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.
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This article is not what we need right now.
Bernie is the only leftist in the Senate. So until that changes it will be impossible to move beyond him.
We need a progressive takeover of the democratic party. The MAGAs tranformed the republican party in what 10 years?
If we have midterms it has to start then.
We have to organize at the community level and do it without all the shadowfunding the fascists have.
Probably won’t happen. The DNC are conservatives and the majority of the US is too. Most ppl are too dumb/uninformed to see left leaning politics is what they actually want
Which means there’s no hope for this framework and the best thing that can happen is collapse and rebuild for even any long term hope for our descendants after a lot of pain.
I agree the people have been systematically made hostile to policies that would defend them the laborers from the capitalists by capitalist for profit media propaganda and capitalist captured government propaganda.
If the people are only willing to vote as “left” as the good cop fascist dems and it’s a coin flip between them and the can’t go any further right fascist Repubs, there is no solution short of letting entropy tear it all down.
You can’t repair a sinking ship when the only solutions available are make more little holes(D) or make more big holes®in the hull. The people would need to at minimum have a stop making new holes (funneling all resources to the top 0.1%) party. But that’s evil communist leninist Marxist socialism Herp derp! Better starve to death under a freeway 🇺🇸
*The Koch Brothers et al. used their vast wealth to transform the Republican Party in 10 years.
The biggest problem the left faces is that money is required for any political action in the U.S., and there is no money for the left. No billionaire will fund 50501, or Our Revolution, and in fact they’ll gladly spend several million dollars defeating leftist primary challengers and suppressing news of protests.
Our political system is hopelessly rigged. There is no longer any way to use it to save ourselves.
Reading the article, the argument is that Bernie isn’t left enough, and more radical candidates need to be run in primaries.
I think the language is funky. They’re saying beyond, like take his ideas and go even further, not move away from Bernie. They want more and better of him.
Luigi, because Bernie was our compromise.
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.
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.
The left needs to be rid of centrists like Bernie/AOC and bring in actual leftists. Not just progressives but communists, socialists, syndicalists, anarchists, revolutionary trade unionists, the class conscious workers who will lead the revolution. Compromise with the Capitalists is useless as they have no morals, they will always claw back everything they have compromised (Trump is proof of this). Furthermore working in the Capitalists liberal democracy is the best way to get absolutely nothing done and to fall to fascism.
WORKING PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITE
Your politicans will not save you nor will running one more electoral campaign, we need to build class consciousness and strengthen unions to prepare for revolution (it is not a if question but a when question)
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
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 .
Trash article.
Their foreign policy criticism of Bernie is that he told people to vote for Kamala, and she didn’t do enough to stop the genocide in Gaza.
Like Jesus Christ, people like this are why the Democrats cant win.
She indicated that she would continue biden’s unquestioning and unconditional support for netanyahu’s genocide.
You can make your point without downplaying genocide support.
Oh please do go ahead and tell me how much Trump is doing to stop that.
Oh what’s that? Nothing?
Are you saying that it was fucking obvious everyone should vote for and endorse Kamala?
Jesus fucking Christ, anyone who didn’t support Kamala was dumb as fuck. Full stop. If your criticism of Bernie was that he supported the obvious lesser of two evils then maybe you deserve the president you got.
If your criticism of Bernie was that he supported the obvious lesser of two evils then maybe you deserve the president you got.
Where did I criticize Bernie?
And anyone who supports genocide is human garbage and will always deserve worse than they’re currently getting. Regardless of how shitty what they’re getting is, they deserve worse.
This literal entire comment chain is about how the article’s foreign policy criticism of Bernie is that he endorsed Kamala, and she didn’t do enough to stop the Palestinian genocide.
and she didn’t do enough to stop the Palestinian genocide.
The basically vowed to continue it. Sanders can see the lesser evil, but that’s no reason to downplay the evil.
Sanders’s problem isn’t policy, but organization. He’s great at advocating policies, but there needs to be a better organization in creating more progressive politicians.
This article states pretty much everything I believe about American politics far more articulately than I ever could. I’ve decided; if I ever open an American branch of the NoneOfUrBusiness party I’m making this my manifesto.
there wont be anyone like sanders or aoc, and all other imitation dems turn out to be shills for the gop.
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.
there isn’t, but there can be
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?
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.
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
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.
we can’t get more than what sanders wants if we can’t even get what sanders wants
So, would you then say “we can’t get more than what Kamala wants if we can’t even get what Kamala wants”?
No.
besides the genocide, Id agree with that yes
harris had dick cheney’s endorsement and wanted nothing more.
Yep, article is well meaning but dumb.
Idealism is great, but politics requires pragmatism. Which is why people like AOC and Bernie (who are well left of Kamala politically) still told voters to vote for Kamala in the election - she was the only way to avoid Trump, she was the pragmatic choice.
But apparently we’ll be discussing why it’s a dumb idea to be a protest voter in a very close election for the next four years non-stop.
Surprisingly, It’s sometimes easier to do big things.
For example: Do social security instead of tinkering around the edges of the existing retirement system.
