The quote came from here:
I understand that there’s been a lot about this topic, already. I’m referring to the claims made specifically in this clip, and it’s title. If you disagree, how? Even though I’m generally Left of the Dems, I’m curious how people respond.
The source is The Real News Network, but I don’t know who this speaker is.
I think that pro-Bernie people greatly overestimate his importance/appeal. And in this case, overestimate the willingness of the Democratic leadership to believe that the Republicans are fascists.
In some “a magical genie offers you the choice” style thought experiment, I’m reasonably sure they’d pick Bernie; I just don’t think that they believed that was the choice.
Nor do I, actually… I know the other two.
The one speaking is… Abby Martin.
Also, I’d like to add that I’m not subscribed to this channel, and “Real News Network” isn’t comfortable labeling for me. I believe I got this video off of BlueSky
I don’t think it’s that Democrats prefer fascism to Bernie’s populism. That’s like saying that a high school football coach wants to lose the state championship by having his son be the starting QB rather than another, better, quarterback. Obviously, the coach wants to have both - the championship and glory for his son. No coach wants to lose.
But if push comes to shove, then yes, the coach would rather his son be behind center than let the other non-son QB start.
The democrats are subservient to the rich as much as the republicans are – they just have a sane “you can shear a sheep a dozen times but only skin them once” economic policy whereas the republicans are willing to destroy the country and loot it if they get to be at the top of the
ash heap when it all comes crashing down. But both of their policies always looks out for the interests of the rich first.
The American people fundamentally mostly want the economic conditions of their lives to improve. A party that credibly represented that position would easily win US elections. But it would run contrary the interests of the rich. Tax the rich, admit and attack wealth disparity, increased prosperity for the working class (though they would call it the “middle class” as no one ever wants to actually acknowledge the working class in US politics), pro union – that’s a winning message for democrats, but a losing message for their paymasters.
So instead democrats focus on “identity politics” and various non-economic issues like gun control. The rich allow the parties to squabble over those things because it doesn’t impact their bottom line, and it gets us fighting each other instead of recognizing that they the biggest obstacle in the way of creating a better country and world. Obama actually nailed it when he said that they cling to religion and guns because they don’t think anyone is actually going to make their lives economically better, but it also applies to democrats too. We’ve been trained to basically ignore the possibility of improving the lives of the poor at the cost of the rich and to fight over other issues instead.
Bernie was willing to actually speak to those issues and it was clear that it was resonating with the democratic base. He threatened to topple the entire arrangement that the rich had in controlling both parties. As an analogy, have you ever noticed that religious people generally hate atheists far more than they hate other religious people? It doesn’t really make sense, right? Someone who believes another contradictory religion is also saying your religion is wrong. But people of different religions recognize on some level that they are playing the same sport, but rooting for different teams. But there’s a sort of implicit understanding that they’re the same. Whereas with atheists, their existence attacks and exposes the whole idea of being religious as a sham. They’re sort of a threat to the whole sport. And so everyone hates them far more than they hate people rooting for different teams.
Bernie sanders is kind of like an atheist in that analogy. Republicans and Democrats are playing the same sport – interests of the rich above all else – just rooting for different teams on the other issues. Someone like Bernie comes along and exposes that, and it’s not just team vs team, but the entire system/sport becomes threatened. And like a Christian and Muslim coming together to hate atheists, the powers of both parties shun someone like Sanders. I acknowledge that the republicans actually have mixed messages on Sanders but that’s only because they’re trying to use him to drive a wedge in the democratic party and cause them to lose – if there was any serious chance Sanders became powerful they’d rally against him with their full force.
Previous to 2016, the democrats could lose to republicans while still basically retaining the norms of the country. Sure, they’d lose ground on a few issues here and there, but there wasn’t an existential threat to the country or its political system. Whereas Bernie winning would be an existential threat to the control the rich had over our political system. So absolutely, pre-2016, the democrats would much rather have a republican win than Sanders win as a democrat. And I think because no one thought the possibility of Trump winning in 2016 was real, their suppression of Bernie was working under the assumption that it wouldn’t lead to a Trump presidency. They would’ve chosen something like a Mitt Romney presidency over a Bernie presidency, but would they choose a Trump presidency over a Bernie presidency? That’s a more complicated question because Trump, too, represents the destruction of norms.
I don’t know if they’re smart enough to realize that 2024 was the last crack they had at maintaining a semblance of democracy in the US, that a 2024 Trump win would be an unrecoverable fatal blow to this country. If they had, and they could’ve prevented a Trump win by running on a strong economic mesage, well, they chose not to. In a way, they chose to risk the destruction of American democracy and rise of fascism over running on a platform of economic populism that probably would’ve won.
So, then, they treated economic populism (valuing the lives of the masses more than the lives of a few rich people) as being in the same ballpark of a threat as Trumpian fascism. So if the proposition in the title of this thread is wrong, it’s not by much.
