Bernie's Revolution-- No Turning Back Now

Did you watch the very last segment of Chris Hayes' MSNBC show Wednesday evening? He had Bernie on and-- in the wake of the DCCC-less near-win in Kansas Tuesday-- Bernie had some advice for Democrat establishment types that I doubt they want to hear-- or are even capable of hearing. "Number one: a 50-state agenda; do not surrender parts of the country to right-wing Republicans. Number two: a progressive agenda that makes it clear that the Democrats are going to stand for working families [and are] prepared to take on Wall Street and the one percent. We do those things, I think you're going to see fundamental changes in the way politics works in America."

Chris then got him to criticize basic DNC/DCCC strategy-- strategy that is totally at odds with what Bernie is exhorting them about. They do not believe in the 50 state strategy and firing Howard Dean-- who was implementing it at the DNC-- was the very first thing Rahm Emanuel did when Obama hired him as Chief of Staff. He replaced Dean with a milquetoast conservative establishment hack, Tim Kaine, who was soon followed by by the female Rahm Emanuel-- Debbie the Destroyer. And as far as standing in solidarity with working families and taking on Wall Street and the one percent, has he seen who the DC Democrats consistently choose as their leaders?

No member of Congress in history (other than some presidential candidates) has taken more in bribes from Wall Street than Chuck Schumer-- $26,434,240 in "contributions" from the Finance Sector since 1990-- which is more than McConnell ($11,887,251) and Ryan ($9,354,992) combined! And the Democrat who's gaining as the "consensus" candidate among House Democrats is former New Dem chieftain, Joe Crowley, one of the most corrupt men to ever serve in Congress, a guy who has never fought one election in his entire backroom-boss political career and who has already gobbled up $6,142,714 in Wall Street bribes, more than any Democrat currently serving in the House-- even beating out notoriously corrupt slime bags Steny Hoyer ($5,920,848), Kevin McCarthy ($5,776,517) and Jim Himes ($5,545,212) after the last cycle. Bernie, buddy, I wish it wasn't so.

Responding to a question from Hayes about the near-win in Kansas, Bernie went on that "with a little bit more help they might have pulled it off." A little bit more would have been easy, since Perez, Pelosi and the DC Dems gave no help at all-- and were delighted to see Thompson lose after he dared defeat their own conservative establishment creature for the nomination. "I would hope that the Democratic leadership learns that lesson." They won't-- not while Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Wasserman Schultz and the rest of the careerists still hold all the cards. Watch the whole clip above.

Bernie will have plenty of time to explain his points-- our points-- to DNC Chair, Tom Perez, as the two of them hold rallies in red and purple states in the next few weeks. Recently, Bernie warned his supporters that "With Trump's election, we live in a pivotal moment in American history. This country will either move in the direction of an authoritarian government where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer, or we will successfully fight back and build a strong grassroots movement to create a government which represents all of us, not just Donald Trump and others in the billionaire class." I wonder if he can get Perez to pay attention-- at least pay enough attention to do something to change the way the party works for the insiders and careerists instead of for the ideals and principles and the ordinary working families who have counted on the Democratic Party. I sincerely doubt it. Bernie:

That's the struggle we now face. No one can sit on the sidelines. Not now. The only way we win is when we stand together and fight back. I need your help to do that.

The bad news is that Trump's agenda-- huge tax breaks for billionaires, enormous increases in military spending, massive cuts in health care and programs that protect the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, horrific attacks on environmental protection and scapegoating the immigrant community-- constitutes the most reactionary set of policies in the modern history of our country.

The good news is that the resistance to this extremist Trump/Republican agenda is growing rapidly. We saw that as millions participated in the Women's March in January. We saw that as hundreds of thousands attended rallies and town meetings in February and March to successfully defeat the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw 24 million Americans off of their health insurance. We are seeing that now as people across the country are mobilizing for Green Day events to take on the fossil fuel industry, combat climate change and transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

When we launched our presidential campaign two years ago, I told you that victory would require the active participation of millions of Americans in every community across the country. That it would require nothing short of a political revolution to combat the demoralization so many feel about the political process. That's what I believed then. That's what I believe now. And that's what I am attempting to do.

During the last several months I have visited a number of states where Donald Trump won. My message: working people must not support a president and a party beholden to powerful special interests and the top 1 percent. We cannot support a party which wants to divide us up by race, gender, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.

I was in Wisconsin where progressives are determined to overcome the Trump victory in that state and elect candidates who, in 2018, will stand with working people and not the 1 percent. I was in Kansas where, in one of the most conservative states in the country, over 5,000 people attended a progressive rally in Topeka. I was in Mississippi, a state today heavily dominated by the Republican Party, where brave workers in the auto industry are fighting for a union. I was in West Virginia, where Trump won a landslide victory, but where many people are beginning to rethink the wisdom of that decision.

And next week I am going back on the road, visiting areas of the country often ignored by Democrats. I will be in Maine, Kentucky, Florida, Nevada, Nebraska, Utah and Arizona. I will be talking about the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we face and the need for the rich to start paying their fair share of taxes. I will discuss the Medicare-for-all, single-payer legislation that I will soon be introducing. I will urge people to join the Fight for $15 minimum wage struggle to make sure all Americans enjoy a living wage. I will ask people across the country to help us create millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. I will explain the need to aggressively move forward for comprehensive immigration reform and why we must immediately fix our broken criminal justice system.

But I can’t do it alone.

And he's not doing it alone. He's dragging Perez along with him. Let's hope many of us are wrong and Bernie manages to convert him into someone willing to help revitalize American democracy and advance the political revolution. Instead of part of what Jamie Peck described in The Guardian last night:

Since losing the presidency to a Cheeto-hued reality TV host, the Democratic party’s leadership has made it clear that it would rather keep losing than entertain even the slightest whiff of New Deal style social democracy.

The Bernie Sanders wing might bring grassroots energy and-- if the polls are to be believed-- popular ideas, but their redistributive policies pose too much of a threat to the party’s big donors to ever be allowed on the agenda.

As Bernie has always said, "our political revolution was never about one candidate. It was about creating a mass movement for real change in this country. That's the struggle we began. That's the struggle we'll continue. No turning back now." One part of that is helping progressives replace the corruptionists from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. The new thermometer on the right is dedicated to that and that alone-- helping progressive candidates willing to face the onerous-- murderous-- task of primarying an entrenched, corrupt establishment conservaDem, the way Donna Edwards did, Matt Cartwright did, Hilda Solis did and Beto O'Rourke all did with great success. And we've got our first two candidates so far.