Desperate Dollar Democrats

Russophobia and Hillary Clinton's blame game tour must be losing a little steam, because the anti-Bernie Sanders concern trolls are back. Too many people are still Sanders supporters, and that's making the party leadership a tad nervous.

So the New York Times has been performing its own due diligence with several prominent articles in recent days gently "raising questions" about the legitimacy, if not the basic sanity, of the Bernie faction. On Sunday, the newspaper groused on its front page that Democratic "militants" are making it so hard for the Wall Street faction to achieve the real goal: winning. The Times version of a Democratic militant is somebody who is crazily demanding health care for everybody.

In effect, that makes the majority of the United States one big pitchfork-wielding mob, given that eight in 10 Democrats want single payer insurance, and three out of 10 Republicans do. Therefore, "hippie-punching" is being elevated to a whole new level by the increasingly desperate Neoliberal Thought Collective of which the Times is such a faithful mouthpiece.

As Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin inform their readers:

 Democrats are facing a widening breach in their party, as liberal activists dream of transforming the health care system and impeaching President Trump, while candidates in hard-fought elections ask wary voters merely for a fresh chance at governing.

The growing tension between the party’s ascendant militant wing and Democrats competing in conservative-leaning terrain, was on vivid, split-screen display over the weekend. In Chicago, Senator Bernie Sanders led a revival-style meeting of his progressive devotees, while in Atlanta, Democrats made a final push to seize a traditionally Republican congressional district.

All that centrist Democrats are saying to voters is, please, give the superior knowledge class of the plutocracy one more chance to do right by you. All they want is to govern you as responsibly, as freshly as a sprig of plastic-wrapped mint. The Berniecrats, on the other hand, are just a ragtag bunch of tent revival militants smoking a lesser herb. Sound familiar?

Since that particular article didn't go over so well within the reader commentariat, the Times has now proceeded to play the age card. "Is Sanders, At 75, Too Old for 2020? His Fiercest Fans Say No" is the headline of the piece written by Yamiche Alcindor.

This headline contains two implicit messages: yes, of course Bernie is too old, you dolts! And you progressives who agree with his policies can't possibly be serious, mature voters. You are "fierce fans" who operate with your emotions rather than with your rational minds and your own agency. You see Bernie not as a politician in a representative oligarchy, but as a Mick Jagger-type rock star in a democracy who will instantaneously grant your most whimsical wishes.

With their idol turning 79 in 2020, some fans of Senator Bernie Sanders who had gathered for the second annual People’s Summit were thinking wistfully about the next progressive hero who could take the presidential baton: Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts might make a good next leader, though she at times appears too cautious.

The subliminal message: you're smoking way too much hash. Grow the hell up.

The Times did not mention that many Sanders supporters have increasingly been urging him to forget about reforming the Democratic Party from within, and instead help them form a brand new party. But as Sanders explains to Nina Turner in this Real News Network interview, he is still taking a wait and see approach. He's actually acting pretty cautiously and conservatively for such a "radical" politician.

Here's my published comment on Alcindor's story:

 In general, all politicians on the national stage are "too old." And too rich, and too esconced in near-permanent power to have any earthly idea how their putative constituents are struggling just to get by.

The divide between the centrist Democrats and the more progressive Sanders faction has as much to do with class and ideology as it does with age. And given that the rich are living longer, chronological age becomes moot. When you're a multimillionaire member of the Senate, for example, you have all the affordable health care you could possibly want.

The average age of the Democratic House leadership is 72. Unfortunately for us, the GOP leaders in that body are slashing the social safety net with youthful abandon: they're in the prime of their misbegotten lives, averaging out at just 42 years of age.

Eighteen of the 33 Senators running for re-election in 2018 will be 65 or older.

Even Elizabeth Warren will be close to 70 should she choose to seek her party's presidential nomination. In order for younger people to succeed at electoral politics, we have to get the money out. We should also impose term limits on congress critters, so that younger, poorer candidates have a fighting chance to get elected locally and then eventually run for president before their Medicare kicks in.

Down with the Oldigarchy.

http://blog.quorum.us/the-115th-congress-is-among-the-oldest-in-history-1

(Incidentally, the Times just announced that it has radically changed its commenting system. No more pre-publication human moderation, no more waiting for your remarks to be printed, no more preference given to elite green check commentators: a Google algorithm shall set you free, and most articles will now be open to comments. An explanation, of sorts, is here).

Silver Lining of the Silver Streak Trainwreck

With nearly a trillion dollars worth of succulent tax cuts dangling just out of reach of ravening plutocratic jaws, is it really a coincidence that Republicans pulled their wealth care package just as the stock market was closing for the weekend?

I suspect the main reason that GOP leaders prolonged their charade for one more theatrical day was not to glean more votes, but to buy time to plot their next billionaire-saving move. Anything to avoid the public spectacle of a market dive, anything keep investors and health insurance predators from thrashing around in a greedy panic before the platoons of political lifeguards went on TV to reinflate the swim bladders of freedom.

Paul Ryan, who in a sane and just world would have resigned both his seat and his speakership by now, instead used his big moment of defeat to dog-whine to his overlords. Despite their failure to repeal Obamacare and rip millions of people away from life-saving Medicaid benefits, they have concocted plenty of toxic back-up snacks, designed to cull the population in a more stealthy and piecemeal fashion. If anybody can make the vulnerable population sink like lead, these miscreants can. They just got a bit ahead of their sadistic selves, is all.

