Bernie Sanders and the Carnival of American Elections

At this point in the campaign for the 2020 Presidency, the corporate media is trying to desperately find anyone who can compete with Bernie Sanders. To no avail. They are trying to lift Biden, Harris, O’Rourke, Booker, Warren, and any/many others. It’s not working. How could it? It’s obvious bull.

Only a Democratic Primary candidate to Bernie’s left could compete with Bernie Sanders by pushing even more popular policy proposals. But of course the dominant media won’t get behind anyone like that, and no such candidate exists currently. So the race for the Presidency is Bernie’s to win, as he continues to zoom far in the lead, which the corporate media are simply committed to lie about.

Someone to the left of Bernie should run in the Democratic Primary. It would help all around. There has not been a peep from anyone willing to do it, to get out there and help move the discussion farther toward the popular left, which is exactly what Bernie did in 2016.

Bernie would still win in 2020 in all likelihood but the political discussion and reality would be moved farther to the left again. Unfortunately, that won’t happen without a candidate rising to Bernie’s left in the Democratic primary. It would be a real setback not to have a candidate farther to the left of Bernie give some prominence for even more just and popular policies that would keep moving the political reality left to help meet more of the immense unmet needs.

Run, Bernie, run, yes, but his ideas should be given some real competition to help save the planet and the people who live upon it. Those ideas, policies, and positions can only come from the left where popular and progressive ideas and positions are found, with the people, far from the One Percent system of conquest and exploitation.

Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs Editor, gets it and nails it. At the Guardian: “Why Bernie Sanders is (still) the most progressive choice for president.”

Ben Beckett too gets it spot on, at Jacobin: “Run, Bernie, Run.

More debunking of the bull, by Mehdi Hasan at The Intercept: “Critics Say…. They’re Wrong.”

Chris Cillizza and Harry Enten for CNN rank Bernie Sanders as 5th out of 10 most likely to win in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. It’s a joke.

They rank Kamala Harris at number one, followed by Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, and Cory Booker. It’s a wish list of a power ranking as most likely to win, a wish list of corporate ideology, very far from reality. Bernie Sanders at 5? The primary and the presidency both are Bernie Sanders’ for the taking. Everyone else is desperately trying to catch up. That’s the reality for years now.

Bernie Sanders led, and to the left, not only in the 2016 primary but for decades sometimes alone in national Democratic realms and far more successfully than anyone else, and in doing so he has reached an unrivaled level of popularity these past several years.

Well away from the candidate wish list of corporate ideology, the reality remains: “The next president of the United States, upon the 2020 election, is overwhelmingly likely to be Bernie Sanders – things being what they are today and are likely to be [going forward]. The only real question at that level is who will be the Vice President? Tulsi Gabbard?”

Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t even crack the CNN top 10 list, even though she herself is currently the one prominent potential candidate who is closest to the policy positions of Bernie Sanders, as she was his strong supporter in 2016. The corporate ideology wish lists Tulsi Gabbard away, when she is more likely to run in the first place than Beto O’Rourke, whom the corporate wish list currently places at 2nd most likely to win. Beto O’Rourke would do far better for himself and the public to run against the atrocious and extremely unpopular John Cornyn in the 2020 Texas Senate race. Considering Beto O’Rourke for a 2020 presidential candidacy given his senate option is just another complete joke.

The more you imbibe the corporate propaganda, the less you know. Both Chris Cillizza and Harry Enten should know better. They probably do. Apparently their paychecks and positions demand everything but the transparent truth.

Bernie Sanders remains the prohibitive favorite. For years now, he has been the prohibitive favorite to win not only the Democratic primary but the Presidency as well.

Not according to corporate pundits like Matthew Yglesias. They can see past the obvious into the mystical unknown. Why, the race for the Presidency is just a wild jump ball! Lots of women seem to be fired up this year, so it must be a woman candidate who will win! He suggests limply. (Hillary who?) A simpleton take on gender if there ever was one.

And then no mention of the likely woman candidate, Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, most similar to the most popular national political figure, Bernie Sanders. Oh, and no mention of Bernie Sanders’ longstanding front-running overwhelming popularity. He’s just a “factional protest” guy, you see, according to the corporate seer.

Denial. Silence. Dumb. Call it what you will, it’s nothing new, this kind of idiocy of the One Percent media caste. Brainwashed stupidity, where not willful deceit. They are like dogs barking at the moon, these corporate conventional wisdom peddlers. Here’s some snake oil: it’ll heal you right up! Oh? You think universal health care would do the trick? You would support that? You do support that? Decisively? Well, I guess opinions differ! If you want mine- Oh, another snake oil salesman came through here just a minute ago? Oh, well, you can’t blame a guy for trying! Yes, I’m leaving now.

