Is Sanders Done?

I don’t know if it’s what American’s want. As I commented in the last post, Clinton has an effective strategy of capturing and controlling leadership of labor organizations. Labor leadership is where the rot is. The rank and file is not at all on board, but there’s not much they can do.

Warren is a zero on foreign policy, just a “me too” opinion on the neocons and US hegemony.

I wonder if the idea occurs to some of the unions that “Sanders would work hard for our issues whether we endorse him or not, Hillary won’t even take our calls unless we do.”

There seems to be some ugly game theory going on here. Plus the usual “what will I do in this town after this gig if the Clintons blacklist me…” type corruption of the leadership.

Bernie has to do more than turn his supporters over to Hillary at the convention. He has to persuade them to come out and vote for her in November. How enthusiastically he campaigns for her will indicate how much he has pushed her left and what she gives him.
Instant gratification and short attention span are typically American and why we have so many problems. There is a long game. I think Bernie’s life and history show that he understands the long game. His statement’s about the necessity for a movement reflect this. But most Americans are not in it for the long game and have no comprehension what that is. They need to get into this long game or the shit is just gonna keep on coming.
Global warming anyone?

Still early days yet and it still hasn’t sunk into the Dems heads yet that HRC cannot win aganst Trump.

I can see Clinton running as the SANE Republican. That is she is much more likely to pivot right than left. Important to remember that today’s Democratic Establishment is to the right of Ronald Reagan on taxes, domestic spying, commitment to endless foreign wars, and support of Wall Street.

So it won’t be much of a pivot.

I think her attitude toward Sanders’ supporters is the same as Obama’s toward progressives. As someone I know said who talked to the Obama people back in 2008 about what they had to offer progressives, they were all, f*ck you, you have nowhere else to go, we don’t have to give you anything –and they didn’t. In fact, I think most of the Millennials and people Sanders got engaged in the political process will either stay at home or vote for Trump in the general election. So Clinton won’t get them anyway, and this is another reason why she will go right.

Not saying it will, progressives seem endlessly gullible, but this election cycle should teach them once and for all that change is not possible within the Democratic party. That is perhaps the one service that the Sanders campaign will perform. Say what you will, but Trump has shown that the Republican party, as opposed to the Republican Establishment which is horrified by its loss of control, is far more responsive to its base than the Democratic party is to its.

I mean look at how corrupt and ossified the Democratic party is. There is widespread discontent in the country and in the Democratic base, but the Democratic Establishment and pols only care about their interests, their privileges, and their positions. They don’t give a shit about either Democratic voters or the independents they need to win. Let’s go down the list.

1. At the national level, you have the DNC and its head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She is in the bag for Clinton. She is not out to see that there is a fair process but that there is a single preordained result. While the Republicans had debates out the gazoo, Wasserman Schultz scheduled very few and at odd times because that was what Clinton wanted, and she only added debates when Clinton felt she needed them, and again when Clinton wanted them.

2. At the state level, it is much the same. This is especially important in caucus states where the state machines can mobilize certain numbers of caucus goers, facilitate or obscure how to get to caucus sites, skew the procedures in the caucuses, and finally hide the popular numbers behind the caucus “results”.

3. On the merits, you would expect unions, organizatons like Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and minority leaders to flock to Bernie Sanders. But merit has virtually nothing to do with how these organizations and people operate. The Black Agenda Report out of Chicago has popularized the phrase of the Black Misleadership Class. But we can apply the misleadership tag to most unions and social purpose organizations. Local chapters and members might have more in common with a Sanders’ candidacy, but for the leaders at the national level, it is as Inside the Beltway as it gets. It is not about representing members or the best interests of those members. It is about being a player, the membership and what they want be damned.

4. Then there is all the corrupt big money behind Clinton in the form of PACs and big donors. This kind of money is not about civic interest. It is a straightforward attempt to buy an election and further the class interests of its donors, again the Democratic base be damned.

