Scandalize his Name: The Red-baiting of Bernie Sanders

Recent weeks have given witness to a decided growth of the Anyone-But-Bernie (ABB) syndrome-- the promotion by top Democrats of any candidate remaining in the Democratic primary race whose first name is not “Bernie.” 

Perhaps the most obvious examples were the outrages of the recent Iowa caucuses. Apart from the $800,000 anti-Bernie ad campaign by an operative of AIPAC and pro-Israel zealots, the brazen attempt to undermine Sanders’s victory and promote a new ABB champion stands out. With Biden faltering, though still polling top numbers in Iowa, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through its Iowa surrogates, manipulated the results to dump Biden and install a younger, glitzier opponent to the grumpy, stoop-shouldered Sanders. Out of nowhere, the energetic, but hollow small-town mayor, Pete Buttigieg, was boosted into the primary lead by hook and by crook.

The anti-Sanders crowd thought that the media would press the bogus Iowa “victory” into an unstoppable wave for Mayor Pete. But that wave broke on the shoals of the Sanders victory in New Hampshire, sending the ABBers into a panic.

Of course they still have the many-times-a-billionaire Michael (now just “Mike”) Bloomberg as a backstop. While he has shamelessly reached third place in the polls by spending more in nine weeks than all the other Democratic candidates combined and even more than the entire Republican National Committee did for Donald Trump in 2016, he comes with much baggage. 

Even the most cynical voter has to reflect upon the affront to the flimsiest concept of democracy that permits the naked, crass purchase of the US Presidency. But that hasn’t stopped Bloomberg from hiring thousands, creating a shortfall of political operatives for the other candidates, from purchasing high-profile endorsements, from asking wealthy donors to refrain from supporting other candidates, and from generously paying thousands on social media to spread his message. His “meddling” in the US electoral process makes all other accusations of meddling, including foreign meddling, appear ludicrous.

But as my comrade Joe Jamison so perceptively points out, this is only one of many ambushes that the Democratic Party elites have prepared for the Sanders campaign. Apart from DNC dirty tricks (as seen in Iowa, also with the stacking of the Convention Rules Committee, and with changing the debate rules to accommodate Bloomberg), the DNC is attempting to narrow the field to the most promising “moderate” or “centrist” candidate to oppose Sanders.

Should Sanders get by these hurdles and the second-ballot Superdelegates, there is the donor strike and the “cutting” by Party loyalists that handed the 1972 election to Nixon and away from McGovern. Even a loss to Trump is worth keeping Sanders from the White House with his modest social democratic program. 

Perhaps the most insidious tool that the corporate Democrats, their Republican counterparts, their compromised collaborators, the monopoly media, and other ossified institutions wield is the tried-and-true practice of red-baiting. 

In the post-war history of the US, every step, every motion toward even a modicum of social justice, has been met with the cry of “Communism!”. Even many dedicated anti-Communists have felt the sting of red-baiting when they stepped out of line from the capitalist consensus.

So it comes as no surprise that celebratory commentator, Chris Matthews, slung mud at Sanders in a recent public meltdown, suggesting that he and other capitalist apologists would meet their demise should Red-Bernie be elected.

Top-dollar political consultant, James Carville, also recently called Bernie a Communist, as has candidate, Amy Klobuchar, on different occasions.

And a fulminating MSNBC “personality,” Chuck Todd, came up with a different wrinkle, denouncing young Sanders supporters as “brown shirts” (he may have been influenced by the hopefully short-lived, scurrilous alarm of a “red-brown alliance”).

What does a targeted red-baiting campaign, like the one directed at Bernie Sanders, mean?

✱ In the first place, it means desperation. Like its dialectical counterpart, false patriotism, it can be said that “it is the last refuge of scoundrels.” When hard pressed and owning no argument, scream “Communism!”

✱ It is a sign of ideological bankruptcy. Bernie brings class issues into the Democratic Party conversation that might come at a cost to some capitalist interests. Medicare for All, for example, when properly understood, would drive private insurance out of healthcare delivery. This is not consistent with the political program adopted by the Democratic Party since its surrender to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s, a program that stresses private, market solutions that keep profits and concentrated wealth largely intact. This ideological surrender to capital was ably captured by the ludicrous slogan: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Since such thinking is largely in disrepute, the only recourse is to yell “Red!”

✱ It is a sign of compromised values. While many workers see the Sanders movement as friendly to minorities, the working class, and the poor, all too many of organized labor’s leaders fear the prospects of class confrontation, of class struggle. They see Sanders's campaign as threatening their cozy relations with corporate bosses and Democratic Party elected officials. Red-baiting is the crucial tool in driving a wedge between militant unionists and those more easily alarmed by false threats.

