Question: Are We Acting On Fact or Out of Indoctrination, Propaganda, Clever Marketing, and Neoliberal Bias?

“I find it deeply distressing when people take and defend actions that have grave and abiding global impacts on the basis of a wholly unfounded, uneducated "sense" of things. I've got news for you: unless you're taking the time to deeply educate yourself on politics, history, individual candidates, and constructs like “electability,” then what you are acting on is indoctrination, propaganda, clever marketing, and bias, not fact. The “electability” frame was used by the DNC to defend the illegal, immoral, and ultimately catastrophic scuttling of the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. Bernie’s electability was evidenced by measurable indicators — polls, packed rallies, the rapid growth of a fervent movement. It was clear to educated political analysts that the U.S. was experiencing a populist moment, in which voters on both sides of the aisle wanted a President who would defend their interests against the corporate establishment. THIS agenda is what was driving the passionate movements behind Bernie and Trump (setting aside how weird it is that Trump’s base was suckered into viewing him as anti-establishment). We simply were not going to win by running an establishment candidate against Trump. That’s not hindsight: some of the best political analysts in the world were screaming it from the mountaintops. But the DNC reframed the meaning of “electability,” as: acceptable to the corporate neoliberal wing of the DNC. The real motivation for advancing these milquetoast establishment candidates is the INTERNAL fight within the DNC to keep the Party in the hands of the neoliberal corporate elites. NOT to win against Trump. The corporate powers behind the Party apparatus care more about retaining power over the agenda of the DNC (and RNC) than they do about who is President. That’s the great, poisonous gift of John Kenneth Galbraith, Lewis Powell, and Lester Thurow to the Democrats, shoved fully down our throats by Reagan and the Clintons in the 1980’s, and now trying to hold onto its power against the progressive uprising led by Bernie Sanders (and now AOC and Elizabeth Warren, too).”

Amy Belanger
Memorial Day 2019