Capturing the Party is an Important Goal

For Progressives, Capturing the Democratic Party Is More Important Than Beating Trump

By Ted Rall

November 8, 2019 

I'm largely in agreement with Rall here, however I see a few conceits.

It's a good story perhaps, but there is no evidence given (or probably existant) that Bernie primary voters didn't vote for Hillary in sufficient measure to affect the general election, let alone people who did anything more than just vote for Bernie.*

I'm not so sure about lame duck presidents going after bankster-popular goals.  THAT is when the bad stuff like that happens, because nobody is paying attention.  That's when Clinton did the most damage to the New Deal regulation of banks (though killing AFDC had come in his first term).

There is zero evidence impeachment would be any easier in 2021, even if there are a few more Democratic Senators amidst a Trump re-election (which itself would tend to work against having more than a few, I would think).

Strangely, mid-stream, he makes it unclear why HE actually supports Bernie.  I share that ambiguity.  I'd like a more anti-Imperial president also, and Gabbard seems a step or two closer to that, maybe (voting history and some words on Israel notwithstanding).  But at this point, Gabbard is almost like (and might well become, many believe) a third party candidate.  If the Democratic candidate is Biden, Harris, or Booker, I'd vote for her in that role, but not against Bernie or Warren because I think then she'd be a spoiler.

The press keeps covering it up by omission, but Bernie leads in many critical places and against Trump in particular.

And that's important.  We could win, defeating "moderate" Democrats for the first time since 1948 and have the Party of FDR again!!!

Sadly, not the antiwar Party of Henry A. Wallace or even Tulsi Gabbard--that will take greater efforts, for which I don't yet see enough general Disgust yet--though there should be.  The powerful hold of RussiaGate, the wholesale acceptance of Imperial narratives on Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Israel/Palestine and Hong Kong--with varying weaknesses even on the left--shows how far we are from breaking through with the full Antiwar agenda as expressed here and across a left-right spectrum of legitimate antiwar sites and authors.  Back in the day, Wallace couldn't even win the rigged VP selection and had to run as a third party, and got 2.4% of the vote as a third party candidate.  Hopefully people have become more antiwar since then, but look at those narratives again, we don't seem there yet.

Bernie hasn't foresworn Imperialism with as much vigor as Gabbard, but he's far different in that regards than LBJ, the previous progressive Democrat (Carter, Clinton, and Obama were all "centrists").  Bernie has said many good things and even written good foreign policy bills (including the one on Yemen, which got vetoed).  I believe he would move the ship of state in a better direction as quickly as it can be done.

(*To get very technical, the real question is what difference the Bernie candidacy made in 2016--were there enough people who would have voted Hillary if Bernie had not even run to have made the difference in getting Trump an Electoral College victory?  This may be a smaller set than Bernie-leaning-voters because some Bernie-leaning-voters might never have voted for Hillary in any case...so their "loss" because of Bernie's candidacy doesn't count against (or for, depending on your perspective) the Bernie candidacy wrt Trump's victory.  This question is also unanswerable, but could have been discovered or may yet be approximated with careful examination of polls.  I suggest that even if there were studies showing the "Bernie" voters not voting for Hillary to have made the difference, the standard I'm proposing is even harder  and probably would not have been met in that case.  Deep State rigging like the Comey October Surprise made far more difference, and show the Deep State's weirdly conflicting goals as I have elaborated, but proves one thing, they weren't acting consistently against Trump getting elected if at all.  And one more thing: the Deep State always counts the votes, and especially if there are machines.  So, don't blame or credit Bernie for the Trump victory.  It was as much a DeepState victory as any previous one, but now,  with Mud Wrestling 24/7, just what the DeepState ordered, because of course it's the perfect distraction.)