✱ It is a sign of fear of a Democratic Party realignment. Since the loss of the South to the Republican Party in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Democratic Party needed new alliances. Assuming that labor and minorities could be neglected because they could only cash their political capital within the Democratic Party in the existing two-party system, party elites began a long courtship of middle and upper strata urban and suburban liberals. To entice their votes and their dollars, the Democratic Party embraced fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. New Deal-style public programs were replaced with private agencies receiving public funding (so-called public-private partnerships); “efficiency” and budget austerity were the new watch words; and encouragement and tolerance of diversity in civil society replaced compensatory programs directed to raise oppressed minorities. From the 1970s on, the Democrats offered little resistance to the depressed, eroding living standards of working people, the oppressed, and the poor. Red-baiting distracts voters from these disruptive facts. 

For the party bosses who supervised this shift, the prospects of a new, energized, progressive campaign behind Sanders is a nightmare. A campaign that places issues relevant to the vast majority of working people, that promises to regulate corporations, that might shift the existing extremely one-sided balance in power, and that could redistribute some income and wealth is completely out of step with the existing Democratic Party alignment. Painting Sanders’s program red is the hysterical response to that danger.

✱ It is a sign of the crisis of the two-party system. For some time, the two existing, corporate-dominated parties have been stretched to the limits, attempting to contain divergent, rebellious factions. The Republican Party faced a hard-right, uncompromising insurgency dubbed “the Tea Party” that questions the leadership’s commitment to fighting for its vision of conservative values. The rise of Trump has further challenged party unity with its distinctive anti-globalist, national self-interest agenda. 

In recent years, the dominance of corporate Democrats has been challenged by a youth-driven, progressive faction seeking relief from the human devastation left in the wake of declining social services, enforced austerity, and a deep economic collapse. This rising has coalesced around the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist.” 

How the Democratic leaders manage this insurgency will determine the future of the Democratic Party. Can the insurgents be contained? At what cost? Or will they lead many workers and minorities somewhere else?

For the short term, red-baiting is seen as a way to cauterize this threat. 

But suppressing the insurgency may well lead to an even greater militancy. Most young people have shed the knee-jerk anti-Communism of the Cold War; the fear of socialism is receding, as many are exposed to the inequalities and injustices of capitalism and search for radical alternatives.  

Democratic Party leaders may well smother the Sanders campaign. They have smothered other insurgent campaigns in the past. But the movement behind this campaign is another matter. While it may dissipate out of frustration with the likely treachery of a thoroughly corporatized Democratic Party, it may, on the other hand, emerge in a new, independent, and even more radical direction.

We should do all we can to see that the latter happens.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Tilting at Windmills?

Two months have passed since the 2018 midterm elections, yet Democrats are already jumping into the 2020 Presidential race with many more candidates on the way. Typically, candidates are reluctant to go against an incumbent, but the Democrats smell blood in the water with the Trump Presidency.

This is another “new face” moment when Party leaders sense that Democratic Party voters are angry at nearly all of the US institutions and disgusted with past choices.

Earlier moments of flagging voter confidence necessitated fresh faces to bolster class rule. For example, in the wake of the Nixon fiasco, the Democrats found a relatively unknown “aw shucks” peanut farmer/governor from the South. Jimmy Carter, a “Mr. Clean Jeans” with an unblemished record as an administrator, served in sharp contrast to the Nixon sleaze machine. By 1978, he had betrayed the last iteration of a progressive, New Deal-like Democratic platform and roused the somnolent then “lion of the Senate”-- Ted Kennedy-- to run against him in the next primary.

Bill Clinton, another governor, but this time with youth and charm, rode the health care issue to victory. It is easy to forget that universal, low-cost healthcare was the number-one issue nearly thirty years ago and still remains unsolved. And every Democratic candidate will run in 2020 again on healthcare reform, though the Democratic Party leadership is working overtime to stealthily dilute any popular “Medicare for All” program in order to make it corporate friendly.

The twin catastrophe of costly wars and a collapsing economy associated with the Bush administration drove public confidence in US institutions to a new low. Once again, ruling class legitimacy required confidence builders. Seizing the opportunity, the Democrats offered both a reliable, established policy hand-- Hillary Clinton-- and a new fresh, untainted face-- Barack Obama. Both came with a bonus appeal to urban social liberals and identitarians: first woman President or first African American President.

Obama proved better suited to ruling class purposes, raising and spending over twice as much money as McCain in the general election.

Like Carter, Obama was all promise and little change. Despite two years of rare command of both the legislative and the executive branches, Obama only delivered on a Rube Goldberg health care bill written by the insurance industry. Of course, its failings are the reason that the healthcare crisis remains at the top of national issues.