Barry Grey of World Socialist Website has them absolutely pegged:

 Both Ryan and Trump hinted that the administration would use its executive powers to slash away at Obamacare restraints on the health care industry and restrict eligibility and benefits for recipients, particularly those who depend on Medicaid.
Ryan said ominously, “There are things the secretary of health and human services can do.” He was referring to Tom Price, a rabid opponent of both Medicaid and Medicare, the government health program for the elderly.
Trump repeatedly predicted with relish that Obamacare would implode. “It will have a very bad year,” he said, suggesting that he and Price would do their best to undermine the program.

So notwithstanding the victory dance creakily performed on Friday by senescent Democratic Party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is no time for hoi polloi rejoicing. The GOP legislation failed, and yet at least 20 million Americans remain as uninsured as ever, with tens of millions more finding their premiums, co-pays and deductibles to be increasingly onerous. It's actual people continuing to drown. Not that the tide of the global plutonomy ever raised any rickety lifeboats, of course, It just that, lately, it's loading them down with enough ballast to sink them as quickly as possible.

Donald Trump certainly had a point when he cynically observed on Friday that Obamacare is not sustainable. He acted almost relieved in the aftermath of the AHCA debacle.

So what better time for Bernie Sanders, whose political capital and national popularity have only soared with every passing day of the chaotic Trump administration, to formally introduce another Senate version of Medicare for All?

If Donald Trump had any political smarts, he would rush to triangulate with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party against both the corporate Ryan and the fanatical Freedom Caucus wings of the GOP, and espouse true single payer health care. He'd help punch some big old holes in each bloated swim-bladder. And who knows - there may even be a handful of "moderate" Republicans willing to join the cause in the interest of saving their own political lives.

As Brent Budowsky writes in The Hill,

The consistently high ratings for Sanders, and the consistently low ratings for Trump, show that the real majority in America is the genuinely progressive and genuinely populist view of Sanders, not the phony populism or warped conservatism represented by Trump.
Based on the historical pattern of midterm election voting, if the midterm election were held today with the president's unpopularity so high, the result would be a landslide victory for Democrats.

Let Hillary Clinton, who recently announced that she's "ready to come out the woods" just try to denounce cost-effective and humane and egalitarian health care coverage, and pissily admonish single payer advocates to "get real" as she echoes her campaign's specious talking points against universal guaranteed care. She'll deservedly sound every inch the demented Grimm Brothers character who lost her way and stumbled out of the woods into the sunlight by pure, moral compass-free, mistake

Since there is no longer even the fuzziest of lines between entertainment and politics, why not treat America to a madcap buddy film instead of the current box office dud called RussiaGate?

There will never be enough lifeboats on the Titanic to allow disasters to end well, so let's forget for a moment all those depressing drowning metaphors - and hop on board the Medicare For All Express!

In an imaginary remake of Silver Streak, for example, a couple of erstwhile antagonists named Donald and Bernie would lead an improbable team of health care reformers who join forces to throw a band of neoliberals off the runaway capitalistic train. They'd manage to decouple the locomotive from the cars right in the nick of time, saving the day for their fellow passengers seated left, right and center. It's a relatively easy script to imitate, given that two of the characters in the original movie were also named Hilly and Whiney.

The suspense will be in guessing who are the villains and who are the heroes. Who finally sees the light, and who still adamantly refuses to seek treatment for chronic tunnel vision and willful myopia?

Therefore, the audience is definitely urged to participate. Keep calling your congress critters. Keep inundating the White House with synopses of Single Payer health care proposals. Don't get derailed by the emerging schlock horror genre called Them Bad Russians.

Poet Allen Ginsberg poignantly sounded the alarm half a century ago. "America: This is serious."

Gray Lady Clutches Neoliberal Pearls

Falsely equating right-wing populism with left-wing populism, The New York Times editorial board just delivered another in a long series of clumsy backhanded swipes at the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. 

It's happening to Barack Obama's America. It's happening to Lech Walesa's Poland. It's happening all over the democratic free world. The disdainful rabble are simply not properly groveling at the feet of constitutions and kowtowing to the naturally unequal miserable order of things. Therefore, we should be just as afraid of Bernie Sanders as we are of Donald Trump.

Of course the Times doesn't put its red-baiting in such gauche terms as that. They are daintily circumspect in their neoliberal propaganda: 

Populist leaders, whether of the far right or the far left, have made major advances across Europe and in the United States, drawing on a widespread sense of alienation, discontent with ruling elites and anti-globalization and anti-immigration views.

In nearly every case, whatever their specific agendas, populist leaders claim to represent the will of “the people,” and therefore believe they are empowered to ride roughshod over any person, institution or law that gets in their way. That kind of thinking led to the terrible dictatorships of the 20th century, a fact that becomes more relevant by the day.

Never mind that there is nothing even remotely "far-left" about populist Democratic leaders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They are merely pro-capitalist liberal politicians with the effrontery to defend the programs of the New Deal and the Great Society and occasionally make greedy plutocrats feel uncomfortable. But to hear the Gray Lady whine it, Sanders and Warren are absolutely drunk on power, riding roughshod over anybody allegedly getting in their way.

The Times editorialists were probably overreacting to recent remarks by Bernie Sanders in which he's criticized the party's clinging to identity politics at the expense of the working class, which apparently is expected to stay trapped in its deplorable basket.

“I think it’s a step forward in America if you have an African-American CEO of some major corporation. But you know what, if that guy is going to be shipping jobs out of this country, and exploiting his workers, it doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot whether he’s black or white or Latino," Bernie had the audacity to say.

