It's Been Ten Years. It's Time To Admit Bernie Sanders Was Wrong.
Everyone’s talking about how progressive Democrat Graham Platner has been forced to drop out of his Senate race following allegations of sexual assault. Personally I never paid attention to Platner’s campaign, because I long ago stopped taking Democrats seriously.
The first clue that Platner was a shitty person wasn’t his military service or his Blackwater stint or his tattoo or the sexual assault stuff, it was that he ran for high office in the US government under one of America’s two mainstream parties. That’s damning in and of itself.
I said this on Twitter today and some DSA guy told me the best way to make changes in US politics is to work within the Democratic Party to elect left-wing candidates and advance progressive agendas.
I said, “You guys have been trying that for ten years with nothing to show for it.”
I mean, how much longer is it going to take before people admit that the “change the party from within” strategy isn’t working? Do you want another twenty years? Another fifty? Do you need to spend the next century watching a handful of vaguely progressive imperialists getting elected to Congress and then getting primaried out by opponents with mountains of special interest funding before you admit that you’re not making any meaningful gains? Our planet could be lifeless before then.
The Bernie Sanders “revolution” was ten years ago. Large factions of the American left took up his call to take over the Democratic Party using primary elections throughout the nation, and ever since then it’s been a two-steps-forward, two-steps-back addition of zeros. The people never got President Bernie, and the few progressive gains made on Capitol Hill were either kicked out like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman or went full pro-establishment like John Fetterman. The few who stuck around have turned out to be perpetually disappointing empire managers like AOC, who know how to straddle the line between left-wing lip service and status quo swamp monster.
It’s time to admit the commies were right, kids. The factions on the so-called “far left” who’ve been rejecting electoral politics and calling for real revolution against a system designed to suppress leftward movement have been completely vindicated over the last decade. You cannot change the system using a political party that is designed to prevent change.
The Atlantic has an article out by David Brooks titled “Democrats Became Great by Fighting the Left,” and in a sense this claim is absolutely correct. It’s not correct in the sense that David Brooks suggests, but it is correct that the reason the Democratic Party has been allowed to remain so dominant is because it is such an effective tool for thwarting all leftward political movement in the United States.
In the article, Brooks (who last year published an article titled “The Epstein Story? Count Me Out” shortly before showing up in the Epstein Files) begins by rehashing the same tired old Hillary 2016 talking points arguing that the loony left is full of communists who must be forcefully opposed by the sensible center. What’s more interesting is the brief history lesson that comes later, in which Brooks notes that after World War II the Democratic Party leadership took action deliberately “in order to block the leftward advance” toward socialism within its ranks.
That’s all the Democratic Party has ever existed to do. If it wasn’t such a successful tool for suppressing leftward advancement, the party would not be permitted to exist as a mainstream political force by the capitalist oligarchs who run the country.
It is the Democratic Party’s job to prevent peace, equality, justice and socialism. That’s the only reason it is permitted to exist in the hub of the capitalist empire, and that is the only reason why ten years of effort to change the party from within has produced no meaningful results.
The experiment has been run, and the results are in. You can’t conduct a socialist revolution using a party whose primary function is to suppress socialist revolution. This has been conclusively established.
It’s time to find another way.
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“You cannot change the system using a political party that is designed to prevent change.”
Impeccable logic, I’d say.
As they say there are two political parties in the USA. One is right-wing and the other is fascist. Republican party is not the right-wing party.