"socialism" popular in the US
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“In addition, an unknown number of people chose not to vote at all, taking to heart the message–– emanating from Stein and many supporters of Bernie Sanders––that Hillary Clinton was as bad as or worse than Trump.”
But it was true. Clinton was already a proven evil as a war-monger in Libya. Trump successfully portrayed himself as the lesser evil, the wealthy billionaire the banks couldn’t buy while the Wall St candidate Clinton was for ever courting Big Business.
Trump opposed the various free trade deals that many blamed for the rust belt and got working class votes. Sanders also being opposed to those, revealing his own nationalist protectionist bias, wouldn’t have lost those states and would have beaten Trump.
After he lost the nomination, he endorsed Clinton and spoke at more rallies in support of Clinton than even she did herself and a helluva lot more than Clinton did for Obama when she lost to him.
And what is the reward…Sanders now being back-stabbed by Clinton.
Chomsky has no crystal ball but merely makes educated guesses, and we can speculate that Trump compared with what Clinton may have done taking into account her record, was the 2016 anti-war candidate and his protectionist policies were reflected in Sanders.
Did Trump keep his 2016 electoral promises? Of course not. Would have Clinton? Doubtful.
Be careful, comrade, you are running the risk of them accusing you of “left accommodationism” ! This is what they went on to say in that pamphlet of theirs Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation):
“Other destructive politics arose from a single-minded, narrow anti-neoliberal “leftism” which insisted that neoliberalism is a greater threat to humanity than proto-fascism. In an interview with WGBH during the election season, Stein went so far as to declare that “[t]he answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames of this right-wing extremism.” As one commentator shrewdly noted, her plan was to stop Trump by electing him president! Yet, despite the horrors of Trumpism we have experienced thus far, not to mention those that lie in wait, the notion that neoliberalism is a greater danger than Trumpism doggedly hangs on. ”
Hence their view that you should vote for “neo-liberalism” , i.e the status quo, as the lesser danger.
Any winner in the USA electoral race, is a winner and a victory for capitalism including Bernie Sanders. He calls himself a socialist but he is running on the platform of a capitalist party, and the Green Party and the DSA offered him the presidency and he did not accept it . Neoliberalism is not the problem, the problem is capitalism as a whole economic system, Some left-wingers are claiming that the problem is the banking system, but the banking system is only an aspect of the capitalist system, it is like the old Stalinist claiming that the problem was Nazism instead of the world capitalism system including themselves. In the USA the main problem is not Donald Trump either, it is the whole capitalist system, they can remove Trump and another capitalist leader will take his place to run capitalism for the US ruling class.
The same thing happened when Ralph Nader run as president of the Green Party, even more, they said that George W Bush was the winner because Nader obtained many votes from the Democrats, and it is known that Bush won based on the Electoral College like Trump and Al Gore was the winner. The USA is the only country around where the winner is the loser and the loser is the winner, and in most country anybody who obtain the majority of votes is the winner including the small island of Barbado which Donald Trump would call a shit hole country
I think there may be a big cross-roads ahead.
The Democratic Party machine will break Sanders to stop his nomination and he, himself, has no other recourse if he wishes to see his “democratic socialism” survive and thrive but to break the Democratic Party.
We can i think predict he will not have the majority in Congress if he is President to get his legislation passed and there is a limit to what he can do by presidential executive orders.
So if he wants the GND, M4A and the host of other reforms that his “democratic socialism” encompasses he has to seek a further mandate from outside the existing Congress and that means having his own ticket standing in the 2022 Mid-Terms to get elected the so-called Justice Democrats like AOC and Ilhan Omar. It means two very different Democratic Parties, funded and organised separately
That all pre-supposes he gets nominated and is elected, not a 100% guarantee since Trump could after all win because he’ll get the reluctant backing of media and no doubt some third candidate will stand as a spoiler, not the Green Party, but someone like another Ross Perot to pick up the conservative Democratic vote.