5. Then there are the anti-democratic superdelegates, spots reserved for the pols of the Democratic machine, which account for about one-sixth of all delegates, who can make the candidacy of an individual as corrupt and disliked as Hillary Clinton appear inevitable. You know, resistance is futile.

6. Then there is the primary schedule. It begins in 4 small to tiny, highly unrepresentative states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina), two of which have easily game-able caucuses, and one of which still calls the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. This is followed by Super Tuesday which, as I said in a previous comment, is essentially a Southern Primary of states that Democrats are unlikely to carry in a general election, but which will have a disproportionate impact on whom the Democratic nominee will be and which will trend to the most conservative of the Democratic field. I mean if the Democrats wanted to pick a candidate who represented the interests of their base, their primary schedule would be weighted to early primaries in New York, the Midwest, and the West Coast. But then big D Democratic seems to have nothing to do with small d democratic. Naturally not a bug but a feature.

7. Then there is the Establishment Democratic choice Hillary Clinton herself. She is a posterchild of the corruption and privilege that the country is revolting against. She is the Goldwater Girl who in her Arkansas days got on the board of Walmart, and made a couple hundred thou on some, let us say, curious and timely, futures trades. She is the feminist who stayed with her sexual predator of a husband out of pure political calculation and who now gets her surrogates to slam Millennial women who don’t support her as a bunch of boy crazy ditzes who are going to hell. She is the former First Lady who used that position and its connections to become the Senator of Wall Street from 2001 to 2009 or smack dab in the run up to the crash of 2008 and in the midst of the largest financial frauds in human history, all of which she seemed to miss. Meanwhile she was also an undistinguished Senator from New York, despite her name recognition. She ran against Obama in 2008, lost became his Secretary of State, and now wraps herself in his mantle –at least around African Americans. Her stellar achievement at State was the disaster in Libya waged in contravention of the War Powers Act. How has that worked out? Bill was out making “speeches” and racking up a fortune of a hundred million. Hillary pitched in, delivering her $675,000 ones to Goldman Sachs, which she is so studiously hiding. Then there are the millions from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative to Keep the Clintons Rich. The email server is not so much about the emails themselves but the paranoia and control Clinton demands even when this entails breaking the law. Indeed paranoia and control pretty typify Clinton and the Democratic Party.

And that is, barring indictments, what the general election is going to be about. Which money hungry, control freak do you want? Clinton or Trump?

People are fed up with the establishment on both sides. It might take longer on the Democratic side but the cracks are there.

@ S Brennan Trump has outflanked Hillary on the left economically, with him bashing NAFTA, TPP and even some shots at Wall St. He also said he didn’t want to change Social Security, unlike the Grand Bargain Hillary would try to sell to her constituents. If he keeps harping on this he can make some inroads in the Rust Belt states.

Hugh,

great summary!

Too many Americans in p0wer and authority certainly prefer what is happening here. Those Americans without power and/or authority who also don’t prefer what is happening here will have to figure out how to coalesce into multi-million-member battering rams to break through the cinder block ceiling. The Sandernistas are trying to do this in one way. The Stormtrumpers are trying to do this in another way. They will keep trying. If they figure out to succeed, they may start conquering positions of power and authority and staffing them with Americans who don’t prefer what is happening here.

The MSM narrative of Bernie can’t win is mass-perception-management designed to dishearten and discourage people who might otherwise still vote for Sanders in late and later primaries and/or caucuses. Perhaps they can be convinced to come out and run up the numbers despite their discouragement which they will still continue to feel.

After the Convention is all over and candidate whomever gets the nomination, the most valuable thing Bernie could tell his supporters is that he will be retired and/or dead semi-soon and they need to figure out how to become a viable self-propelled self-organizing post-Bernie movement.

I’m with you on Warren, and am saddened by the drumbeat for her to run for the White House. She is a one-trick pony with her scthick about beating up on Wall Street, but she has nothing else to offer on any other topic. Her failure to support anyone at this point is probably an effort to keep her in the spotlight. (“Will she or won’t she? Inquiring minds want to know.”)