Frustration with “hope and change” opened the back door to the vile Donald Trump and his military/con men coterie. Trump became a gift to the Democratic Party and the deeply discredited media (polls show that most people thought that the media was a monger for “fake news” well before Trump coined the term). With Trump’s bombast and crudity, Democrats and cable news windbags can trash Trump without wrestling with deeper issues. Moreover, they could invent a few issues of their own and further their saber-rattling, militaristic agenda. If your corporate masters won’t allow you to tackle inequality, systemic racism, and deteriorating living conditions, then resort to fear and distraction.

Presented with the prospect of a campaign against a bumbling, egomaniacal Donald Trump burdened with falling approval ratings, a herd of Democratic Party politicians and officials are scraping together cash and scrambling for operatives and supporters. Some are really only jockeying for a Vice-Presidential anointment. Still others, for future consideration or a step up in job title. An announcement and a tour of the hinterlands serves as a beauty contest for some future considerations. But there are still many with sufficient self-regard that they plan to run for a shot at Trump.

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What’s new in this election-- or appears to be new-- is a sizable, pesky left wing in the Democratic Party. To be sure, the Party’s left today is a tepid left by historic or international standards. But economic duress often generates a left turn. It is established that younger people’s fate was the most damaged product of a decade of halting growth, greater inequality, and fewer opportunities for better jobs in the wake of the 2007-2008 collapse. So it is no surprise that “socialism”-- ill-defined socialism-- is more popular with youth than it has been in many generations.

Bernie Sanders brought the idea of socialism into a Democratic Party that had even cast off the term “liberal,” embracing “progressive” in its place. Cold War Democrats rivaled Republicans in denouncing socialism.

Of course Bernie embraced Scandinavian-style social democracy, but his use of the forbidden word was welcome indeed.

It is worth remembering that the Sanders primary campaign in 2016 garnered 46% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention despite the widespread sabotage of his campaign by the Party leadership and the powerful effect of conservative superdelegates. Sanders polled well against all of the Republican candidates and in states later critical to Trump’s victory. Nothing demonstrates better the dissatisfied mood of the country two years ago.

But since 2016, the Democratic Party establishment has shown no interest in embracing, even tolerating Sanders-style leftism. They have marshalled a host of arguments-- pragmatic, technical, seldom ideological arguments-- about electability, diversity, demographics, experience, etc. They muster a slew of “realities”-- budgetary limits, need to compromise, unintended consequences, etc.-- that hinder change. They aim to paternalistically keep the Party’s left within the tent without even remotely advancing a left agenda.

To a great extent, Sanders has made their work easier. Aside from some minor Convention reforms, he has neither asked nor demanded any substantial programmatic changes in the Party. He has loyally supported the Party, its strategy, and its candidates since the last Presidential election. Unlike insurgent counterparts in the Republican Party, Sanders makes no non-negotiable demands; he refuses to elevate principles above accommodation to the Democratic Party center. Whether Sanders consciously serves the Party (“sheep-dogging”) or naively believes that he can maneuver among shameless corporate Democrats is irrelevant. He has crippled his effectiveness.

The current face of the left ‘insurgency’ within the Democratic Party is the youthful, attractive and very able Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. What is not surprising is how the Democratic Party establishment and its media henchmen have lined up against her. What is surprising is how deft she has been in meeting their often ridiculous attacks. Tainted Democrats from millionaire Whoopi Goldberg to Neanderthal Joe Lieberman have dismissively scorned her.

Where she wants to go, where she will be allowed to go with her streak of relative independence is yet to be determined. But surely, her challenging of the Democratic Party leadership is an exciting development.

Ocasio-Cortez’s introduction of a 70% marginal tax rate for mega-salaries was a surprise, a welcome and politically shrewd surprise. For the Democrats who speak “progressive” when they are out of power, this idea presents an embarrassing problem. Pelosi and her cohorts have indignantly attacked Trump over his tax breaks for the rich and corporations, but they will never embrace a real, concrete, and popular tax policy as a centerpiece in the coming election.

Ocasio-Cortez has also drawn attention to the notion of a “Green New Deal.” Despite the fact that the term remains more of a slogan than a policy-- how much Green? how much New Deal?-- Democratic Party policy wonks and the new House leadership are blocking anything even remotely related to crafting such a policy.

For those who were snookered by the contrived faux-progressivism of the “community-organizer” legend, Barack Obama, Ocasio-Cortez presents a more credible role model.

**********

Of the early Presidential prospects, the hollow corporate Democrats would likely be most happy with Beto O’Rourke, the upstart who raised a record $83 million dollars to run a Senatorial campaign that advanced virtually no serious issues. With a name that is instantly a campaign slogan and with overflowing congeniality, O’Rourke defines the “moderate” candidate sought by empty suits.

