Bernie, Continued

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Scott Slawson is a decent speaker with a valuable message, but when you think about the menu of all of the celebrities who Bernie could have gotten to introduce him in Brooklyn, an anonymous union local guy from Pennsylvania is not on the list. He was there because Bernie Sanders believes in his fight. That union is getting far more from Bernie Sanders than he is getting from them. It is one illustration of what was clear even during the last campaign: inequality is ripping America apart, and vast portions of our nation have become deindustrialized and reduced to hopelessness courtesy of international capitalism, and the victims of that hopelessness were fetishized by Donald Trump, who promised them everything and has given them worse than nothing. Bernie offered a vision that was not only as anti-establishment as that of Trump, but had the virtue of also being the actual solution to the problems, rather than a thin web of lies, name-calling, and scapegoating. Not much has changed in the past few years. Bernie is back to ask those mythical Working Americans who have often been conjured up as a representation of Trump’s constituency: Have your lives gotten better?

(snip)

Bernie hasn’t changed at all. That’s his appeal. He hasn’t changed since he was the young man getting arrested at civil rights protests. Activists are distinguished from politicians by their ability to maintain a vision of what should be, rather than just what is.

Bernie took the stage on the quad of the college he went to decades ago and called for economic and social and racial and environmental justice. He called for Medicare for all and a $15 minimum wage and prison reform. He called for affordable housing and child care and tuition-free college and stronger Social Security and new infrastructure and taxes on the rich. He called for the end of private prisons and cash bail. He called for campaign finance reform and immigration reform. He said he will take on Wall Street and insurance companies and drug companies and fossil fuel companies. He said all of the things that he said four years ago, and that he said the decade before that, and the decade before that. One reason why Bernie Sanders has never been a darling of the news media is that he is a broken record, a characteristic that offers little in the way of “news” as it is traditionally imagined. That is a consequence of having actual beliefs rather than campaign strategies.

(snip)

A week ago, a union man made an argument to me that resonated. He said that true change will never come from electoral politics; it will always come from movements. Electing any U.S. president will not bring about the changes that the labor movement seeks, because a president is by definition embedded in and, indeed, the leader of a system that a movement seeks to break. The qualitative difference between Bernie and the other Democratic candidates, he said, was not that Bernie himself would make the changes we need, but that Bernie respects activism enough to not stop the movements from doing the things that they need to do to make the changes—the things that are usually viewed by the existing system as war. Bernie, he argued, would be the only one who would not stand in the way of the movements, where the real work happens. He was in his own way making the very same argument that Erica Garner did, before she died of a heart attack at the age of 27: Bernie is not really a politician. He is an activist. What we need is not just someone to hold the White House door open for the movement, but also to not call the cops when the movement starts to paint the White House black.

I do not know yet who I will vote for in the Democratic primary. But it is hard to deny that Bernie has a purity of spirit that is unmatched in the field. His policy prescriptions are good, but it is his quality of being magnetically attracted to the right side of things that could come in handy when America’s situation gets uglier. As it surely will. Shortly after Bernie launched into his speech on Saturday, the crowd began chanting: “Ber-NIE. Ber-NIE.” It started on the risers behind him, and spread quickly across the thousands of cold spectators with warm hearts. “BER-NIE! BER-NIE!” The man himself looked momentarily annoyed. Then he cut everyone off. “No, it’s not Bernie, it’s you,” he shouted. “It is all of us together.”


https://splinternews.com/bernie-continued-1833011354

This is a good read.

[AlexSFCA]

1. He is certainly grown on me since 2016

and not only he has managed to maintain all his supporters from 2016, he dramatically expanded his base since then.

[lunamagica]

7. I've noticed quite the opposite

It seems That almost every day I see posts from posters who voted for him during the last primary and now they regret it.

As fot Clinton supported, he seems to be in a mission to alienate them.

[forklift]

2. A leader who doesn't pivot with the times

and make the message contemporary is equivalent to a flip-phone without internet in an era of smartphones with 4G

[Uncle Joe]

3. The issues and policies that Bernie is and has been championing for decades ARE the smart phone. n/t

[forklift]

5. Except that smart phones actually

have a chance of working after being turned on.

[forklift]

4. How is it possible to start a movement

and hold campaign rallies but not be able to produce copies of tax returns?

Almost any household in the US can produce copies of 7 years of tax returns in a few days.

[comradebillyboy]

6. Good question.