I generally agree with you, except on this key point. Americans have always been willing to vote in ways that directly hurt their economic interests. Looking past the most immediate example, Americans have long been willing to hurt themselves if it also hurts the object of their racist views. Most of the MAGA message is “racism, fuck yeah!” As long as it hurts those people more, it sells.
This is a trend that is illogical, but appears again and again as working-class vote anti-union, anti-safety-net, anti-healthcare, and so on. I agree with many of the Bernie/Socialist policies, but I think the strategy of “if we can just get our message out, we’ll win” is flawed.
I do not know how to fix it.
The two parties, even today, agree on many, many issues. Almost invariably, these are the issues that I disagree with both of them on. Most of these are corporatist or hawkish policies. Sanders and a few others are at odds with the rest of the party on some of these issues, and to many Democrats in power that is a problem. In many ways because the ones in power have spent a long time convincing people that these corporatist policies are good for them.
It’s also even simpler. Americans have been sold bought into the lie that, for instance, someday they too will have estates that will be taxed. Why would any of them value the lives of the masses when them living the life of the rich is right around their next corner?
This notion that if only there was a populist candidate that would lead the proles to the Promised Land is bullshit as evidenced by those same proles electing Trump.
'Cause I’m betting tariffs poll really high among the unwashed masses that do not have the first fucking clue what a tariff even is.
Or if you go farther back, it was a common belief among Confederate soldiers that one day, they two would have slaves to do all the work for them; and that was a big part of what they were fighting for. It seems a deep seated and longstanding belief among the non-wealthy members of the Right that society should be unfair, because one day they’ll be the ones on top benefiting from it.
If you think about it, it’s connected to the American obsession with sports: everyone wants to be a winner, but for there to be a winner, there also always has to be a loser.
Yeah, this. In an election where Harris lost, being called a “radical leftist”, “communist” and all that, it’s beyond imagining that someone who is actually much farther to the left than Harris wold suddenly have won.
With regards to the question in the title, it presupposes that Democrats “Know in their heart” that Bernie would have won, and decided to go with the worse candidate, even knowing that they might be handing the win to Trump. That’s fundamentally nonsense. They went with a candidate they thought could win.
See also: The American Dream.
I think the OP is a sound analysis.
As usual, I thoroughly disagree with an atheist’s view of the motives of the religious, but I won’t get into that since it would be a total hijack.
Rather than contempt for ‘voting against their own interests’, I might note that people who feel marginalized and disrespected and helpless to change that tend to act in ways that always seem pointless and reprehensible to those who are sitting pretty and have no reason to think they won’t always. Black people torching and looting their own neighborhoods, white working class people refusing to make common cause with others in a similar boat – these aren’t mystifying unless you need them to be. Nor is propaganda the sole answer to the latter question.
There has never been a time when we were even close to being an egalitarian society, except at brief random historical moments or pockets of culture, and even then there were always people excluded. We have myths and we have reality and never the twain shall meet.
When they do at some point meet, then a new, different myth spins right off.
Sounds silly to me. I’d rather have Sanders populism than fascism but we haven’t had an election between the two. Between Sanders populism and center-left politics, history has shown that Sanders populism is great for making noise and claiming everyone loves them but not so good at actually getting people to the polls and casting votes.
The word fascism, as used in the video, is an insult rather than an actual description of what America will be under Trump.
If the choice had been between an anti-Israel revolutionary as favored in the video, and Trump, this registered Democrat would have possibly voted for a moderate write-in, and possibly Trump. So the thread title proposition, if you think Trump is a real fascist rather than a more typical strongman type — and think that Bernie is a revolutionary who wouldn’t have pivoted to the center if nominated — is TRUE.
As for her mention of FDR as a desired model, that just confused me.
Well…Trump has won twice. Lost once but lost with the second most votes in history.
I think neoliberlasim started by Bill Clinton and carried on since with democrats is failing with the voters.
Neoliberlalism is consertavisim light. Basically centrist democrats who probably would be deemed conservative in the 1970/80s.
No doubt you will argue that but we have the elections that are the final word. Neoliberalism is a loser…big time.
Is Sanders worse? Hard to say but we know the alternative loses.
Abby Martin is a notorious socialist crank who is on the professional “America Bad” circuit. She gained prominence as a 9/11 truther and then went to work for RT between 2012 and 2015 and then moved over to work for the Venezuelan state TV, whitewashing the state of the Venezuelan economy. You can pull up episodes of her show at the time insisting that life in Venezuela was fine and the entire economic crisis was made up American propaganda.
She’s basically willing to parrot the talking points of whoever is willing to pay her as long as the general message is “America Bad”. Not saying she’s factually wrong about any of the stuff she’s talking about but it’s coming from a source with zero intellectual credibility.
Democrats, like all politicians, want to win, have power, and use it in ways that benefit them. A secondary goal is to enact policies they believe in.
Trying to enact Bernie Sanders’ agenda is a good way to keep Republicans in power for a long time.
Loses about half the time. And wins about half the time.