Sanders is one of the most popular politicians in the US, and his political analysis and messaging remain as relevant and compelling as ever. But while his Tour to Fight Oligarchy is inspiring and important, the broad left badly needs a political vision that goes beyond Sanders.
I agree with a lot of this article, but it doesn’t really acknowledge the reality of the Democratic leadership’s obstruction. The party is, generously, a slightly left-of-center organization that prioritizes stifling their own left wing over defeating their far-right opponents. They’ve successfully held off two of Bernie’s presidential runs, redistricted Bowman out of his seat, and Pelosi has spent so much time and effort undermining the squad (and AOC personally) that it borders on pathological.
I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Bernie in this article, and beyond that, he’s just too old to be in the Senate, much less the standard bearer for the entire left, but the Democrats have spent decades making sure there’s no viable alternative. We need to move past Bernie, but we need to build an actual progressive movement that can get past Democratic obstruction to do that, and for now, Bernie is still the de facto leader of that movement.
They’re center right at best, they dont advocate for workers solidarity and actively distract workers from unity. They demand compromise with capitalists yet give the workers nothing. They are only left wing in social policy, on economics and governance they are fascism lite.
Well, there’s a reason I said, “generously,” slightly left-of-center. It also depends on the Democrat. There’s enough of them that care about labor to get the PRO Act through the house, but not the Senate. I don’t think it would be unfair to call someone like Gary Peters center-left, given his strong pro-union track record, but someone like Schumer or Pelosi, who are squarely on the side of Wall Street and big tech respectively, are just conservatives masquerading as left-leaning centrists.
Imo being left wing should at the absolute bare minimum require supporting the abolition of private property and ownership. Unions are fundamentally a compromise between labor and capital, therefore supporting unions is more centrist. An example of a left wing position would be supporting revolutionary workers syndicates.
I mean, fair enough, but there’s no point in America history where abolishing private ownership wouldn’t be considered far-left. I understand that compared to international standards or across the broader spectrum of political theory, the American left has never been particularly left-wing. When I say the Democrats are slightly center-left or center-right, I’m comparing them to themselves 30 to 40 years ago. Since 1980, they’ve slowly compromised their principles to the point where they can’t be considered, “left,” by any modern political metric.
If you asked a Appalachian coal miner in 1921 they would say that the abolition of private property is the absolute basic nessesity for any leftist movement
…OK, that still would have a far-left opinion in American politics. It’s not like the country was divided between socialists and communists back then. Hell, it took the Great Depression just to get the moderate socialist reforms of the New Deal passed, and even then, its opponents thought it was communism.
Like, I don’t know what to tell you. I understand your point; you think anything that doesn’t involve the abolition of private property isn’t left-wing. But even pre-Cold War, even pre-McCarthyism, even during the Coal Wars, that position would be the far-left of American politics. I’m not trying to be a dick here, but when I, or the author of the article, or most Americans, are talking about, “the left,” we’re definitely not working from your definition.
Even on social policy they have to be coaxed into it by a large activist movement and they’ll ditch it if the Republicans make too big a stink
Almost like some sort of grassroots 3rd party that is literally too radical of an idea for you fools in this community who argued Biden (and Harris) was somehow more leftist than Obama.
Yes, let’s lose worse.
Without ranked choice voting, the only option is to fix it from within.
RCV is not something the two party system would willingly allow to occur in enough states to matter, and it’s not a base requirement for a 3rd party to succeed.
Pakistan doesn’t have RCV, it took them 20 years which included a 10 year military dictatorship and 10 years of faked paper ballots and miscounts. No way the US would need more than that considering we don’t have massive issues involving voter fraud.
I’m sick of people disregarding 3rd party with what is essentially a flawed argument of the two party system used to convince people 3rd parties are impossible.
You would be surprised at the amount of increased turnout from the nonvoters group that would gain wins in an FPTP system despite the disadvantage.
Bernie is the left’s most effective advocate in the US and we need more of him.
We need more like him
Yeah, but also I think a Godzilla sized Bernie Sanders could do a lot of good.
Would you rather fight 1 Godzilla-sized Bernie? Or 100 Bernie-sized Godzillas?
