Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told a crowd of thousands at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday that the U.S. was facing a moment of “extraordinary danger” as he criticized the political, economic and social policies of Donald Trump.
Sanders, who also dropped by the music festival Coachella over the weekend, has been criss-crossing the U.S. to speak out against the new Republican administration.
“We are living in a moment of extraordinary danger,” he said, “and how we respond to this moment will not only impact our lives but will impact the lives of our kids and future generations.”
You can accuse Sanders of Entryism to your heart’s content and I won’t raise more than an eyebrow. But the idea that Sanders is trying to guide liberals back to the liberal party is absurd. Democrats were always going to come home to the Democratic Party. If Sanders is guilty of trying to transform the party from the inside, that’s a strategy at least as honorable as Trump’s vision of transforming the Republican Party was vile.
But the sentiment is misplaced regardless. Sanders isn’t going to find the big OFF button in the Democratic Party’s genocide machine, because it doesn’t exist. Trying to blame him for liberal endorsements of fascism at home is as foolhard as it would be to excuse him for his historical endorsements of Israel. He can hold all the rallies he wants, for whichever party he pleases. But this is ultimately outside of his hands and squarely in the hands of the American proletariat. They’re running the Big Genocide Machine and only they can dismantle it.
this ignores the roles of propaganda, misinformation, manufactured consent and lobbyists have on the american people; liberals ignoring these things are the key reasons why the genocide machine keeps going brrrrr and people who are aware of that fact (as sanders likely is) but help perpetuate it nonetheless are at least as guilty as the conservatives who dgaf.
Well, it cedes that - absent any other voices - the existing liberal propaganda will win out and Dems will revert to the Bill Clinton / Joe Biden candidate mean.
Sanders offering an alternative from within the party isn’t selling out anything. He’s offering an alternative that won’t offend liberals terrified of another Ralph Nader or Ross Perot “stealing” the election for the opposition.