The Forces of Change
The vast majority of Progressives are “Gen-X/Millennials”, the people now 18-50, who as kids watched bought-off Republican/Democratic governments destroy their birthright of prosperity, democracy and representation while plunging them into endless war and debt, facing climate change. They are not helpless kids any more. The Millennials alone outnumber the Boomers. With slightly older Gen-X added, it’s an electoral wipe-out. The question is not whether they will take their government back but when and how. While many worked to get Obama elected, believing his message of change, they were disillusioned when he backed Wall Street not Main Street.
Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, but young Democratic Progressives who were looking for a candidate could not find any Democrats not taking corporate money. Sanders, the only U.S. official to have won federal and local office for 42 years without party backing or corporate money, is registered as an Independent, a nonpartisan. Experienced, he’s willing to teach how government works, and he speaks with wit, knowledge and passion. Progressives therefore lifted him on strong shoulders. When Hillary Clinton’s corporate funding challenged Sanders, Progressives matched her with hundreds of millions in small donations. When corporate media for eight months blacked out news about Sanders, Progressives created alternate channels of news online. In every city and rural area where he spoke, local Progressives not only materialized 10,000-30,000 strong to hear him at the rally but remained engaged to work for months on his election.
The combined effect was electric.
Hillary’s approval numbers remain below sea level, lower than Trump’s. Bernie — an unknown throughout a 42-year political career — once backed by young Progressives became visible and has remained (according to Harvard University in 2017) the most trusted politician in the United States, with a 60% approval rating.
The Neoliberal Choke-hold
Sanders ran as a Democrat because the Democratic and Republican parties, two private political clubs, had (unconstitutionally?) shut off all access to the presidency except through them. They accepted him because he looked easy for Hillary Clinton to beat. What Sanders had not realized was that the Democratic primaries, engaging millions of unsuspecting citizens in a mummery at great public expense, were fraudulent. As the DNC/Clinton/Podesta emails, and statements by a Democratic Party attorney, attest, the party leadership feels justified in choosing the winner before people vote, then rigging things to make that happen. Polls taken up to the last day before the November 2016 election show that Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump even in the swing states that Hillary Clinton lost, with one poll on the eve of election showing that it would have been a 56% landslide Sanders’ win, making the well-documented rigging of the primaries perhaps more obvious.
The willingness of party politicians to risk the nation and world in the pursuit of personal power was mindbending. Wikileaks releases of DNC/Clinton/Podesta emails made it clear for example that in what Democrat Hillary Clinton called her “Pied Piper Strategy”, she manipulated the 2016 Republican primary to boost Donald Trump as the nominee. Certain that he’d “attract the crazies” (activate the white nationalists and religious fanatics, which he did), her campaign figured that he’d thus scare people into voting for Clinton.
The Democratic National committee [DNC] moreover was laundering money for Clinton, as the DNC emails show. With Hillary over her donation limits, the DNC raised money from multi-millionaire and billionaire donors like George Clooney “for the state Democratic parties”, but sent it to the state parties with instructions to immediately send it back to the DNC. The DNC then sluiced it through to Clinton. Sanders voters had been pressured to contribute to those “state parties” too.
Yet Sanders seriously thinks that Progressives as a group are going to support the Democratic Party! There is every evidence that most aren’t and won’t.
The Democratic Party is as of September 2017 hemorrhaging not only members but voters; 67% of the nation says that the party is out of touch with the people. Those numbers are worse than for Republicans and Trump. Democratic Party approval ratings have tanked. The DNC, dependent for donations on its Progressive base, which it so flagrantly misled and defrauded, is no longer able to get Progressives to cough up for a party that they know is corrupt. The DNC is broke, $3.3 million in debt.
The Other Path
There’s another way. In the wake of the rigged primaries, millions of Democratic Progressives poured out of the Democratic Party, intent on linking up with Independent Progressives and Green Progressives and starting a new supermajority party.
Fourteen million more Progressives flooded out of the Party in the three months between the November 2016 elections and February 2017. It hasn’t stopped, and outside the Democratic Party, Progressives have been organizing. The Progressive Convergence on September 8-10 at American University was called by Progressive Independent Party, Draft Bernie for a People’s Party and Socialist Alternative, and involved people from at least 20 other groups. Streaming into Washington DC activists from throughout the burgeoning Progressive movement formed a solid front.
Bernie Sanders has said, “The overwhelming majority of the American people know that we have got to stand together, that we're going to grow together, that we're going to survive together, and that if we start splintering, we're not going to succeed.”
Progressives hear, “We must not splinter.” After the 2016 primaries, however, the Democrats made Sanders, an Independent, Trump’s strongest opponent in Congress, the Democratic Party’s head of voter outreach. A compelling speaker activating Progressives wherever he goes, including Appalachian coal country, where he taps into union backgrounds, Sanders believes that he can restore the Democratic Party to honest elections and Progressive control in time for the 2018 and 2020 elections — and that somehow the ruling Neolibs won’t succeed in kneecapping that effort as they have all other efforts in the past.
Sanders, while arguing that creating a new major party is “too hard”, is therefore sticking like superglue to the Democratic Party. There is a compelling argument for that route (or is “rout” the more correct spelling in this instance?). Many Progressives however do not see starting a new party as “too hard” in comparison to the mountain that Sanders is climbing. Progressives of every kind are therefore trying to publicly discuss that overall strategy with him because where Sanders enormous political weight is on the see-saw matters. It affects everyone.
Invitation to Debate
As the Progressive Convergence took form, Nick Braña, founder and head of the People’s Party, electoral manager with Our Revolution and National Political Outreach Coordinator with the Bernie campaign in 2016, issued a written invitation to Sanders to a town hall, to debate author, public philosopher and professor Dr. Cornel West.
Dr. Cornel West
West, the first to warn that President Barack Obama was championing Wall Street not Main Street and the first prominent African American to endorse Sanders when Sanders ran for president in 2016, insists, “We must admit the Democratic Party has failed us and move on….”
A petition signed by 50,000 of Sanders’ supporters, asking Sanders to take part in the Convergence debate was (as Sanders has known for weeks it would be) presented at his Senate office on Friday, September 8th.
Yet Sanders never answered any of those invitations to debate.
.Why not?
Nick Braña
Ah well. The Convergence surged forward without Bernie, rooms full of genuine adults with centuries of activist experience among them, trading insights, access and skills, pulling into alignment...