Well I’m probably dead either way unless Bernie can be reasoned with so at least the godzilla sized Bernie could go on to do good things for the world and not be a radioactive nightmare for everyone to deal with.
Exactly, I love Bernie, but he’s old. Of a new generation of young progressives don’t establish a foothold in the senate change will not happen.
Ot at least not through peaceful means.
Bernie should be running “here’s how to run for office in your area” drives on his oligarchy tour. The only way progressives will kick out corporate democrats is by the common person running more. Bernie should be pushing more people to run instead of just getting up on a stage in front of people and being a politician. He’s not a good organizer. Great talker. Horrible at getting people out to vote. Dude couldn’t even get enough people out to vote in the Democrat primary in 2016 to defeat Clinton. She beat him by a larger voting margin than Trump won by last year.
Oh no, every fuckin person In line to vote with me just said they were voting for Clinton because they were told he couldn’t win. Everyone agreed with him yet I couldn’t convince the 20 people in line that if we all voted for him it could all work. The dnc did him wrong, the media coverage wasn’t great (never is take that as it is), and people thought Clinton was a shoe-in. I dont disagree with your statement for teaching people how to run, but don’t disregard how the dnc didn’t want him there at all.
The DNC definitely didn’t want him there. But the RNC didn’t want trump. Trump was able to convince voters to vote for him despite him being a long shot candidate. Bernie wasn’t. Bernie, if he was a better organizer, would have been able to convince more people to vote in the primary either to outnumber the people who voted for Clinton or convinced the Clinton voters to change to his side. Obama was someone who was able to convince voters to come out and vote for him in the primary and was able to convince Clinton voters to switch sides. Again, Bernie couldn’t.
I also think a core part of this is just him running for the nomination for the Democrat party despite not in fact being a Democrat. I had many people around me who also agreed with him but voted for Clinton because he wasn’t a Democrat and obviously only wanted to be able to be a part of the party when he needed them as opposed to always being there.
I personally think if Bernie had always been a part of the Democrat party he would have had an easier time convincing enough people to switch to his side. It’s not like he needed a blowout to win the nomination. This is also why I think someone like AOC would have an easier time running for the nomination since she is and always has been a Democrat.
The party also used the screwy rules to keep him down, rules put there for just the purpose
Very well put.
I agree the left should build a cybernetic android and place Bernie’s brain within. He will need to be reprogram to destroy those who oppose the will of the people and the good of all humanity. Hail BernBot666
We need more like sanders. Fuck the democrats. I want independents and I want all those who aren’t on board with the Democrat party to recognize it’s time for a change. Especially now in this time of rebuilding while conservatives are in power.
No, the left needs to study Bernie and take notes. Then elect politicians exactly like him.
Like fucking milk.
The left needs to stop with the purity tests and start doing the do the work. Bernie is flawed, as are we all, but he is out there knocking doors .
Yes, and no. Yes, we do need to move beyond him and seek out fresh, new voices. No, because we still need him to provide his own opinions while he is still here. We can have both.
I believe the left needs to start listening to Sanders. This man is a genuine champion. He, for decades, has been shunned by his colleagues, and yet he has never wavered in continuing to fight for all of us. I wish I had a fraction of the courage this man has.
Bernie is like the only leftist rep. You mean the center-right needs to start listening to Sanders.
Bernie has many good ideas, but listening more to him won’t get you anywhere. I’ll just copy paste another comment I wrote about this:
Just voting for progressive candidates won’t fix things. I don’t know if there was any point where that was enough to fix things, but if there was it definitely isn’t now. Therefore, Bernie—who did not, does not and will not recommend any method of resistance beyond simply voting—is incapable of leading a progressive movement. Bernie and politicians like him need an independent progressive movement behind them to win elections; if you put them in charge of the movement they’ll sit around doing nothing for most of the year.
The US progressive movement needs real leadership willing to take action (and occasionally get their hands dirty) and it needs it fast.
Who would be best suited then? I genuinely would like to know, because I feel like there isn’t anybody right now.