The Times doesn't name the alleged victims of this alleged lefty American populism, because they know that casting billionaires as oppressed victims would sound downright silly. So they merely mention, in casual passing, the dangerous socialism that they consider just as much a threat to their cosseted world as Donald Trump's own gleeful exposure of class divisions, malign wealth and crony capitalism.

This red-baiting is all about the discredited Clintonoid wing of the party wishing to remain powerful and relevant against all odds and against all sanity. Since the working class didn't come out for Hillary Clinton on November 8th, she and her media propagandists are coming out with a vengeance against the working class. The Democratic Party will be reformed over their dead bodies.

Now that the so-called Faithless Hamilton Electors have failed to subvert the Electoral College system and now that Vladimir Putin's alleged hacking of the Democratic Party is old news, centrists are scrambling to attack new scapegoats from the right. So why not stay closer to home this time?

It helps immensely that James Bennet, the recently hired chief of the Times editorial board, himself has roots that burrow deep into Clinton soil. As reported by the World Socialist Web Site, he is the brother of neoliberal "New Democrat" senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and the son of Douglas Bennet, a long-time political operative who served in several Democratic administrations, including that of Bill Clinton.

According to Politico, the Times began courting Bennet last spring, just as Bernie Mania was reaching a fever pitch and posing a threat to Hillary Clinton. Bennet reportedly took the offer on a promise that he will eventually succeed Dean Baquet as executive editor.

I'm personally agnostic about the current battle over the chairmanship of the decidedly un-democratic party.  Keith Ellison is the choice of the Bernie Sanders progressives, and Labor Secretary Tom Perez is the choice of the Obama/Clinton Wall Street faction. Since only about 400 party officials are allowed to vote for the leader, the rabble are reduced to signing petitions through various veal pen offshoots like MoveOn. For a party so suddenly averse to the Electoral College, the Democrats certainly have no intention of opening up their own corporate ballot process to the disrespectful proles skulking outside the Big Gilded Tent.

And they certainly have no qualms about smearing Keith Ellison in the most blatant racial and Islamophobic terms. He once said something nice about Louis Farrakhan in his youth. He endorsed Bernie Sanders. The horror.

Barack Obama, for his part, damned Ellison with faint praise at his press conference last week, merely calling him a "friend," while waxing rhapsodic over the "wicked smart" Perez. It's no coincidence that of all the Democratic labor secretaries in recent memory, Perez has become famous for reaching out to the business community. No way has he restricted his wicked smartness to the working folks who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.

The Times ran a glowing article about this rising star last spring, praising Perez's ideological toothlessness right in the headline. Finally, we have a labor watchdog who is "not all bite!" The occasion of the puff piece was a visit by Perez to an overpriced New York City restaurant, where tipping had just been outlawed in favor of a slight (taxable) wage hike and (taxable) benefits for employees. The patrons forking out an average of $100 for a modest luncheon were pleasantly surprised at the very slight price hikes in the menu, which thanks to the newly-banned 20 percent gratuity, actually makes eating out cheaper for them.

Perez was only too happy to praise the restaurant for its "social responsibility" in raising its pathetic wages and sparing its workers the onerous responsibility of sharing and declaring their tips.

He is talking about “conscious capitalism” and “inclusive capitalism.” He is singling out “high road” employers. He is promoting B Corps, companies that adhere to lofty social and environmental standards. In doing so, he hopes he can persuade less enlightened corporations to change.

“The employers who do best are employers who reject these false choices,” Mr. Perez said. “It’s not a zero-sum world where you either take care of your workers or you take care of your shareholders. You can do good and do well, too.”

Truer, more wicked neoliberal words were probably never spoken. No wonder the rich Democratic donors are clamoring for him as party leader. They clothe him in the usual identity politics and bathetic back-story, supplying just the right liberal reason to elevate him. Since he is the son of Dominican immigrants and worked his way through Harvard by collecting trash, the working class rabble should have no logical reason to complain. Plus, as the Times helpfully explains, the working class can no longer speak for itself anyway. (The Paper of Record carefully doesn't mention that it was anti-union neoliberal policies that helped destroy the labor movement in the first place.)

The Party Dies, But Democracy Lives On

By Natalie Higley

(reprinted with permission of the author)

Just in case you missed it, after Bernie stood for the Vermont delegation, suspended the rules and forced the entire convention to do a voice vote (which we have fought against DEEPLY for months now) almost the entire Bernie delegation stood up and left the convention, together we all marched down the halls, chanting "this is what democracy looks like", and out into the media tent where we sat in silent protest with tape over our mouths. Written on the tape was, "no voice", "dnc stole my voice", "silenced by the dnc" and so on. We sat in solidarity holding hands. The media was unable to ignore us and that is why the media tent was the chosen destination.

 Cops then lined the doors and locked us in. Snipers were visible on the roof tops "monitoring" the media tent and the protest, police poured in from every direction, far more than I could count. We were hearing that we would all be arrested and removed if we didn't leave and yet they did not allow us to leave. Many of us, myself included, were very scared. We stood at the large glass walls at the front of the media building. I was crying and deeply upset, hundreds of Bernie delegates were locked outside the media building and standing in solidarity with us. I didn't know what to do, my phone was dead, i knew that my friends and family had been watching our live stream and that when my battery died I'm sure that they were panicking.

 I knew that if I got arrested so many things in my life would fall apart, and I started bawling uncontrollably, we were at the human limit of stress and exhaustion and emotionally overwhelmed after the slew of hardships and up and downs of this week. Being so overwhelmed I put my hands flat on the glass walls and just stared out the window crying, not knowing what to do. Within seconds, I had dozens of Bernie delegates outside, rushing the window and placing their hands over mine. Mouthing to me that we would be ok, that it will never be over, that we will continue, that they loved me, that they saw me, that we were together, that they would help me, that there was no need to be afraid because they were fighting to get us out, and they stood with me for an hour while the protestors outside were negotiating with officers for our release.

