This is an excellent, illuminating, and deeply important article by Norman Solomon.
This will be a critical election. I do not plan to support another neoliberal democrat — which Bernie is not! —because I understand that the radical changes that all of our lives depend on will be fiercely resisted by all those from both major political parties who’ve sold their souls to their corporate donors. I believe that there is an imperative to get the Dark Money — of the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. — out of our poisoned political system and corporate media. In making our decisions, I truly hope that each of us will deeply research through independent media resources any potential candidate’s record on global warming, war, the environment, healthcare, education, immigration, economic and racial justice, etc. And a vital question: WHO FUNDS THEM?? The answer becomes darkly obvious for anyone who claims they’re not a Democratic Socialist or that they are a Capitalist. That is an immediate and glaring RED FLAG. Another vital question: do they back the Green New Deal or not?? Are they consistently supportive of those like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other true progressives who are fiercely working to free us from the stranglehold of corporate interests who are destroying our nation and the planet??
We are truly at a crossroads at this time in our human history. We will choose to save ourselves and our children and grandchildren and all the children everywhere, or we will not. There is an imperative to look deeper and deeper and deeper, to place principles before personalities, to courageously embrace a profound commitment to truth, and then to choose wisely. — Molly
Presidential candidate Kamala Harris began this week in the nation’s first primary state by proclaiming what she isn’t. “The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire,” she said, “but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist.”
Harris continued: “I believe that what voters do want is they want to know that whoever is going to lead, understands that in America today, not everyone has an equal opportunity and access to a path to success, and that has been building up over decades and we've got to correct course.”
Last summer, another senator now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren, went out of her way to proclaim what she is. Speaking to the New England Council on July 16, she commented: “I am a capitalist to my bones.”
A week later, Warren elaborated in a CNBC interview: “I am a capitalist. Come on. I believe in markets. What I don't believe in is theft, what I don't believe in is cheating. That's where the difference is. I love what markets can do, I love what functioning economies can do. They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity. But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it's about the powerful get all of it. And that's what's gone wrong in America.”
In the obvious contrasts with Harris and in the less obvious yet significant contrasts with Warren on matters of economic justice as well as on foreign policy, Bernie Sanders represents a different approach to the root causes of—and possible solutions to—extreme economic inequality, systemic injustice, and a dire shortage of democracy.
It’s not mere happenstance that Bernie is willing to use the word “oligarchy” to describe the current social order in the United States. What’s more, he pointedly ties his candid analysis of reality to more far-reaching—and potentially effective—solutions.
Now that Bernie has announced he’s running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, progressives will need to decide on how to approach the contest. Anyone with feet on the ground understands that the Democratic nominee will be the necessary means to achieve the imperative of preventing a Republican from winning another four years in the White House. So, who is our first choice—whose campaign deserves strong support—to be the nominee of a Democratic Party that has remained chronically dominated by corporate power?
The “tweak options,” represented by Sen. Harris, recycle the kind of mild populist rhetoric that served the presidential aspirations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama so well. Corporate interests backed them from the outset, and corporate interests benefited. Overall, Wall Street soared while Main Street got clobbered.
The “regulatory options,” represented by Sen. Warren, would be a positive departure for the top of the Democratic Party. Yet the constrained analysis (markets “are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity”) puts forward constrained remedies, more palliative than cure.
The tweak options are fully compatible with further consolidation of the reign of corporate power that has enthroned oligarchy in the United States.
Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/19/only-hope-bernie-2020-progressive-grassroots-uprising?fbclid=IwAR1VFWQcMOKr_p8912D6cZMCQ6r3jiCQDtOLXEm01s0eSmgxd7cqrX6bK68
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