Re: [Marxism] Sanders never planned to win; structural elements were always in place to prevent that victory

2020-03-12 Thread Mark Lause via Marxism
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Two things that signaled his lack of seriousness.

The first was the injection of the "'s' word" early on, where it was
absolutely unnecessary (and incorrectly used).  He was actually running as
a New Deal Democrats urging the party to return to its earlier
manifestation.  What was the point of introducing "socialism" into the
discussion?

The other was raising the issue of Cuba at exactly the point in the
campaign where he was easing into the lead.  what was the point of it?
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[Marxism] Sanders never planned to win; structural elements were always in place to prevent that victory

2020-03-12 Thread J.B. Nicholson via Marxism

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Louis Proyect wrote:

(So, he only had himself to blame.)

Meanwhile, a small group of senior aides had been pushing Sanders for months to go 
harder on Biden.


The problem: Sanders actually liked him [Biden].


There was no problem for Sanders. Sanders had (in 2016 and now) a different goal. 
Sanders made a series of campaign choices aimed at allowing him to put on the fiction 
that he wanted to become POTUS but seemed to lose the chance at some early stage. His 
endorsed policies made him perhaps the country's most famous current politician and 
very well-liked in polls (still seen as one of very few who can "beat Trump" as the 
Dems say). But his refusing to run outside the party that treated him badly, and 
praising/endorsing his opponents even when he didn't know who precisely that chief 
opponent would be such as pledging to support the nominee whomever that person was), 
all were structured to prevent him from ever becoming POTUS.


The late Bruce Dixon had it right years ago in 
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary -- Sanders is a 
sheepdog for the Democratic Party. Change a few of the names to match current-day 
specifics and the rest of this article reads fine today. It wouldn't be surprising to 
me if this overall strategy continues with some younger person taking the mantle of 
sheepdog to replace Sanders.


Sanders was never an effective threat to establishment interests. The DNC corporation 
knew that (and so did all of the elites putting on the political theater of opposing 
Sanders[1]), and Sanders knew it too. Sanders' goal: get more people to support the 
dying Democratic Party even while it pursues neolib/neocon ends harder than ever. 
It's telling and a shame that so many read Sanders' efforts (like in 2016) as a 
candidate who genuinely ran to win.



[1] From http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf

> Bruce Spiva: [...] We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and 
we're
> gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily 
deciding,
> we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna 
go
> into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that
> way. That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have 
also
> been their right [...]

This tells the real tale of the power the DNC corporation never lost to choose who 
represents their corporation (aka party primary nominee). The Democrats don't pull 
this power out in order to not lose too many Democratic Party supporters but that 
power remains in place.


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