 I don't know what they said and I don't know what they negotiated, but after an hour and a half (felt like an eternity but in protesting world that's very fast) the doors were allowed to open. No one left me, and everyone wanted the opportunity to come "talk" to me. They stood with me and refused to leave until we were released. Once they opened the doors we had a flood of people coming to hug us and tell us how much they loved us and how proud they were to stand with us. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life, and most likely nothing will ever top that.

 Afterwards, we spoke to a million and one press members. I interviewed with everyone from the young Turks to BBC. Then there was a march led by Nina Turner and the black lives matter movement, out of the convention center. If the dnc has not yet recognized how large the exodus from this party is becoming, they are even more self absorbed and tone deaf than I ever could have imagined.


 Yesterday began the death of the Democratic Party. They have brought this on themselves and deserve everything they get. Hillary loses to trump by double digits in the polls and the numbers are only getting worse. To ignore that is to ignore fact and truth, they are ushering in the age of trump with open arms and i won't take the blame come November. I've done everything possible to attempt to ensure a win for Bernie, the only candidate who consistently beats trump in the polls, and has for months. I can leave this Friday knowing that I've done my absolute best, along with the hundreds of delegates I've met this week. I am proud of every step we have taken here and of those to come in the next two days. I will never forget a single one of them, and I have never met a more amazing group of people.‪#‎TheRevolutionContinues‬ ‪#‎JillNotHill‬ ‪#‎DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie‬‪#‎DemExit‬ ‪#‎DncDeathBySuicide‬ ‪#‎DemConvention‬ ‪#‎NeverHillary‬‪#‎NeverTrump‬ ‪#‎ThisISWhatDemocracyLooksLike‬ ‪#‎TheDayThePartyDied‬‪#‎July26th‬

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Natalie Higley, 23, is a Bernie Sanders delegate from Lakeport, California.  

Here she is, posing with Sanders at a campaign rally in Stockton held in May.

And here's full video of Tuesday's walkout, largely uncovered by the corporate media:

Dave Lindorff has more details and commentary here.

Just a Spoonful of Bernie Helps the Hill Pill Go Down

Not.

The rage was everywhere you looked on both the Philly convention floor and out on the steaming streets on Monday. And justifiably so.

Therefore, may quisling Bernie Sanders's pathetic plea for his delegates and fans to behave and not make a mockery of him, personally, fall upon millions of deaf ears. If it's got to be a Bernieless burn, then so be it. A real revolution doesn't begin by falling down insensate and pledging to elect a deeply corrupt politician to (if she is truly as blessed as she constantly says she is) a White House reign that is not cut as short as those of her fellow lying war-mongers, Nixon and Johnson. 

"This is a real world we live in," an abject Sanders told a crowd of booing supporters as he urged mindless public fealty to the Clintonian version of trickle-down capitalism.  This re-endorsement was despite Wikileaks' release of the trove of emails proving that the Democratic Party is a corrupt institution, with  access to money and power for its own ends its only goals. This was despite evidence that party flacks had conspired against Bernie Sanders, personally.

As the saying goes, shit always flows downhill. Bernie took his own generous personal portion and let it flow right down to his millions of fans.

His big speech on Monday night, effusively praising Clinton, left me wondering why he'd wasted all his personal energy in the first place, why he hadn't been loudly and vocally supporting Hillary Clinton all along. His original campaign rhetoric is now lost somewhere in the ozone

 Of course, nobody should have been surprised. Least of all me, who warned from the outset not to put all our eggs into one Bernie Basket, lest the "sheepdogging" role ascribed to him by Black Agenda Report turned out to be all too true. I'd stopped feeling the Bern altogether during one of this spring's interminable town halls, when he blandly supported President Obama's drone assassination program and promised that it would continue under a Sanders presidency.

After that, god forgive me, the sound of his voice sounded like fingers across a blackboard. But yes, I still would have held my nose and voted for him.

 From the start of his campaign, of course, the writing was right there on the blackboard. He'd vowed from the outset to endorse Clinton when and if she seized the nomination. I think what happened then is that the throngs of adoring fans and their millions of small donations went to his head. His true, initial purpose of herding more cattle into the party corral was temporarily lost in a cash deluge of historic proportions and the seductive glare of the stage lights. He played the part of lonely outlaw for so long that even he started believing in his fictional character, especially once he won New Hampshire by double digits.

Meanwhile, there are about a hundred more days to go to Election Day. The manipulators of public consent would like nothing better than for us to put our struggling lives on hold for the duration, to root for a greater or lesser evil.  And then the whole thing will get started again on Inauguration Day 2017, if not before.

So let the revolution continue in the Bernie-Free Zone. At this point, he is only an impediment.

Let's give Jill Stein a look. A protest vote today can always lead to a meaningful vote in the future.

And next time an annoying Hill Pill tells you to grow up or shut up for wanting Medicare for All and a living wage law, congratulate them on their affordable pragmatism and then hit them up for a donation to a medical charity, a food bank, or StrikeDebt.

Feeling the Heartbern

 *Updated below.