In the Obama mold of attractive, youthful and flamboyantly moderate candidates are Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar. All are ambitious, anxious to please, and ill-disposed to advance a peoples’ agenda.

Similarly, the avuncular crowd-- Joe Biden and sleepy Bob Casey-- are dependable centrists and accommodators, but not likely to answer to the “new face” moment.

Representing the Party’s left, Sanders remains the most viable candidate, though the media has already begun to dig up dirt to undermine his chances. Should he falter, Elizabeth Warren offers a Sanders-lite candidate with a credible record of assailing the bankers around the financial crisis, but little policy-wise beyond repeating that she is an advocate for the “middle class.”  

The most intriguing candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, the only Democrat to dare to challenge the Democratic Party foreign policy consensus. Gabbard has courageously and vocally defied the apologists for US wars and US interventions throughout the world. Nearly alone, she has stood against the war mongers who stoke confrontations and aggression, and she has even defended Syria’s right to peacefully determine its own future. Measured against almost any Democrat, her congressional record and her public positions today are decidedly the most radically advanced.

Yet the attacks on her candidacy began almost immediately after she announced plans to run. Rather than weigh her legislative record, her projected issues, critics dredged statements made in her youth and misstatements since renounced. They accuse her of being “left hard-realist” in outlook, “homophobic,” “virulent anti-gay activist” (CNN, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Daily Kos etc., etc.), loved by the “Conservative Media and the Far Right” (The Daily Beast) and on and on. ad nauseum. Many liberals and the moderate left-- especially the speech moralizers-- shook their fingers in Gabbard’s direction over past indiscretions. Significantly, one of Gabbard’s openly gay House colleagues, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, came to her defense. Her voting record with the organization that claims to represent the greatest number of sexually diverse members is 100%.

But it can’t go unnoticed that the same standards are not applied to other candidates. No one has challenged Elizabeth Warren for being a Republican until an epiphany in1995. No one is probing the past views of the many “liberal” Bible-thumping Christians who populate the House and Senate and run for office. If they attend churches that oppose abortion or same-sex marriage, does that not disqualify them? Or do we judge them on their own current public posture, as we should?

And recall the sickening obituaries by these same news sites a month ago of ex-CIA chief, Reaganaut George HW Bush, eulogies that found nothing to fault in his loathsome history. All was forgiven.

No, the real grounds for the attack on Gabbard lie elsewhere. Gabbard dared to question the official narrative that Assad is a butcher and the US should push to overthrow him. She also criticized Israeli apartheid, another foreign policy disqualifier with the media, the pundits, and the Democratic Party leadership.

It should not be lost on the Democratic Party left that no other candidate will speak as boldly on these issues, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And it should not be lost on the left, in general, that no prominent Democratic leader has stepped up to defend Gabbard’s foreign policy positions, her right to legitimately hold them, or her right to run for President on these issues.

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Denied a sense of history by 24-hour cable news noise and suffering social media addiction, it should come as no surprise that most voters demonstrate no grasp of the history of reformism, of insurgencies in the Democratic Party. As some left pundits like to remind us: “The Democratic Party is where good ideas go to die!”

There is much truth in this epigram. With the exception of extraordinary moments like the Great Depression and the 1960s mass insurgencies, the Democratic Party as an institution has shown overwhelming resistance to any movement to change its character from fealty to the capitalist agenda. Its existence as an opposition force is based solely on cultivating an image moderately distant from the other more shamelessly pro-corporate, unabashedly capitalist party. For the most part, the Republican Party has established the capitalist, ruling class line and the Democrats have occupied a position minimally to the left of that line, an option available when the preferred line falters. That would appear to be the logic of a two-party system when both parties are capitalist.

The details of history support this thesis. Within a few years of the close of the Second World War, the Democrats were in retreat from Roosevelt’s New Deal vision, especially its foreign policy. The turbulent sixties were dampened by assassinations that effectively disrupted electoral politics and frightened potential insurgents who likely suspected that the spate of assassinations was more than a coincidence.

When Senator George McGovern secured the Democratic Party nomination in 1972 and promised to further democratize the process, extend the Great Society, and revise US foreign policy, the media, the Democratic Party establishment, a conservative labor leadership, and Cold Warriors subverted, sabotaged his campaign and emboldened the re-elected Nixon administration.

When that same Nixon administration was disgraced and the Republican Party damaged, the Democrats enjoyed a rare freedom of action with a veto-proof House and Senate domination in 1976. The platform promised a reduction in military spending, full employment, a low-income housing policy, comprehensive national health insurance with universal coverage, acceptance of busing for racial integration, rejection of nuclear energy, and a host of other progressive reforms. This was to be the last New Deal-like Democratic platform. It was betrayed within two years.