As per @Bill H, I am totally with you on Warren et al., but I am still disappointed.

I still have strong hopes for Sanders, but if the Dems vote in Hillary, America will get what they deserve: President Drumpf. Perhaps everyday Americans (and the rest of the world along with them, unfortunately) just have not suffered enough under their corpo-fascist regime yet.

The Dem elites just don’t get it, Trump has far ore tactical freedom. In an election he can go more to the left or the right than HRC on any issue. Because of of her backers she is locked into a very narrow course. Trump can just choose what path gives him he most votes.

Given the usual patterns of votng it is going to hang on white men (many previous Dem voters), young people in general and women.

Young people and many women will just not vote for HRC and will not bother voting, without which HRC cannot win. Trump, over and above the usual GOP votes will get the male white vote en masse.

Sanders can count on the usual Dem votes, he will split the white male vote and will get the kids and the women en masse. A lot of those disaffected men want to vote Dem but feel betrayed by them (and they were). Sanders would give them reason to stay.

A lot of the pressure groups (Black, LGBTI, Human rights, etc, etc) lobby groups are playng a tactical game right now. They are not stupid, but know how vicious HRC is. If they choose Sanders right now and HRC gets up and somehow wins they are screwed.
Watch for defections as time goes on and Sanders gets more votes.

That is one piece of advice I’d give hm, start getting some behnd the scenes work done with them NOW. Don’t leave it too late.

The insurgent Right and the insurgent Left in the USA share the delusion that far more of their fellow citizens agree with them than the numbers who actually do agree with them.

In the old days when Democrats were moving right to keep up with the Republicans the saying was that voters would pick a real Republican over a fake one.

Now if Hillary runs as the “sane Republican,” as Hugh suggests, and Trump attempts to out-flank Clinton to the left then we voters are going to have to choose between voting for a fake Republican or a fake Democrat.

Oh the humanity.

Sometimes I think everyone on this site but me takes it for granted that Hillary can’t win in November.

Maybe indeed she will lose, but I don’t see why her campaign should be thought of as hopeless.

I begin to suspect that what passes for a Left in the USA has its own intellectual echo chamber, rather like the far better-funded (and more airtight) intellectual echo chamber of the U. S. Right.

Both Trump and Clinton have really high negatives. I expect Clinton to run as the lesser of the two evils. I don’t think Clinton or the Democratic Establishment realizes though how little force that argument has anymore among independents, millennials, and progressives. She is disliked, and I mean really disliked, by many. She inspires enthusiasm in few. And groups like African Americans where she has strong support have poor turn outs.

Trump I would say is feared (as a dangerous nutcase) by many, but he does have enthusiastic supporters. And he taps into a current of populism. Clinton is elitist through and through. She hates and has zero understanding of anything populist.

Both Trump and Clinton have plenty of scandals waiting in the wings. The thing is Trump’s have yet to stick while those of Clinton are like ticking timebombs.

In a Trump-Clinton match-up, the one sure loser is the American people.

Maybe you should get out from the cabbage patch more and ditch the rose-colored Hillary glasses. The Clinton Global Initiative and influence peddling, the Wall Street speeches and the exorbitant fees/bribes paid for them, Hillary’s “feminism” and Bill’s “lechery” (since you have some problem with calling it what it is sexual predation), her private email server, and the whole Libyan fiasco which she championed, all and any of these could sink her candidacy without her being indicted on anything or spending a day in jail.

Oh, and I think I’ll stay in the cabbage patch for now. At least I can hear sounds from the real world there, unlike in the Pwogwessive Intellectual Echo Chamber, which increasingly reminds me of the Wingnut Intellectual Echo Chamber–they even believe some of the same things, especially about their Demonic Duo of Bill & Hill.

different clue: Yep, dead right and the same in every country the neo-liberals dominated, UK, Australia, Canada and all the sorry rest.