The scenario of a defeated Sanders will again result in despair and disillusionment and despondency, causing either apathy and exiting politics for many, or the creation of a third Party (call it a Labor Party). Although that will be fully reformist, the WSPUS could pick up members by presenting itself as the authentic Debsian socialist party by ignoring Debs reformism as no longer necessary tactic and concentrating on his class analyses, if that could be accomplished.
But i simply speculate and I have never been a good at predictions.
The Red Scare
A prominent “liberal” TV presenter associates Sanders with Castro and that if the Cold War had been won by communists there would be executions in Central Park
I don’t know why he calls himself an anarchist since he clearly isn’t. In fact in this interview he undermines the whole anarchist case that self-styled “direct action” alone is sufficient to get reforms. As he points out, you also need a sympathetic administration to consolidate them, which has to be voted in. In other words, if you want reforms, the best strategy is a two-pronged one of both direct and electoral action — that is, if your goal is some reform as in practice is the immediate goal of nearly all anarchists. If you will the end, you’ve got to will the means. He’s being logical, they are not. It also the best strategy to get socialism, where we are being logical and, once again, anarchists are not.
An Anarchist who supports state capitalist governments and its leaders, like the government of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ecuador. He spends four years attacking the US government based on the so called anti-imperialist tactic, and then, he asks the workers to vote for a capitalist leader, and for a capitalist libertarian political party. I don’t waste my money and time buying and reading his books, He is similar to Richard Wolff who calls himself a Marxist and he supports the concept of Co-op which is not a Marxist conception, it is just reformism within reformism, and an idea started by Robert Owen proven to be a total failure
I hope that in the next primary the Democratic Party leaders do not elect Donald Trump as their favourite candidate to solidify completely the dictatorship of one single-party rule
Another survey on the popularity of “socialism” and it seems that the Democratic Party voter is more receptive but not the Republican…
A new Gallup survey showing most Americans would not be willing to vote for a socialist also revealed that an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters said they would back a candidate like Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is leading in national polls.
More than three-quarters of Democratic voters surveyed—76%—told Gallup they would support a presidential candidate who identified as a socialist.
A large chunk of independent voters said they would back such a candidate, with 45% saying so, while only 17% of Republicans reported the same.Overall, 45% of 1,033 respondents said they would back a socialist in the poll, which had a margin of error of four percentage points.
Curiously, the Republican Party was the institution of certain advanced and progressive ideas, and it was the party opposed to slavery, and nowadays it is the negation of the negation, and the Democratic Party was the party of the white supremacists, the party of the KKK and the party of the slave masters, but now it is wearing the mask of being progressive, but Bernie Sanders who is just a Social Democrat they are giving him a hard time, and if by any chance he becomes the party candidate and the president of the USA, the democratic party and its senators are going to become the opposition of Bernie and they might make alliance with the Republican. It is just a clear indication of what was written on the First Workers International: The liberation of the working class can only be obtained by the workers themselves, In this reactionary world we do not need leaders, presidents, or senators. It does also show the political backwardness of the American ( USA ) society
A disturbing article that should worry Sanders supporters
“…JPMorgan, recently told its clients that, even if Sanders were elected, “we put the probability of major changes like medicare-for-all or a wealth tax at less than 5 percent.”…”
“…many analysts – even those who support the principle of “medicare-for-all” – think there is little chance he could actually deliver it, even if he won power…”
“…the institutional fact that US presidents are constrained by Congress in what policies they can enact. Sanders might be in favour of relatively radical redistribution, but that’s not true of the wider Democratic party…”It is what we have been saying on this forum for some while now. Big Business concurs with our cynicism and scepticism when it comes to America turning “socialist” with Sanders
“More recently, Sanders has argued that the U.S. is already “a socialist society” that redistributes national wealth to corporations through tax breaks and subsidies. “The difference between my socialism and Trump’s socialism is, I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires,” he said on Fox News Sunday.”
The Democratic Party mobilises against Sanders
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/15/bernie-sanders-democratic-centrists-alarm
“The claims that the leftwing Sanders would spell disaster for other Democrats are also tempered by the likelihood that Trump and his allies will portray whoever wins the nomination as an out-of-control socialist”
Except of course, Bloomberg
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/14/michael-bloomberg-california-trump-voters
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