By the mid-1980s, the Democratic Party was reborn as Reaganism-lite. As The New York Times noted, virtually all of the reforms of the 1976 and 1980 platforms were discarded. In their place was a new focus: “The [1984] platform contrasts in a number of key areas with the 1976 platform on which Jimmy Carter and Mr. Mondale were elected, and the differences say a good deal about the path the party has chosen this year. Abortion and Homosexual Rights.”

In place of welfare-related programs, the Democrats offered “Cost containment.”

“The 1984 platform mentions marijuana for the first time in its section on crime and drug control,” signaling the Democrats’ developing fixation on criminalizing drug use. “What may be the only overt mention of liberalism in the 1984 platform,” The New York Times notes, “maintains that the answer to crime is 'neither a permissive liberalism nor a static conservatism.’”

Similarly, the Democrats’ fascination with global, unfettered markets emerged at this time: In the view of The New York Times, “The party is more concerned about world trade now than it was in 1976, with attention rising from two paragraphs to nearly 2,000 words. Very little of the campaign protectionist language survived into the final draft, however, which observes that ‘the international economy is the area in which we must compete.’”

As the grand liberal chronicler, The New York Times, underscores above, the 1984 Democratic Party platform marked a watershed in the abandonment of New Deal thinking in the party, a change that entrenched even further in the ensuing years. By the election of Bill Clinton, the process was completed, allowing the Democrats to successfully attack and dismantle the New Deal welfare system. An attempt by Clinton and Newt Gingrich to privatize social security was only derailed with the distraction of Monica Lewinsky.

Of course, there were insurgencies along the way-- some shallow, some Quixotic. The Kennedyesque Gary Hart campaign was hollow and symbolic; Jesse Jackson successfully broke through the racial barriers constraining a Black national candidate by projecting a remarkably radical economic and peace program in the primaries, only to be buried by corporate fundraising funneled to the Democratic establishment; the Deaniac campaign of Howard Dean was innovative and boldly challenging of the war consensus, but was sunk by a corporate media exercising its powers to submerge Dean under waves of derision.

History suggests that the Democratic Party is a corporate monolith only moved to change in order to meet profound crisis coupled with extreme mass pressure. Even then, it remains a capitalist party, a party that puts the interests of capital before all else. And when it is forced to make concessions, its corporate masters move as quickly as possible to reverse them.

History shows that these moments of concession are extremely rare. Nonetheless, new generations of well-meaning activists are intent upon foregoing the more radical-- actually the more promising, but more tasking-- alternatives of independent, revolutionary politics. As insurgents have in the past, they will attempt to reform the nonreformable.

One can only hope that when the new generation, excited again by the idea of socialism, recognizes the futility of transforming the Democratic Party, they will not fall into cynicism and settle for polishing the capitalist apple. One can only hope that they will find a home where they are more welcome.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

A Moment Charged with Possibility

Writing in the Los Angeles Times (If Bernie Sanders loses, his backers may not be there for Hillary Clinton in November, February 5), Evan Halper and Michael A Memola report:

Gio Zanecchia is so enamored of Bernie Sanders that he made a five-hour drive with his wife and infant son from South Jersey on Saturday morning to catch a glimpse of the progressive firebrand.

But what if Sanders loses the Democratic nomination? Asked whether he will be there to vote for the Democrat in November should Sanders falter, the 34-year-old union mechanic reacts as if the question is insane. There is not a chance, he insists, that he would ever support Hillary Clinton.

“She’s establishment,” Zanecchia said. “Most of the guys I work with think she’s a criminal.”…

This is not a group that is particularly loyal to the Democratic Party. While liberal Democrats make up a big chunk of Sanders’ support, many other backers are independents. Some mistrust the party so much that Sanders supporters booed the party chair when she took the stage Friday night at a dinner at which the candidates spoke.

Zanecchia’s second choice for president is Donald Trump.

Attempting to interpret the electorate for the Wall Street Journal (The Life of the Party, January 30-31), John O’Sullivan, a prominent writer, highly regarded in conservative circles, agrees that Democratic Party loyalty plays a diminished role in this electoral cycle. He sees changes in the Democratic Party as creating a gulf: “These changes have orphaned a very large class of voters. Working-class Americans no longer feel well represented by the Democrats…”

But he sees a similar gulf lurking in a significant section of the Republican Party, producing: “ the people now saying that they will vote Trump for president. Early media analyses tended to assume that these voters were Tea Partiers under a new flag. But… Philip Bump… found that Trump supporters were younger, poorer, less educated, less conservative, more moderate, more likely to call themselves Republican, less likely to call themselves independent…, more likely to be white and less likely to be evangelical than were Tea Party supporters on all these points.”