The Wingnut-Get-The-Clintons-Industry has effectively immunized, cloaked and shielded the Clintons against any genuine criticism from any genuine sources. They have achieved “discreditation by association”. So because of mass media screaming about “Whitewatergate”
24/7 for years and years, any criticism of Clinton’s Free Trade Agreements is either not heard at all or is dismissed as some kind of sly bait dangled by the Wingnut Whitewatergate hustlers to bait and switch people over to esthetic distaste for the Clintons and concern with Wingnutty non-issues.

And so I find serious sensible people defending or excusing or rationalizing the Free Trade Agreements, the Telecommunications Reform Act, the Glass-Steagall repeal, etc. over and over and over again. And despite all my best efforts to keep my criticisms scraped clean of any trace of Wingnut barnacles, many many people only hear the smell of some kind of Wingnuttery behind my condemnation of NAFTA . . . for example. So that now when I say, for example, that I believe a President Clinton will support TTP, TTIP, TISA, etc. based on her persistent support of these things throughout her State Secretaryship; people think I am a mysoginist Bernie BroTroll. And not just me . . . anyone who raises these objections is dismissed as such by numerous Clinton supporters who will be plunged into even deeper reaches of Ukrainian level poverty along with the rest of us if Clinton is elected to pursue her Free Trade Neo-Liberal agenda.

“Bill & Hill both made real mistakes, and they have other flaws…”

Understatement of the week. Sort of like saying the Titanic had a few rust spots or Al Capone had a few rough edges. The Clintons are grifters. But because these grifters were hounded by the Republicans, to criticize them in any meaningful way is portrayed as akin to cursing in church. It’s just not done. Maybe we should draw haloes over their heads and call them Saints Bill and Hill.

We used to call the 25% or so of public opinion who supported Bush no matter what MFMs because they were totally impervious to either argument or evidence. But as Obama and the Clintons Redux have shown, this mindless, endlessly justifying phenomenon is not confined to conservatives. Tribalism seems to exist across the political spectrum.

«because the blue collar middle class were allegedly “racist, sexist, hippie-bashing, flag-waving, stoop-browed, vacuum-skulled, knuckle-walking Darwin Award candidates that they fell for the “Southern Strategy”, hook, line, sinker, and flopping in the boat.” . . . that they deserved and deserve the mass poverty through mass jobicide»

I think that this is a big misreading of what happened in 1970s and 1980s.

The «blue collar middle class» split in two: a large number, those who had become prosperous thanks to trade unions, safe jobs, good wages, good benefits, good pensions, became thus rentier middle class caring much more about property and stock prices and voting to keep the losers out and to push wages and benefits down. BTW those newly minted “F*ck YOU! I got mine!” rentier middle classes in the USA have a definite ethnic bias: irish/jewish/italian, who were the bluecollar backbone of the Democrats, and whose descendants still largely dominate the higher Democrat machine echelons; but who are now mostly suburban Republicans.

These people went Republican or DNC Democrat/Clintonista as soon as they got a tiny bit of wealth. This happened also in the UK, Australia, and other Anglo-American culture countries.

it is not that the parties of the left betrayed their voters, but most of their blue collar voters betrayed the parties of the left who had put them in middle class.

There is about this a very good (if biased) speech by the english politician Tony Blair, the equivalent of Bill Clinton:

http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202
«I was canvassing in the Midlands on an ordinary suburban estate. I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory. He was not rich but he was doing better than he did, and as far as he was concerned, being better off meant being Tory too.»
«Post-war Britain has seen two big changes. First, and partly as a result of reforming Labour governments, there are many more healthy, wealthy and well-educated people than before. In addition, employment has switched from traditional manufacturing industries to a more white-collar, service-based economy. The inevitable result has been that class identity has fragmented. Only about a third of the population now regard themselves as ‘working-class’. Of course it is possible still to analyse Britain in terms of a strict Marxist definition of class: but it is not very helpful to our understanding of how the country thinks and votes. In fact, of that third, many are likely not to be ‘working’ at all: these are the unemployed, pensioners, single parents – in other words, the poor. A party that restricts its appeal to the traditional working class will not win an election.»