Flanked on one side by 150 FBI agents poring over pages of her manifest national-security malfeasance, and the insurgent campaign of a geriatic Brooklyn-born “socialist” senator from Vermont, Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the White House is now starting to resemble the Bataan Death March. The Nation, a crypto-communist magazine for the red-diaper-baby set, puts the boot in:
A year ago, concerned that ordinary citizens would be locked out of the presidential nominating process, The Nation argued that a vigorously contested primary would be good for the candidates, for the Democratic Party, and for democracy. Two months later, Senator Bernie Sanders formally launched a campaign that has already transformed the politics of the 2016 presidential race. Galvanized by his demands for economic and social justice, hundreds of thousands of Americans have packed his rallies, and over 1 million small donors have helped his campaign shatter fund-raising records while breaking the stranglehold of corporate money. Sanders’s clarion call for fundamental reform—single-payer healthcare, tuition-free college, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, the breaking up of the big banks, ensuring that the rich pay their fair share of taxes—have inspired working people across the country. His bold response to the climate crisis has attracted legions of young voters, and his foreign policy, which emphasizes diplomacy over regime change, speaks powerfully to war-weary citizens. Most important, Sanders has used his insurgent campaign to tell Americans the truth about the challenges that confront us. He has summoned the people to a “political revolution,” arguing that the changes our country so desperately needs can only happen when we wrest our democracy from the corrupt grip of Wall Street bankers and billionaires.
We believe such a revolution is not only possible but necessary—and that’s why we’re endorsing Bernie Sanders for president.
A few days ago, I tweeted:
Dems finally showing true colors by running a communist and a criminal for president. You knew ’twas just a matter of time.
— David Kahane (@dkahanerules) January 21, 2016
Thus do we reach the end stage of the Democrat Party — a party conceived in murder and devoted at various times to slavery, segregation, sedition and secularism. That Sanders’ program of “revolution” can appeal to so many young people indicates that the lessons of the Cold War have already been lost on the Ignorant Generation.
We do so now impelled by the awareness that our rigged system works for the few and not for the many. Americans are waking up to this reality, and they are demanding change. This understanding animates both the Republican and Democratic primaries, though it has taken those two contests in fundamentally different directions.
At the core of this crisis is inequality, both economic and political. The United States has become a plutocracy—one in which, as Sanders puts it, “we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality.” America’s middle class has melted away, while the gap between rich and poor has reached Gilded Age extremes. The recovery that followed the 2008 economic collapse has not been shared. Indeed, in the United States it seems that nothing is shared these days—not prosperity, nor security, nor even responsibility. While millions of Americans grapple with the consequences of catastrophic climate change, fossil-fuel companies promote climate skeptics so that they can continue to profit from the planet’s destruction. While Americans have tired of endless war, the military-industrial complex and its cheerleaders continue to champion the reckless interventions that have drained our country, damaged our reputation abroad, and created a perfect storm of Pentagon waste, fraud, and abuse. While Americans of every ideological stripe recognize the need for criminal-justice reform, African-American men, women, and children continue to be gunned down by police officers on the streets, and mass incarceration continues largely unabated.
Americans are fed up and fighting back.
If you seek to understand the rise of Donald Trump, you must realize that the same forces are propelling Bernie Sanders — and that the underlying angst is exactly the same. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
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