Mr. O’Sullivan is troubled because these Republican-in-name voters are less willing to carry the water for the corporate Republicans. They eschew the anti-government dogma that welds corporate Republicanism together with the Tea-Party: “Tea Partiers stress constitutional limits on what government can and should do; Trump supporters are enthusiastic for getting things done and aren’t too particular about how that happens.”

The Trumpets and Trumpettes lack enthusiasm for free-market ideology: “[L]ibertarianism and its prophet, Sen. Rand Paul, have been pushed aside by the rush of popular support to Mr. Trump, who represents, if anything, a movement from libertarianism to activist government.”

And most alarming to Mr. O’Sullivan and the corporate Republicans, “…Mr. Trump has sweepingly promised to preserve entitlements against… reforms, discouraging other Republicans from making this tough case.”

Thus, the Trump segment of Republican voters departs sharply from the corporate Republican playbook and represents somewhat of a challenge to the core corporate ideology of Republican Party bosses.

Of course the Trump constituency openly embraces the anti-immigrant racism stirring in all the elements of the Republican base. O’Sullivan sees this more of a tactical issue than a principled difference.

Something is stirring in the US electorate

Dissatisfaction within the two parties is not new. The desire for a break from the past, for change, drove the Obama election. And the rise of the Tea Party signaled turmoil within the Republican Party. While Obama and the Tea Party were both responses to a continued deterioration of confidence in US institutions and politicians, the challenges never threatened the two parties’ pro-corporate programs-- the Obama phenomena never eroded the dominance of big business or the banks, nor did it pretend to do so; the Tea Party never distracted the Republican Party from its mission to promote capital, big and small. Both parties were confident that they could stage manage dissatisfaction and tame dissent in the final act.

The Sanders and Trump successes suggest that voters are not appeased by the thin gruel offered by the party elites this go-round. But something more profound is occurring—a refusal to settle for the usual charade. Moreover, party loyalty is unusually thin this time, challenging party leaders’ ability to count on a transfer from one candidate to another. What the pundits call “unpredictability” is actually the exercise of a new level of political maturity and independence.

A recent Pew Research Center poll (December 8-13, 2015) bears out the mood of voter alienation: 62% of all respondents maintain that “the federal government does not do enough for middle-class people.” Thus, the notion that anti-government sentiment runs deep in the populace is a media-inspired illusion. Instead, people want better government.

Furthermore, the respondents harbor no illusions about the political parties. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe that the Republican Party favors the rich. And only 32% of the public believe that the Democratic Party favors the “middle class.”

One should not be fooled by the dodgy term “middle class,” so popular with class-conflict deniers. Respondents understand the term as roughly synonymous with “working class”: “When it comes to what it takes to be middle class, there is near unanimity in the public that a secure job and the ability to save money are essential for middle-class status.” (Pew)

Thus dissatisfaction is understandable when “middle class” is coupled with the finding that “Majorities of self-identified middle-class (58%) and lower-class adults (73%) say that good jobs are difficult to find.”

An even more recent Pew poll (released 2-10-16) shows a remarkably strong unhappiness with the US economic system (presumably capitalism!): “A substantial majority of Americans – 65% – say the economic system in this country ‘unfairly favors powerful interests.’” Fewer than half as many (31%) say the system “is generally fair to most Americans.”

While rejection of “the establishment” and “business-as-usual” marks a new level of political maturity, it is not accompanied by a comparable ideological clarity; the public shares only a murky vision of alternatives. The expression of dissent through such diverse electoral vehicles as Sanders and Trump demonstrates this point.

Nonetheless, the successes of the Sanders campaign, despite many weaknesses, open up an opportunity for the left in the US. Sanders has successfully and unapologetically embraced words like “socialism” and “revolution” in his campaign narrative. Never mind that he may use the words in a modest, unthreatening way; they have been effectively banned from main stream US political discourse for most of our lives. To the shock of many, a Boston Globe survey of New Hampshire Democratic Party primary voters prior to the February 9 vote found that 31% described themselves as “socialist,” over half of those between the ages of 17 and 34 did so as well.

Certainly many only have a hazy idea of socialism, but any one afraid to discuss socialism with others in this climate should surrender her or his leftist badge.

The failure of intense red-baiting to gain traction at this moment is equally remarkable. Consequently, the occasion to interact with an angry electorate looking for fresh answers should not be lost to the socialist left.

While Democratic Party values have inexorably moved rightward over the last 25 years or more, its loyal followers have just as deliberately moved leftward. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Democrats describing themselves as “Very Liberal” rose from a mere 9% in the Bill Clinton era (1992) to 22% in 2016. Whatever “Very Liberal” means, it should be fallow ground for those of us offering a fresh alternative. It is surely apparent that the barrier to moving politics leftward is the Democratic Party establishment and the two-party stranglehold on change.

