On October 4th
in the Washington Post, Sanders signaled into an interview his intentions of
holding Clinton accountable in office.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sanders-is-prepared-to-be-a-liberal-thorn-in-clintons-side/2016/10/24/aaf6dd88-97eb-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html
He and other like-minded Senators were already plotting legislation for $15
federal minimum wage, tuition-free public college, an end to mass-incarcerations,
aggressively fight climate change, break-up the to-bit-to-fail banks, and other
key liberal agenda items found in the Democratic Platform that he had a hand in
crafting.
“I will be
vigorously in opposition, and I will make that very clear,” Sanders is quoted as
saying.
This kind of
strident and defiant tone is something we haven’t heard from Sanders sense he
ended his primary bid, and indorsed Clinton. And while he has been dutifully on the campaign
trail trying to convince his former followers that one must vote for Clinton –
it only to deny Trump the White House, he has still mostly faded from public
view and lost a lot of his influence. So,
for hard-core Bernie supporters, Sander’s more defiant posture has been welcome
news, some even declaring “Bernie is back!”
I remain unimpressed.
Don’t get me
wrong here. I welcome any fight for the
issues that he lists. And we need
fighters. With that said, Sander’s while
fully arrayed for battle and intensely determined, armed with decades of experience,
still stands on the wrong battle field.
What Sanders doesn’t get is that as important his liberal agenda is –
the agenda has changed. The issues now
have to deal with the open corruption that WikiLeaks has exposed – not just
from within the Clinton campaign, but the entirety of the Democratic Party as
well as throughout government as a whole, root and branch and from state to
state.
The evidence
is undeniable that the Democratic Primary was rigged for Clinton, and that the
media conspiracy to shelter Clinton from her own record signals the rise of a
new totalitarian era. And Clinton’s saber-rattling
has suddenly made World War III and a nuclear exchange with Russia and/or China
a shockingly real possibility. Assuming
one can even argue that we aren’t already thy deep in the global crises. And day by day, it’s getting harder to NOT
say the FBI hasn’t engaged in an aggressive cover-up in regards to Clinton’s un-encrypted
servers. Even now that the FBI has “re-opened”
Clinton’s e-mail investigation, it reeks more of desperate damage control
rather than the FBI exiting its responsibility’s.
These are
the issues that Liberal and Progressive activist are confronting today, and
Sanders is AOWL on this front. Indeed,
one has to question just how serious Sanders even is with his own agenda. Trying to aggressively fight climate change –
without addressing or even giving voice to the power structure that makes that
battle necessary is an exercise in futility. True, he might be able to do quite a bit in
the next few years, but each battle will be hard fought and costly, yet easily
undone with the stroke of a pen or fall of a gavel. Sanders will end up wasting time and previous
resources that the left simply cannot afford lose, only to find our-selves in
exactly the same position as before.
Part of
Sander’s problem is the perverted nature of the situation. True, if the Democrats retake the Senate, he
would be in line for chair position on the Senate Banking Committee and be in a
position of significant power. But this
also places the Clinton wing of Democratic party in power over all of the other
Senate committees as well. When faced
with corruption, the last thing you want to do is feed it more power.
Sanders is
an example of a naïve opposition, one who seems to think that what we are all
up against is simply a difference in opinion.
All that is needed to effect change is to get more Democrats elected to
office. But this ignore the reality of
the political landscape, and even ends up feeding power to the corrupt system.
It’s become
inescapably clear to me that Sanders doesn’t give any credibility in the corruption
charges that swirl around Clinton, or the pay-to-play reality that keeps the
party infrastructure firmly in the grip of the establishment. At worst, Sanders patents with Clinton may be
wearing thin, but there remains no sign that his intends to call Clinton or
other Democrats out on their corruption, instead focusing on “the issues”. Far from being a thorn in Clinton’s side –
this makes him an enabler for further corruption, and an obstacle that the left
must overcome in order to build any real momentum.
