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.
A new party is needed. Be done with the garbage that we currently have
Like this? www.huevosparty.com
Centrists need to stop telling leftists what to do and what is good for them or they’re going to keep on losing elections.
This article is not what we need right now.
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.
No, the left needs to study Bernie and take notes. Then elect politicians exactly like him.
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.
So what are you waiting for? Take a rifle and don’t come back until “it’s over over there”
there wont be anyone like sanders or aoc, and all other imitation dems turn out to be shills for the gop.
i.e. Fetterman.
there isn’t, but there can be
Sanders works with democrats while voters paint democrats as evil. If you love Bernie then ask yourself why does he keep such company? Vilifying the dem party ain’t helping and your Bernie recognized that a long time ago. What are you accomplishing ?
Something needs to change either people pull their head out of their ass and cut this shit out, or they get better at shit and stop it. But wtf
One of Bernie’s biggest flaws is that he’s working with the Democrats.
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)
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 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.
Yeah what does Bernie know about getting his hands dirty?
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.
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.
Sanders is the american Jeremy corbyn and if it looks as though he might get near to power, the establishment will take him out, smear him and try to remove him from politics and the democratic party, just as they did corbyn.
They used the excuse of antisemitism in the labour party, which was total lies, he’s the most stalwart anti-racist in UK politics and has been for decades. His record speaks for itself. He’s still barred from the labour party now.
Couldn’t insult Corbyn any harder
I’m not sure what you mean, but I seem to remember corbyn and sanders were friendly and spoke at the same demonstrations etc. For a while there it seemed we would have decent politicians running things on both sides of the pond.
I mean they are not the same. Corbyn is the real deal, Bernie is a sellout at best, now a sheepdog for the establishment keeping the voters runnung away to 3rd parties.
No surprise one of them got framed and the other one is still around.
Bernie can have his platform to do his show to give their corporate party a progressive face, not the 3rd party candidates who get sabotaged by the Dems and which they try to get of the ballots by lawsuits or any way possible.
They will fight them harder than republicans.
If you want to compare him to UK politics he would be a labour politician.
All talk about being for the people yet doing the opposite.Well okay, which mainstream US politician is better than Sanders?
Why TF do you need mainstream politicians?
3rd party is the only option, or stay in the endless loop like you’ve been doing for a few centuries nowBecause the system is rigged against 3rd Parties, the Dems and the GOP have worked hard over the decades to make it all but impossible for 3rd Parties to get on ballots. For example, it can vary from state to state the amount, but 3rd party candidates need to get thousands of signatures in each of the counties they want to have their name on the ballot in. Meanwhile the Dems and GOP have gotten state laws passed that automatically put Dem and GOP candidates on the ballots like an reward for voter involvement in the previous election.
Getting on the ballots at all for 3rd parties costs a lot of money and time to do. It’s generally why you only really see 3rd parties pop up for the presidential election, which just sort of becomes a joke because it’s usually a nutter like Jill Stein.
a nutter like Jill Stein
While there are better ones and I don’t really follow her, there’s no doubt she’s far better than any of the imperialist genociding psychopaths both sides of your uniparty regime endorse.
What makes her a nutter eactly?
I’m part of a 3rd party but the problem is, they don’t win. Eg right now the Democrats could be in power rather than trump. That would avoid absolute catastrophe and keep the west at mid level shit.
Now trump won things will get bad. I hope that the people will overcome and in 100 years people will say it was a good thing that trump got in, because it galvanised real change. People were put into a position where they had to demand change. Or it could go the other way - there might not even be any people in 100 years to assess. Chaos is dangerous, even well planned, contained chaos, which this isn’t.
They don’t win bcs of this dumb defeatist ‘lesser evil/wasted vote’ mentality.
In EU there are plenty of parties that started from 2% and have grown until they become a force and get a place in government.
I really hope you get your true change now.
There would be no Trump without the dems creating that climate making it possible.
And their horrible tone-deaf politicians making clear you would get more of the same as under Genocide Joe.
So I’m glad Trump won, a US president fucking up his own country for once instead of others is a win for the world.
It makes no difference for Palestinians, Yemeni, Syrians or plenty others who rules the country that bombs them or aids the terrorist proxies to do it for them.
I feel sorry for the few that aren’t part of the massive dem/rep population but that is collateral dammage.
It needed to happen.
How you deal with it is up to you.
we can’t get more than what sanders wants if we can’t even get what sanders wants
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