Lest anyone harbor illusions, the insurgencies are very far from victory. The two party establishments are not going to surrender—they will fight ferociously to the end. After all, the two parties belong to the elites and their corporate partners.

On the Republican side, should a corporate Republican fail to rise to successfully challenge Trump, Michael Bloomberg stands in the wings with a threatened independent run. The party’s corporate masters would rather he scuttle the ship temporarily than see Trump set back Republican chances for the next decade, especially with the emerging minority majority.

Should Clinton falter on the Democratic side, Biden is waiting in the wings, ready to accept a hand off. Rigged primaries, media assaults, and other traps lie ahead for Sanders before a stacked convention. We must remember that the Democratic Party doesn’t belong to the people.

The left must offer ideas of substance and clarity, along with bold alternatives, to the young idealists supporting Sanders’ quixotic campaign or they may retreat to indifference and inaction. A lot is possible.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Why Donald? Why Bernie?

“People on the left believe that systems are corrupt. People on the right tend to believe that the system (at least as they understand its design) is just fine, and it's individual people who are too corrupt or too weak to propel it towards its full greatness. Thus partisans of the right lean more toward a version of Thomas Carlyle's view that history is about great men (and now women, too), which elevates biography to the level of supreme importance, while partisans of the left care less about the outsider's life story than his criticism of power and how he will challenge it. These differing conceptions dictate how the candidates present themselves and even how they would govern, should one of them become president.” Michael Tomasky, Very Improbable Candidates, New York Review of Books, 11-05-15.

In his recent article, Michael Tomasky explores the questions challenging most of the mainstream political commentators: What explains the dramatic ascendancy of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in their respective primary campaigns? What accounts for poll numbers far exceeding rivals expected to cruise through the primary season?

For my part, I argue, as I have in the past, that both parties are so thoroughly owned by corporations and the wealthy that the chances of a real oppositional movement emerging from within the Democratic Party and through the two-party electoral process are slim-to-none. The chances of a renegade Republican emerging are somewhat greater, but still slight. A far more reliable indicator of primary prospects can be found in counting the campaign contributions and gauging the sentiments of the corporate-friendly party leaders. To steal a movie catch-phrase, the key is to follow the money. After all, the fuel for winning national political office is cash, and more and more decisively with every election cycle. Thus, victory is decided by those who have it. I stand by my projections: thoroughly corporate-friendly candidates will emerge in the end, as they have in the past.

In the case of Bernie Sanders, Tomasky would agree that Sanders’ chances are slim: “Then, on March 1, comes Super Tuesday, which consists mostly of southern states... Barring unusual circumstances, it's difficult to see how Sanders could amass the delegates needed to win the nomination.”

But what does stand behind the Sanders/Trump phenomena? What accounts for the unexpected success of Sanders’ economic populism and Trump's re-visioning of Know-Nothing philosophy?

Clearly longer term trends are at play. Opinion polls show that the public's sentiment that "things are going in the right direction" has been steadily and persistently trending downward since 1998. Similarly, approval rates for Congress have shown a dramatic decline since 2005. Not surprisingly, confidence in key economic institutions like banks has also collapsed.

More recently, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows sharp shifts in political ideology within and a stark polarization between the political parties. At the high water of Reaganism (1990), only 39 per cent of Democrats described themselves as somewhat liberal or very liberal, with a strong majority falling into the former category. Some will remember that the word “liberal” became an epithet during that era of high-Reaganism.

Today (2015), 55% of Democrats see themselves as somewhat liberal or very liberal, with the split nearly 50/50 between the two categories. Clearly, liberalism-- whatever the word now means to respondents-- has regained currency within the Democratic Party.

Similarly, the percentage of self-described Republicans embracing the conservative label has risen from 48% to 61% in 25 years. As with the Democrats, the more staunch (in this case, very conservative) sentiment has grown more dramatically, increasing from 12% to 28% of Republicans since 1990.

These numbers go a long way toward showing an increasing divide between the two parties. But even more significantly, they show an increasing desire on the part of the rank-and-file to reshape the respective parties in a more ideological direction. Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and its institutions has generated both a rightward (in the Republican Party) and leftward (in the Democratic Party) drift, a drift spawned by a distrust of the ideas and candidates offered by the parties' mainstreams.

Given that third parties have not yet stepped up to absorb this dissatisfaction (opinion polls strongly suggest that the electorate would welcome third parties), voters are expressing their unhappiness by supporting candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (and other outliers).