Except they don’t. They don’t get it. Or they don’t want to. It’s as if their paycheck depends on it. It as if they are paid to be “experts.” They have to play the cloaked idiot on the internet, who is pretending not to be idiotic. They willfully brainwash as they are willfully brainwashed, often self-brainwashed. I suppose there are more gentle ways to put it. The reality of imperial propaganda, from the good liberals and conservatives alike, not so dissimilar from their Good German brethren.

Even if Bernie Sanders does lose, it doesn’t change the reality that he currently is and long has been the overwhelming favorite to win. This is widely known generally, being plain and obvious, while being commonly denied in corporate media. It’s what they do. It’s what the corporate media do to one and all. Or they try like the Devil, whether they have brought themselves to believe it or not.

One of the very least talked about 2020 Democratic Primary Presidential candidates is Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, US House Representative. She appears to be on the verge of declaring her candidacy for the Presidency. Though greatly overlooked, she is the second most important candidate known to be a possible contender. I suggested why a year and a half ago: 

“You know, it’s funny what isn’t said. The next president of the United States, upon the 2020 election, is overwhelmingly likely to be Bernie Sanders – things being what they are today and are likely to be in a few years. The only real question at that level is who will be the Vice President? Tulsi Gabbard? Nina Turner?”

Tulsi Gabbard is the first Samoan-American and the first Hindu elected to the US Congress. She currently holds the rank of Major in the US Army. She remains as likely as anyone to become the Vice Presidential candidate of Bernie Sanders upon his nomination for the 2020 Presidential election, which would make her the first female Vice President in US history, upon a Sanders/Gabbard win.

Continue reading Tulsi Gabbard – 2020 Begins To Get Real

The Yellow Vest Insurgency – What’s next? by Robert Hunziker at Counterpunch:

Paris, France, April 2017: Macron Unveils Assault on Workers’ Rights.

Paris, France, December 2018: A potential worldwide insurgency of the working class starts in France as Yellow Vests occupy the streets.

“Some 75% of the French back the gilets jaunes. And this support has held up despite the violence.” (Source: La République en Flammes, The Economist, December 8-14, 2018)

The French Yellow Vests Insurgency may or may not grow into a major threat to the established order; nobody knows for sure how it will play out.

Nevertheless, the undertone has been obvious for some years. Once the world publicly recognized a division between the 1% and everybody else, the stage was set for flare-ups, like the Yellow Vest Insurgency movement, as tens of thousands of people dressed in bright yellow vests hit the streets.

Continue reading Bernie and the Yellow Vests

I made that up. It may be true, I suppose. Or not. Regardless, Bernie Sanders seems to have approached the popularity of Santa Claus. Not without reason. He is certainly the most popular national politician, just as he has been for the past two or three years. His progressive policies on health care, education, banking, taxation, infrastructure, the environment, income, wages, employment, and so on are generally and decisively more popular than the positions of any other prominent candidate or politician. And yet, like Coca Cola, Bernie Sanders is not “the real thing.” His policies on none of these issues and conditions go far enough, while his stands on debt forgiveness, judicial and criminal justice reform, and militancy, war, and international policy, etc, are all woefully lacking, not nearly as progressive nor as popular as they should and could be.

Coca Cola is what it is: unhealthy junk. Coke can’t meaningfully improve itself. Brand Bernie can. Brand Bernie isn’t wholesale junk, unlike Coke. Compared to the traditional toxic corporate candidates and politicians peddling their snake oil of austerity, Brand Bernie is a bit medicinal. But Brand Bernie needs to improve if it hopes to become much more the real thing.

Continue reading Bernie Sanders Is More Popular Than Coca Cola

Every single 2020 Democratic Primary candidate for President is utterly embarrassed to stake out policy positions to the right of Bernie Sanders. If they aren’t, they should be, because they are exposing themselves to be cruel tools for, by, and of the establishment: the One Percent.

Continue reading Cruel Tools of the One Percent: The Embarrassment of the 2020 Democratic Primary Candidates For President

Are movements of the left – popular progressive movements – so weak that they have no one to run to the left of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary? First you run to the left of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary for the unparalleled publicity opportunity, then you run as an independent for President to force the Democratic nominee to tack left and not right in the general election … and to keep the heat on, progressive and popular, post-election. Who will step forward? Which movements will offer up left candidates to pull the double duty of running in a primary and then again in the general? Otherwise the primaries will be dominated by the cruel tools of the establishment.