) and tone-deafness—and cynically readjust their politics to remain relevant to the world coming up from under them; or they can fight it tooth and nail, utilizing their ill-gotten gains from decades of corruptive tax breaks for the already wealthy.
Well, there could be a third option, much as in the UK, where the establishment fights the movement working to supplant them, and win, but lose everything that matters (to them: in this case, every seat in Parliament) in the process. A Pyrrhic victory.
I honestly believe we're witnessing the anti-Reagonist movement come to life. We didn't build it. The pieces were stitched together by the centrists themselves. They've alienated vast swathes of the working class, and have abandoned enough of the middle class that they inadvertently Frankensteined a monster together.
This movement will now begin working to dismantle much of the Reagonist mechanisms that've kept the disaffected out of politics for the past four decades. Whether or not Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, his campaigners, surrogates, and followers will begin working to unseat any and all Reagonists in the Democratic Party, leaving these centrists with no tenable position in politics, unless they convert to a New Deal 2.0 belief system (or drift back towards the Republican Party, which outside of Trump populism, is hollowed out at the base, and primed for a new Republican movement, which will still shut out these so-called centrists).
However, much like when Clinton cast off the labour, social justice, and progressive movement, these Reagonists will find themselves outside the political process, and they will be unable to adjust.
Sanders victory may well depress Reagonist turnout, and boost his numbers for upcoming primaries. I could see Sanders taking the nomination without there needing to be a second vote. Hopefully his campaign doesn't rest on its laurels, and they work for this outright victory.
Very eloquent summation. And I too hope that the Sanders team continues to campaign as if they're the underdog candidate.
Hopefully Biden gets destroyed in South Carolina. And then all the billionaire dollars propping-up the remaining losers could be irrelevant for the final outcome. They can still stay in the race but they get fewer and fewer votes.
In Canada I'd called for a long time for the death of the Liberal Party. I thought things were polarizing here but the NDP is too hapless to offer a leftist alternative and so we get extremists like harper, Ford and Kenney, while sane/non-ignorant or stupid people are left with Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh.
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