Hope you had your gallon jug of Mylanta handy for the capitulation:

To be fair, Bernie Sanders has succeeded in getting the Democratic machine to at least give lip service (for purposes of convention unity P.R.) to such initiatives as free public college tuition for working and middle class families, an increase in the minimum wage to $15, and reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. He failed abysmally at getting them to recognize that Palestinians are human beings possessing basic human rights. He failed to convince them to turn against Party Leader Obama and oppose ratification of the brutal corporate coup euphemized as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

And the endless wars, of course, will continue. Bernie didn't even try at anything close to pacifism. War is the essential glue holding all the bipartisans together.

So.... about that "revolution."

  According to Bernie Sanders, no world event will be more important than electing Hillary Clinton president in November 2016. There will be as few as possible disruptions at the party convention in Philadelphia later this month, because the hope balloon has already been popped. That promise of "taking this fight all the way to the convention?" Gone the way of the rotary phone and the used car salesman.

Hillary was her usual grimly gracious self at today's rally in New Hampshire. She allowed that Bernie's "passionate advocacy hasn’t always made him the most popular person in Washington. But you know what? That’s generally a sign you’re doing something right.”

Not that Hillary and her minions in the press ever thought Bernie was actually doing anything right by espousing Medicare for All and other "happy dreams." Until he capitulated, he and the "Berniebros" were smeared with a whole paintbox  full of slimy colors, ranging from racism to sexism to delusion to radical extremism to utopianism. Now that's all in the past, and Hillary, too, is embracing rainbows and puppies and unicorns. She's even honoring you with her generous willingness to accept your paltry $27 donations to supplement the billion or so she's raked in and will continue to amass from Wall Street and the polluters of mass destruction.

Applause, applause. (although a few Bernie Sanders fans did walk out in protest.)

To paraphrase the Empress-in-Waiting, we have to build those bonds of mutual respect between the police state and the oppressed masses.  Hillary used the smarmy passive tone in describing the epidemic of shootings by cops: “the tragedy, the tragedy of black men, and women and children killed in police incidents.”

Murder becomes a "police incident" in which innocents simply "get killed." 

(The neoliberal status quo is starting to squeeze my gut in a vise. Taking my first slug of Mylanta.)

 And, she went on, we must take back "our democracy" from the wealthy special interests of which, for purposes of manipulating populism in the service of elitism,  the Clintons are currently to pretending not to be a part.  Last time, the pandering was directed against vulture capitalist Mitt Romney. This time, it's Trump, who to Hillary's benefit, is Romney on crack and steroids with a side of racism and narcissism topped off by the froth of a dull-normal IQ.

To be fair to Hillary, she did speak one sentence of great universal truth today: "Talk is cheap."

And Bernie's body language said it all. As Hillary began speaking, he immediately began wiping his brow (or was it his eyes?) with the white handkerchief of surrender. There was no heat wave in New Hampshire today.

Congeal the Bernary!

Sorry to cut this post so short, but I'm starting to feel the churn. For lunch today I'm having another double shot of Mylanta with an Alka Seltzer chaser.

* I thought I had agita, but it's nothing compared to the indigestion suffered by New York Times columnist Andrew Rosenthal. While regular people (or should I say independent voters of all ages and millennials) are upset about Bernie's endorsement of Hillary, Rosenthal is miffed that it wasn't "inspiring" enough.

It didn't quite reach the over-the-top levels of Barack's own soaring oratory last week, but neither was it unenthusiastic to the ears of most (regular) people who heard it.

Rosenthal bitched just a few weeks ago about Bernie not getting off the pot, and now that the Vermont senator has finally dumped his concession, Rosenthal is complaining about the quality of the offal. He whines:

Bernie Sanders went off for a month to contemplate life after the revolution, and this was the best he could come up with? “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process, and I congratulate her for that.”

So said Sanders at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where he appeared on stage with Hillary Clinton as an ally for the first time. As big events go, it felt pretty small, with Sanders waving his arms around and offering up his usual list of shouted slogans.

His real concern is that Sanders doesn't have the magical power to force his fans to vote for a deeply loathed candidate. Bernie fans aren't proper little lemmings, it seems.

So still very much stuck in my digestive disorder metaphor mode, I published this reply to Rosenthal:

The New York Times's heartbern just won't go away, will it?

Long after the "flailing arms" and the "shouted slogans" and the rallies are naught but wispy white-haired memory clouds floating high above the Green Mountain State, the elite pundits will still be reaching for their Mylanta, thinking of all the democratic horror that might have been... had they treated Bernie with any respect to begin with.

The outrage of Medicare for All, the nightmare of free college tuition, the threat that there would be no Trans-Pacific Partnership to enrich the corporations even more than they already are, still linger like bad acid reflux, judging from all the "sore winnerdom" displayed by the pundits lately.

Bernie-bashing seems a bit moot at this point, wouldn't you say? Or will you still be demanding "What does Bernie want?!?" a decade from now?

 Actually, I thought Sanders was almost too enthusiastic in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. He shouted so much that he was forced to wipe the sweat (or was it tears?) from his face with a symbolic white hanky the moment she finally got her turn to faux-enthusiastically praise her faux-nemesis.

I would have preferred that he keep his promise of "taking this fight all the way to the convention"- if only to make the confab seem a little more exciting. The suspense is gone, the uncorked wine drunk (and upchucked) before its time.

Hillary's greatest, most truthful line in her grimly gracious speech: "Talk is cheap."

Bernie Politely Asks Dems To Play Nice

It could have been worse. The New York Times could have waited to dump  Bernie Sanders's prayerful op-ed until the long holiday weekend. That it has received such pride of place in the middle of the week, in bold headlines, even rising (albeit temporarily) above Thomas Freedom Friedman's latest elite whine, is proof positive that the Establishment no longer considers Bernie much of a threat.

