Bernie Sanders

Taking down the Democratic Party is the most important task of the new year.
— Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report

Paul STREET
Anyone who hoped that the terrible experience of a neofascistic presidency might jolt the Democratic Party media and politics establishment into embracing the basic lesson of the 2016 election – that running a dismal, dollar-drenched centrist well to the right of the citizenry for president just guarantees right-wing control of the United States’ executive branch – is certain to be disappointed.

Over the last decade, a national consensus has developed for a progressive left agenda on the economy, social services, the climate crisis and ending wars but the movement has not yet built the power to make that a reality. The next decade will be ripe with opportunities for transformational change due to a combination of expanding popular movements as well as escalating crisis situations.

Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film The Exterminating Angel is many things to many people. The eye of the bewildered beholder, beholden to his or her personal perspective, conditions the response. The plot is straightforward: a small coterie of wealthy Mexicans convene for a dinner party, only to find that they cannot leave the party — literally. There is no apparent physical impediment. Nothing visual blocks their exodus. Rather it is a kind of psychic inanition that collapses their will to leave.

Norman SOLOMON
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins — but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.

Norman SOLOMON
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination.Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins—but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.

Brutal for Tier 2: "Sanders supporters are the most set: 71% saying they will definitely vote for him...57% of Biden voters definitely will vote for Biden...29% of Buttigieg and 28% of Warren voters indicated they plan to stick with their candidate."https://t.co/LZD7tvzZGC— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) December 18, 2019

That the U.S. is a nation divided is a statement few knowledgeable individuals would challenge. These divisions have been exacerbated, to some degree, by the impending 2020 election wherein Americans will go to the polls to elect their next President and a cadre of senators, congressmen and a multitude of lesser known local politicians.

In his 2007 classic Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War—a book that, in the age of Donald Trump, is more relevant than ever—Joe Bageant makes an observation that cuts to the nub of the matter. America, he says, isn’t composed of some great middle class; it is an overwhelmingly working-class country.

by Thomas NeuburgerWheels within wheels.