For the Republican corporate puppet-masters, Trump presents a real problem. The unhinged insurgency represented by Trump threatens to derail, or at least move to a siding, the deeply embedded, core Republican agenda of unfettered markets, a shriveled public sector, no taxes, and corporate welfare. In its place, Trump offers rabid racism, nativism, and cultural war based on the foggy notion of a lost “America.” Republican leaders know this is a formula for defeat. They are struggling to snatch the nomination away and hand it to a reliable corporate Republican. Jeb Bush was their choice, though he has gained no traction despite an enormous war chest. I trust they'll figure it out.

The leftward pressure felt by the Democratic Party's bigwigs has been historically less of a problem. They have managed voter dissatisfaction by feigning left and driving right. They have endured primary insurgencies (Jackson, Dean, in recent years) knowing full well that the game was rigged by money and superdelegates (approaching 20% of those voting at the convention). They also mastered the tactic of embracing vague leftist postures in electoral campaigns, which are quickly discarded after victory (Obama). These tactics will likely serve them well with the Sanders insurgency.

Nonetheless, the Sanders campaign offers valuable and important lessons for the US left. Running almost exclusively on the issue of economic inequality, Sanders challenges the concept of “liberalism” fostered by the liberal media and Democratic Party elites. Over many years, “liberalism” has come to be associated with “social liberalism”: life-style issues, identity, and tolerance-- all worthy values, but more urgent to those enjoying economic security. “New Deal liberalism,” based on collective prosperity, economic equality, and community benefits, has largely been driven from the political landscape. Contemporary liberalism has been shaped into NPR (National Public Radio) liberalism, a liberalism that assiduously avoids any but the most innocuous critique of the capitalist system, but sincerely wants everyone to find happiness.

But Sanders has touched a popular nerve. He recognizes this as a Piketty-moment, with millions of people left on the outside looking in after the 2008-2009 economic collapse (and the continuing crisis). Millions are disgusted with the poverty and desperation of so many serving as a backdrop to the vulgarities of extreme wealth.

A Pew Social Trends poll shows this change dramatically: between 2009 and 2011-- a span of a mere 2 years-- 19% more respondents in the samples reported “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between the rich and poor. Fully two-thirds of respondents in 2011 reported “strong” or “very strong” conflict. As Pew's Rich Morin reports, “... the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness.”

Surprisingly, a majority of Republicans share this view with nearly three-fourths of Democrats. Independents trail only slightly, with 68% reporting strong or greater perceived class conflict.

Not surprisingly, Blacks and Hispanics recognized the class conflict in great numbers before and after the twenty-first century Great Crash. Whites, however, showed the greatest jump in recognition of the class divide-- from 43% to 65%. Nearly one-in-four whites in the US were jarred by the effects of a capitalist crisis and its impact on them, their families, and their friends into seeing class antagonism where they never saw it before.

Of several potential “social conflicts in society,” the Pew study shows that the rich/poor divide is perceived as the most acute, well more than conflict between whites and Blacks.

This is the fertile soil for Sanders’ economic-equality campaign. This is the growing class divide fueling Sanders' candidacy.

Another Pew poll shows the willingness of US citizens to find solutions to the growing inequality by redistributing wealth. In a study of attitudes towards the US tax system, respondents placed their feeling that corporations and the wealthy fail to pay their fair share well ahead of their other tax concerns. When asked what bothers them “some” or “a lot” about the current tax system, fully 82% felt bothered that corporations were not paying their fair share and 79% felt the same way about the wealthy paying their fair share. Our friends and neighbors are unquestionably friendly towards taxing corporations and the rich, another chord that Sanders has struck.

It should be obvious from polling results and the Sanders campaign that US political and economic attitudes have shifted substantially in a direction that is potentially favorable to the left. But it should be just as obvious that this opportunity has been willfully squandered by the Democratic Party. In fact, apart from Sanders, the Democratic leadership has shown no interest-- apart from moral suasion and empty rhetoric-- in making the US a more egalitarian society, in taking sides in the class conflict.

On the other hand the independent left-- independent of the two parties-- has a great opportunity to embrace and develop the economic issues that Sanders has touched upon. Tomasky writes in the quote above of a left that “...believe[s] that systems are corrupt...”, that will criticize “power” and “challenge it.” Too much of our left has yet to recognize that the two-party system is among the corrupt systems. Too few of our comrades have drawn the conclusion that the two-party system is an oppressive “power” deserving of criticism and challenge... and not a democratic institution.

Regardless of the success or lasting impact of the Sanders candidacy, the US left must seize the opportunity offered by the rapidly shifting attitudes of the US people. Organizing and educating to focus mass dissatisfaction against oppressive systems and institutions-- especially capitalism-- is the next step.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com