They decided to humor the guy by reprinting the gist of his stump speech and most important, allowing him to drop a couple of subtle hints that he's supporting Hillary Clinton against Doctor Greater But Less Effective Evil.

Commenter Jay-Ottawa condensed the Sanders op-ed in his usual pithy fashion:

Hey, gang! Bernie's talking on the NYT op-ed page this morning. Allow me to give you the executive summary coming through his bullhorn.

BERNIE: "As I've said repeatedly in all my campaign speeches, this economy sucks. The rich keep getting rich; the rest keep getting poorer. Allow me to reel off the statistics measuring how far the 99% has nose dived (because people just love to hear me rant about the problem). These developments are terrible, terrible, terrible.

"Therefore, don't vote for Trump because he'll lead us into an American version of Brexit. What we've got to do, instead, is make the global economy more fair, be nice and all that. That's why I'm sticking with the Democratic Party and Hillary.

"Anyway, as I ought to say at this point, here's what I intend to do to correct the horrors of globalism:

[silence … his op-ed space seems to have run out at this point….]"

Sanders slugged his op-ed: Democrats Need to Wake Up. If he were more forthright, he would have called it Democrats Need To Divest From the Corporate Oligopoly, or even Democrats Should Just Go the Hell Away and Make Room for a New People's Party.

But that would have been a bridge too far, and might have endangered Sanders's high placement on some of those coveted Senate Committees, where he can play the part of Loyal Opposition to the Clinton White House and to the Republicans who are now flocking to her, right and left far-right.

Still, he made his fear-mongering quixotic plea to the fearless, clueless, careless and heartless Empress-in-Waiting:

Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.

But we do not need change based on the demagogy, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment that punctuated so much of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric — and is central to Donald J. Trump’s message.

We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hypernationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies and other powerful special interests.

(snip)

 In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.

As of this writing, there were nearly 1500 reader responses to Bernie's column. From "Josh," here's the top-rated comment:

 Bernie, we've read your campaign speech. We progressives agree with your direction. Now please offer policy solutions. Now please work to get support in the houses. Now please campaign to get the right people in at the state and local levels. Now please start drafting legislation. Don't lose the momentum you've built. Your critique of our system is totally accurate. If Hillary is perceived by many as 'fake', you are perceived as a critic that is good at finding flaws but not so good at fixing them. I hope that both of you prove your opponents wrong.

I sneaked mine in toward the back of the pack:

 Bernie, get a clue. When Clinton's Democratic Party platform reps refuse to include the goal of true universal health coverage and refuse to take a stand against the Trans-Pacific Partnership even in what is ultimately a meaningless document, all the editorializing in the world won't sway their allegiance away from Global Oligarchia and into the realm of the common good.

No matter how you slice it, dice it, dress it or poach it, a rotten egg is still a rotten egg. Not only does it still taste awful, it's bound to make you sick.

Bernie: with millions of votes and millions of dollars in small donations, you have amassed some extremely powerful political capital. To continue wasting it on a corrupt political machine which has thwarted, reviled, and dismissed you and your voters at every turn, it's a slap in their faces to continue to associate yourself with Democrats any longer. They'd just as soon grind you to dust as look at you.

Why not take Jill Stein up on her offer and run on the Green Party ticket? I know, I know - you don't want to be a "spoiler." But the Libertarian Party is already polling high enough to be included in the debates, and Stein is now at seven percent, and climbing. Why not make it a four-way race?

Our "official" choice between a neo-fascist loon and a money-grubbing warmonger is not only no choice at all, it's voter blackmail.

So if we start the revolution without you, Bernie, so be it. About 90% of us have nothing left to lose.

"Berxit" Begins

No, that isn't a typo. I'll be writing more about Brexit (a/k/a "The Failed Neoliberal Project Comes Home to Roost") in a later post.

This is about a different exodus.  Bernie Sanders made "Berxit" all but official this morning, telling MSNBC that he'll definitely be voting for Hillary Clinton this November.

But be heartened, Bernie-or-Busters. Just as it will take Prime Minister David Cameron a little while longer to finally skulk off in abject defeat, so too will Berxit be a gradual process. Just as Cameron doesn't want to upset the Market God by bolting from Number 10 too precipitously, before his successor is officially named, so too does Bernie not want to completely alienate his own supporters before his big prime-time consolation speech at the Philadelphia convention late next month.

These things must always be eased into delicately. Sanders has been giving none-too-subtle hints of his coming endorsement of Clinton, announcing just the other week that Priority Number One in his "revolution" will be "joining with" Clinton to defeat Donald Trump. How much more nuance can we stand?

That "joining" has now gingerly advanced into voting. The voting will soon evolve into endorsement and an official nomination ceremony. The nomination will morph into a honeymoon of Internet fund-raising, and TV ads, and campaigning for - or perhaps even with - Hillary on the stump. It's not so much a revolution, it's a transition toward lowered expectations.

I don't know about you, but I much prefer my band-aids to be ripped off in one quick tear. All of this incremental teasing the adhesive off of the scab that Sanders is playing at just prolongs and intensifies the agony.

You see, just because he is voting for Hillary. Bernie still doesn't want you to think that he's abandoned you, let alone dropped out of the presidential race. He delivered yet another barn-burner of a speech to supporters on Thursday, ticking off each and every progressive policy demand for inclusion in the Democratic platform. He titled it "Where Do We Go From Here?" in apparent homage to the last book written by Martin Luther King Jr before he was assassinated. King, too, tempered his own radicalism by urging pragmatism to the "militant" Black Power movement leaders. Change doesn't happen overnight, he said, nor does it happen with any one politician's election. And violence never gets you anywhere. Of course, King was writing in the days of the Great Society and the civil rights legislation born of his own brilliant activism. Neoliberalism -- control of societies and economies by unelected oligarchies and banks -- was still a distant nightmare back in the 60s.

