Bernie Sanders is running again. If you haven’t picked up my graphic biography about the 2016 and 2020 presidential candidate, now would probably be a good time. It’s the only full-fledged biography of BERNIE in any form and it contains information you won’t find anywhere else about his life and politics.
Bernie is running again. I wrote the book on Bernie.
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The world just got a notch more interesting. Happy to see him run, worried about his age, thrilled about what he’ll do to the conversation.
Ted’s book on Bernie is not to be missed.
I picked it up off my bookshelf again yesterday (where it’s been sitting next to Ted’s also excellent book on Snowden) for a quick refresher.
We could do a lot worse than having Bernie run again. Like we did in 2016 after Bernie fulfilled his pledge to exit and then support the loser.
I may not follow Bernie to the ends of the earth, but Bernie is a good place to start a conversation about forestalling those ends.
(Conversation. You know. That thing people used to do before all verbal exchanges were mediated through the “surveillance capitalist” (anti-)social media.)
(Hi, FBI and CIA. Say Hi to Google and Facebook for me. )
The good news is that Sanders is running again in 2020.
The bad news is that Sanders is running again in 2020 as a Democrat.
Sanders, since getting worked over in 2016 by the DNC, reverted to his lifelong political affiliation as “Independent” according to the US Senate web site. But his recent announcement to run as a Democrat at least legitimizes him (negatively) as a true political Charlie Brown.
The full-time-all-the-time Dems certainly have firmly established themselves as the premier political Charlie(s)Brown with their unwavering fantasy that the Republicans should treat them fairly since they ARE the OTHER major party. I have recently explained this in terms of Dems hoping, repeatedly, for crucial senate support from “moderate” Republicans,*** always to be “disappointed.”
Nick Brana, a Sander’s 2016 campaign insider, has just revealed how the DNC has been working for 3 years to more easily block Sanders from the 2020 nomination. The Article is at this “Link”
Among the cynically anti-democratic traps is the “Loyalty Oath: The Democratic Party added a loyalty oath that allows the DNC chair to deny progressives access to the primary ballot if he deems that a candidate has been insufficiently ‘faithful’ to the Party throughout their life.”
We’ll see if DNC chair Uncle Tom Perez is sufficiently impressed with Sander’s Charlie Brown credentials to deem him sufficiently “faithful” to the wretchedly rancid Dems throughout his life.
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*** is this the origin of Obumma’s “legacy” of allying with “moderate” terrorists?
Hey, Falco – while I share your disappointment that Bernie isn’t running as a ‘democratic socialist’ or some such, I suspect it’s the right strategy in today’s binary environment.
The GOP guy will get approximately 50%, just as they always do. The Dem party faithful will vote for whoever the DNC tells them to vote for, which leaves an independent with less electors than he would need.
By running as a Dem, he has the chance to knock out one competitor.
To CrazyH,
It appears you have completely missed the (documented) point: Sanders has less chance of getting the Dem nomination this time than he had last time. The DNC has been actively seeing to that since the Tuesday following the first Monday of November 2016.
Further, if ANYONE has the ability to make serious inroads into the democracy-strangulating “binary environment” it is Sanders who would take sizable fractions of voters away from both of the concerted-strangulation parties.
Well, one of us missed a point. If Bernie ran as any third party, he would have no chance of winning whatsoever.
I’ll take a slim chance over none any day.
Bernie would/will draw precisely zero of the GOP faithful away. It doesn’t matter that he would help them far more than Trump ever would, they hear word “socialism” and their tiny little minds snap shut.
As in 2016, he’ll do far more harm to the dems than he will to the GOP. Not that I’m against hurting dems, but them’s the facts.
Here’s a way it *could* work.
The GOP is fracturing between the clueless assholes and the even more clueless assholes. *IF* there were a right-wing spoiler – we’d have a true four-party race (plus the usual gaggle of “third” parties).
Bernie might still lose, but it wouldn’t be because of the duopoly.
@Falco
Shenanigans are to be expected. If anything, the efforts to undermine Sanders go to show that the DNC types are totally afraid of an actual upset this time around. So why give them what they want without a fight?
If we can’t get them at the primary, we won’t get them at the general either, which will be a lot more rigged still. To be fair, it is going to be a tough call to see whether Sanders can get a majority of voters in the 2020 primaries:
(+) He now starts with name recognition. Last time round, he lost e.g. New York mostly because only people who registered before the campaign even started were eligible to vote.
(-) The centrist opponent is now chosen by actual voters and it is safe to say that whoever remains will be more relatable than HRC.
(+) The demographics (of voters, alas not his own) favor Bernie ridiculously. Sanders got like 90% of 18+ year olds last time around. Ah, they grow up so fast 😉
(-) Whatever new shenanigans they can cook up.
To andreas5,
I get the point that: “If we can’t get them at the primary, we won’t get them at the general either … ” but with similar logic, if you run, and win, as a Democrat the overwhelming probability is that you’ll govern like one, too!
Who needs that?
Ted,
You should ask the Bernie people to list your book on their website store. This would possibly drive more sales.
Good idea. Will do!
Also could offer the Trump book to the Trump site. There’s no chance he’s ever read it, maybe the name on the cover will be enough to convince him …
… similarly, maybe the NSA would like the Snowden book. If nothing else, it’d be fun to watch their reaction when you ask.
I’ve heard that in contrast to his campaign for the US Democratic Party nomination in 2016, Mr Sanders is now giving much more prominence to foreign policy, emphasising in particular such concepts as «human rights» and «democracy». While I get the impression that Mr Sanders’ concerns are genuine, vestigia terrent ; we must be aware that the above have ever served and are serving now as justifications for US military adventures in the affairs of other countries. I doubt very much that the results would differ significantly were this modus operandi to be applied by someone, who like Mr Sanders, really believed in these notions, than by his predecessors who didn’t give a tinker’s damn about them, but found them useful as pretexts. Killing foreigners as a means of promoting «human rights» and «democracy» in their countries is hardly the way to go….
Henri