Monday, July 31, 2017

Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Isn’t Over - New Yorker

“Do not underestimate the resistance of the Democratic establishment.”.... Bernie Sanders, New Yorker

In Trump’s America, the Independent senator is fighting to win back the heartland for Democrats.

New Yorker: Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Isn’t Over

By

 A good piece in this week's New Yorker. Contrast Bernie - a Brooklyn born Jew -- digging in deeply in Trump territory - while say someone like Chuck Schumer, another Brooklyn Jew -- hides out in Washington with the Dems so-called Better Deal. The internal battle continues as this selection illustrates:

Bernie said on MSNBC -- which by the way no matter what the rhetoric, side with corp Dems because they are a corp.
Democrats would continue to lose elections “unless we have the guts to point the finger at the ruling class of this country.” Hayes asked Perez if he shared that view, and Perez wearily issued a talking point: “When we put hope on the ballot, we win.” Clinton, Hayes pointed out, had put hope on the ballot. She had not won. Whereas Perez offers the liberal abstraction of inequality, Sanders insists on naming an enemy, the billionaire class.
Some excerpts:
Since the election, the Democratic Party has tried to move closer to Sanders’s views. Last week, in a small town in northern Virginia, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, announced the Party’s platform for 2018, “A Better Deal,” which is aimed at winning back working-class voters. The platform includes a fifteen-dollar minimum wage and a trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure, plans that Sanders has long promoted, often with little support. Many people in the Democratic Party believe that, when it comes to policy, Sanders has prevailed. Sanders does not see it that way. He told me, “Do not underestimate the resistance of the Democratic establishment.”

When the Democratic Party fractured, in the primaries, it was like a bone cracking—the Clintonites on one side, the Sanders faction on the other, with no obvious way to repair the break. Sanders’s supporters deeply resented the Party’s obvious preference for Clinton; Clinton’s backers accused them of sexism. Last July, at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, the Sanders faithful shouted down podium speakers, marched out of the hall and occupied a media tent, and covered their mouths with tape, on which some of them had written the word “Silenced.” The two camps clashed again this winter, in the contest for the Democratic Party chair. Tom Perez, who was President Obama’s Secretary of Labor, narrowly defeated Representative Keith Ellison, of Minnesota, the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus and an ally of Sanders. The insurgents had come up short again.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/bernie-sanders-campaign-isnt-over


1 comment:

Pogue said...

I love it. I also recommend "wayofthebern" on Reddit. Interesting reads and comments often.