Bernie Sanders just seems to be having a clumsy time evolving from his role as a presidential candidate who raised millions of dollars and won millions of votes into the perceived role of non-affiliated radical movement leader, following in the footsteps of Dr. King.

Although King, too, had urged his often-disappointed followers to run for public office, he had never sought or held office himself. He was never co-opted by the Democratic Party. And not only didn't he ever vow personal political fealty to Lyndon Johnson, he spoke out vociferously against Johnson's militarism, imperialism, and the Vietnam War.

Bernie is not speaking out against war. Although a vague critic of "regime change" and CIA dirty tricks, he actively supports President Obama's drone assassination program and has voted for billions of dollars in military appropriations in his capacity as senator. Posing as an outsider his entire political life, he is nonetheless a consummate insider -- despite what his colleagues and the mainstream media like to pretend. He's voted with Democrats more than 90 percent of the time.

  Yet the pundits are still complaining about Bernie's continued "failure to concede". 

What does Bernie even want? is their tired, constant and agonized refrain. For every day that he stays in the race, he's only hurting Hillary and boosting Trump, for crying out loud!

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times delivered the latest appeal (published only hours before Bernie went on Morning Joe to all but smother Hillary with kisses), urging him to stop it already with the wishy-washiness. A girl can't wait forever for the engagement ring, especially if she is "less adept at campaigning." Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Hillary from Rosenthal, but still:

Bernie Sanders is making his exit from the Democratic primary campaign in such slow motion that it’s starting to feel like he might still be in the race at Christmas.

Rosenthal then pivots to the standard media Bernie-diss of comparing him unfavorably to civil rights icon John Lewis, a "real" revolutionary who continued the struggle this week by staging a sit-down strike against gun violence (and paradoxically supporting the continuation of the anti-democratic No Fly List while he was at it.) Lewis still has the scars on his head to prove his bona fides. All Bernie has is a head of wispy white (white! white!) hair. This is identity politics run amok, served up by the Times to obfuscate the class war of the feral rich against the rest of us.

"The chilling scene in the House was just a taste of what Sanders followers will risk if they do not throw their undeniable enthusiasm behind Clinton and other Democratic candidates, and the G.O.P. holds Congress and wins the White House in November," Rosenthal scolded.

Bernie just can't win, no matter how valiantly he tries to passive-aggressively throw both himself and his supporters under the neoliberal bus. The pundits will probably still be asking him what the hell he wants 20 years from now. If there is, in fact, such a thing as 20 years from now in a United States of America.

Even in the wake of the mass outrage and disgust and despair evidenced by the Brexit vote and the rise of Trumpism on this side of the pond, they just don't seem to get it. They're still unwilling to acknowledge their own complicity in the creation of the worst social and economic inequality in modern history. 

Brexit, Berxit: The leaders of the free world are still stuck in the desolate room which Jean Paul Sartre described so brutally in No Exit. Nobody's willing to acknowledge the reasons for their own damnation, other than to say "mistakes were made." Even when salvation in the form an open door is offered to them, they refuse to leave, preferring instead the safe misery of each other's own dead company. "Hell,"wrote Sartre, "is other people."  

  Our planet is alternately frying and drowning from a lethal overdose of capitalism, yet the smartest people in the room still waste precious time kvetching about a rapidly cooling Bern.

Their own insecurity is showing. Panglossian denial of the awful reality no longer suffices.

Unity or Mutiny?

It was better than I'd meagerly hoped: Bernie Sanders is bloodied but not bowed, vowing in an address to his supporters last night that the revolution will continue.

 His first order of business: work with Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump. That's a no-brainer. Despite the predictions of the establishment press, the percentage of Bernie supporters defecting to Donald Trump will be minimal. The guy is that grotesque and dangerous.

 Second order of business: reform the corrupt Democratic Party from within, by insisting that all Bernie's proposals make it into the "plank." This is a noble but disingenuous demand. The filthy rich donors and predatory corporations who run this show will not give up their elite privileges without a sustained fight against the weak, the suffering and the marginalized. They'll cover up their class war agenda by championing "diversity" -- the rights and interests of better-off members of the LGBT community, professional women, middle class meritocrats, the icons of the Black and Latino bourgeoisie -- while effortlessly lampooning made-to-order racist misogynist cartoon villain Donald Trump. The Democratic plot not only doesn't thicken, it's been reduced to such thin rancid gruel that even the malnourished masses feel nauseous at the mere whiff of it.

Bernie's final order of business: urging his supporters to effect change themselves, from the bottom up. He urged people to get started by running for office, right in their own communities: school boards, planning boards, town councils and county legislatures. Now he's talking sense. Change never comes from the top down, regardless of who's elected president. This goal is actually achievable.

The people who gave millions of dollars and cast millions of votes for Bernie Sanders have enormous political power, and they should use it. Whether they will be welcomed with open arms to the Democratic Party is another story. The Sanders movement could just as easily implode. Or, it could evolve into third, fourth and fifth parties, or a coalition of activists from the Fight for Fifteen, environmental justice, Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements.

Because when the Secret Service announces the building of a literal wall around the perimeters of the Wells Fargo convention center in Philadelphia in order to keep regular people out, this doesn't exactly signal inclusion. It has been officially designated a National Special Security Event. Aspirational participants in the democratic process have been transformed into potential terrorists. Just as the Democratic establishment ripped the welcome mat out from under working class feet a long time ago, so too will they continually strive to throw all things joyfully Bernie out with their tepid identitarian bath water.