Okay full discloser I am not American and very much not familiar with prominent figures in progressive American politics other than the Squad, so I have no idea. However, it’d likely have to be the leadership of a coalition of progressive groups and third parties uniting for a more equitable and just society and against fascism, in which case they can just elect whoever. I also think the best/only path forward is a broad progressive coalition founding a third party and both competing for elections and resisting in the streets at the same time, so the leadership would naturally emerge from that third party. The leftist activist base whose only direct interaction with politics until now has been to endorse candidates and vote needs to contest and win elections. Unite the left on that basis and you’ve won half the battle.
Yeah what does Bernie know about getting his hands dirty?
The sit out centrists need to vote
Sanders has been saying that longer than most of us have been alive…
No.
The Left needs to get rid of fucking Schumer.
Let Bernie retire, because the man was there for the signing of the declaration (pretty sure his signature is just below Adams’s.)
Let the man retire. Get rido f the Quaislings that seem content to be ineffectual opposition.
Do stuff other than beg the base for money and give people somethign they can be involved in. Start looking at community efforts. Build ties at the base’s own level so the base SEES the Democratic party Doing stuff locally that HELPS them.
I mean, that’s basically what the article is saying, too. Just a lot more detailed, with a lot more research and evidence to support their assertion.
Always good to have facts backing up what was already a ‘known.’
Schumer has turned the democratic party into a top down mess that is ineffectual and will continue to be ineffectual because nobody expects the Democratic party to be able to do anything, and for that to change there needs to be a bottom up restructuring.
there wont be anyone like sanders or aoc, and all other imitation dems turn out to be shills for the gop.
there isn’t, but there can be
i.e. Fetterman.
When the party supported him instead of pulling funding, it should have been clear that he was lying about being a progressive.
this is basically saying, we are currently at -10, Sanders is at +3 and we need to jump to +10 right away. Not gonna happen unless through civil war.
Republicans were at -3 pre 2016 and they’ve ratcheting up to -10 pretty quickly. If you have a good charismatic leader that the base falls for you can drag the rest of the party along to the edges of the Overton window pretty quickly.
If you have a good charismatic leader that the base falls for
…the party’s geriatric republican-lite leadership will ratfuck them out of the primaries.
More of a revolution than a civil war.
Despite all the maga bots online. There are very few die hard maga in real life.
And I realize that most of the military is Republican.
However. Trump has been fucking over the Vets pretty hard.
He also has removed a lot of the military’s top leaders. People who the military personnel respected.
Surely this is going to start eroding the military personnel’s loyalty.
But then I also remember how Republicans have consistently voted against their own interests.
And how many people in Russia are against the Ukraine war because they have friends and family in Ukraine. And their soldiers keep dying.
Yet…they are still following orders to attack.
Things are so uncertain.
But if the American people have to literally battle anyone in our own country it’s going to be us vs our military personnel.
And they have weapons and training.
Our only real chance is using our intelligence over force. and our decentralized leadership is a strength. So one specific leader can’t be targeted and disrupt the movement.
Basically guerilla warfare. Targeting propaganda, military resources, factories that manufacture weapons, and imports. And a priority is Trumps secret police force. ICE.
Because they are removing people who would stand with us. Taking away our resources.
We need to target their communication systems.
There is a few ways that can be done.
Physical disruption or by overloading their systems with inaccurate information.
Of course many of these targets potentially negatively affect the civilian combatants too.
We have to really plan this well. Be strategic.
We need to start preparing for this possibility though. Now. Right now.
I hope we can do this the legal way and get him arrested.
But if not, then we will have to consider plan B.
Every day we move closer to B. Already we are seeing more effects by vandalism of Tesla’s. Vs judge orders.
I personally hold not only the 10 Dems who sold us out. But every single Republican who voted yes on the CR too.as well as voting in unqualified department heads.
The representative dems and Republicans who have not stood up to him.
They also are just as responsible.
The judges who have allowed him to continue his obviously unconstitutional activities.
Every single person in Trump’s cabinet.
They will all be held accountable for their actions when this is said and done.
We won’t forget. They are traitors.
So what are you waiting for? Take a rifle and don’t come back until “it’s over over there”