But:(from the transcript of Bernie's pep talk)

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Secretary Clinton and discuss some of the very important issues facing our country and the Democratic Party. It is no secret that Secretary Clinton and I have strong disagreements on some very important issues. It is also true that our views are quite close on others. I look forward, in the coming weeks, to continued discussions between the two campaigns to make certain that your voices are heard and that the Democratic Party passes the most progressive platform in its history and that Democrats actually fight for that agenda. I also look forward to working with Secretary Clinton to transform the Democratic Party so that it becomes a party of working people and young people, and not just wealthy campaign contributors: a party that has the courage to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry and the other powerful special interests that dominate our political and economic life.

Now, that was the sop to unity that I would answer with mutiny. Bernie has always been way too nice to Hillary Clinton, beginning right in the first debate when he rescued her with the specious claim that we're all "sick and tired of hearing about your damned emails." While he did eventually hound her on her Wall Street speeches and campaign contributions, he only addressed her family foundation slush fund very late in the campaign -- when it was too late to make an impact. So, will Bernie continue his knight-in-shining armor role when Donald Trump drags out his anti-Clinton oppo research and Bill's sordid history with women? We shall see.

To his credit, Bernie is standing firm on insisting that single payer health care, opposition to the TPP, the $15 minimum wage, expansion of Social Security and other "radical" policies make their way into the official party plank. However, Hillary is certainly under no legal (and obviously no moral) obligation to honor the wishes of minions. At best, she'll be forced to keep talking the populist talk until August at the latest, when her presumptive status will be safely in the rear view mirror and Bernie's convention speech has been smudged into a misty water-colored memory in her steel trap of a mind.

Given the rigged duopolistic system, Bernie is right that any struggle during this particular election season will have to be waged at the local level.

In what is very likely the template of his rousing party convention speech, he continued:

I hope very much that many of you listening tonight are prepared to engage at that level. Please go to my website at berniesanders.com/win to learn more about how you can effectively run for office or get involved in politics at the local or state level. I have no doubt that with the energy and enthusiasm our campaign has shown that we can win significant numbers of local and state elections if people are prepared to become involved. I also hope people will give serious thought to running for statewide offices and the U.S. Congress.

 And when we talk about transforming America, it is not just about elections. Many of my Republican colleagues believe that government is the enemy, that we need to eviscerate and privatize virtually all aspects of government – whether it is Social Security, Medicare, the VA, EPA, the Postal Service or public education. I strongly disagree. In a democratic civilized society, government must play an enormously important role in protecting all of us and our planet. But in order for government to work efficiently and effectively, we need to attract great and dedicated people from all walks of life. We need people who are dedicated to public service and can provide the services we need in a high quality and efficient way.

These words are anodyne enough so that even the Empress-in-Waiting can politely, if not enthusiastically, applaud them as she awaits Bernie's official endorsement. Stay tuned for lots of camera-ready hugs, kisses.... and the usual cascades of balloons and confetti. Keep the barf bowls ready as Hillary pays regal and shallow homage to Bernie and the Bros, welcoming them with only figurative open arms --  given that most of them will be stuck outside, watching a Jumbotron screen from behind militarized police barricades.

Meanwhile, the corporate media remains dismayed that Bernie refuses to officially and prematurely concede.  They'll be asking "what does Bernie want" long after Bernie has stopped patiently answering their hundreds of inane questions to the point of hoarseness. My favorite was when a New York Times reporter asked Bernie if his failure to endorse a war hawk and Wall Street puppet makes him a "sexist."

The Atlantic sniffs:

Sanders risks losing leverage by remaining in the race. That is particularly true if it seems like the movement he has worked so hard to build is beginning to dissipate. Some of his closest allies are already giving up on his fight for the White House. On Wednesday, MoveOn.org, a progressive organization that endorsed Sanders, offered its congratulations to Clinton. On Thursday, Raul Grijalva, the first member of Congress to endorse Sanders, announced he was ready to support Clinton. The congressman made clear that he wants Clinton to embrace the ideals Sanders has fought for, but the declaration was an unmistakable sign that the end is near.

This is the parochial coverage of identity horse-race politics in a nutshell. If "progressive" for-profit veal pen organizations like MoveOn are ready to give up, then it naturally follows that millions of Sanders voters, lacking independent minds of their own, are also ready to cave. If one lone congressman switches sides in favor of Hillary, then all the weak and wobbly dominoes will soon come tumbling after. And my goodness, if even "rising progressive star" Elizabeth Warren (aged 66) is endorsing Hillary, why isn't everybody enthusiastically following suit?  Since the "end is near," we must all stop greedily sucking up the oxygen and just die graciously already. Why prolong the agony? We proles are not deserving of care, especially that offensive end-of-life care which is anathema to all good neoliberals, for whom "efficiency" and "best practices" replace the common welfare.

One final thought. We've actually come a long way from last year's "narrative," which was all about political dynasties and a boring contest between a Bush and a Clinton. This election season is anything but boring.There's no guarantee that the campaigns of either leading contender will even survive until election day For the first time in modern history, both candidates are under active law enforcement investigation. And for the first time in a long time, socialism has gone mainstream. The neoliberal project has been well and truly exposed.

And still the pundits wonder why Bernie isn't bowing out gracefully. Keep your fingers crossed, and the popcorn ready. We may end up dead, but it promises to be a thrilling roller coaster ride to the finish nonetheless.

The revolution is on.