Democrats Need Someone Who Can Defeat Trump-- And That's Bernie, Not A Pale And Doddering Imitation Of Hillary

Yesterday, Bernie had an immense endorsement-- the Sunrise Movement. There were three more notable Bernie endorsements as well, one from Kshama Sawant, a Socialist member of the Seattle City Council, one from actress Emily Ratajkowski, which you can watch in the video below, and one from the Dream Defenders. Sawant: "we need a political revolution against the billionaire class, an Organizer-in-Chief prepared to build the movement of millions needed to win far-reaching change."




Jessica Corbett, writing for Common Dreams, explained the significance of the Dream Defenders endorsement. "Praising the 'visionary agenda' of Sen. Bernie Sanders and decrying the corporate media's treatment of him as a 'fringe candidate' in the Democratic presidential primary race, the Florida-based social justice group Dream Defenders on Wednesday joined the massive grassroots movement Sanders is building for his second presidential run."

Dream Defenders initially formed to fight for justice for Trayvon Martin but has since blossomed into a broader "movement for freedom and liberation in Florida." A lengthy statement from the group's Fight PAC endorsing Sanders spotlighted his campaign slogan ("Not Me, Us") and explained that "Bernie is not our political savior. It is the movement behind him that will change this country."

"Our people believe in Bernie and his vision for building power with us," the statement said. "He has the most diverse, the youngest, and the most working class base of any candidate. He has more donations from students, Walmart Workers, Amazon workers and teachers than anyone else-- at an average of $18."

"The mainstream media is afraid of this," the group added, condemning how some major media outlets have regarded Sanders' campaign. "That's why they've attempted to paint Bernie as some fringe candidate and his support base as comprised of only 'white Bernie bros' and erase the millions of black, brown, and immigrant youth and women at the helm of his campaign."

Welcoming the group's support in a tweet, Sanders thanked Dream Defenders for its "incredible" work in Florida, emphasized the power of young people, and reiterated his commitment to working with his movement "to create a nation where every person is able to live with justice and dignity."

Sanders also shared a video that Dream Defenders released detailing its history and goals. As the group's statement explained, "Because our lives and the lives of the people we love depend on it, we have chosen to take a side in this election: to stand against a world order rooted in greed, authoritarianism, and violence."

Dream Defenders highlighted how Sanders' agenda aligns with that of the group, including tuition-free public college, the elimination of student and medical debt, Medicare for All, a jobs guarantee, a moratorium on deportations, the reunification of separated families, overhauling the immigration system, ending mass incarceration, a just transition for incarcerated individuals, cutting the U.S. military budget, pursing diplomacy with Iran, and respecting the rights of Palestinians.

"Bernie's track record is consistent. Throughout his career, he has pushed visionary ideas long before they were politically popular," the group said of Sanders, a democratic socialist. "Bernie is not offering band-aid solutions to the crises we are living in. He believes in a total transformation of our economic and political systems."

Pointing to recent polling that shows significant support among U.S. millennial voters for socialist political candidates, Dream Defenders added that "the media's erasure of young women, and people of color as core constituencies of the Bernie Sanders campaign reflects the establishment's discomfort with acknowledging that the working-class is in fact multi-racial, and the growing consensus that capitalism cannot save us."

In a Politico piece that came out in the midst of all these endorsements, reporter Natasha Korecki acted as a press agent for the Biden campaign. One of the most vile and evil sources within the Democratic Party is New Dem founder and former DCCC anti-progressive strategist Simon Rosenberg, currently urging Status Quo Joe to go all out in calling Bernie a "socialist!!!!" and using the whole GOP panoply of smears against him. "The gloves-off strategy didn’t work for Clinton, " fumed Rosenberg, "and it isn’t going to work this time either."

To counter AOC's appeal as a Bernie surrogate, Biden has dug up some of his old friends from their graves and gotten them into a bus.

Since the start of the year, Biden has sharpened his messaging to highlight the distinctions, dedicating a bigger portion of his stump speech toward making the case that he is the candidate best-suited to work with Republicans and heal a divided country-- something the campaign says draws a sharp contrast with both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

As Biden hits his stride in Iowa, that theme represents a big part of his closing argument. As part of the case for his electability, he asserts that he, more than any other candidate, can help win back the Senate by providing a top of the ticket boost in places like North Carolina, Arizona and Texas-- states where there are questions about whether a candidate as liberal as Sanders would be an asset to the eventual Democratic Senate nominee.

“We think it is a clear point of difference with the approach of some of the other major candidates and one that is authentic to Biden and his record,” Dunn said.

Biden has recently sought to counter Sanders’ practice of rolling out star surrogates like Ocasio-Cortez, who drew massive crowds in the state in November and electrified Sanders’ supporters. Her tour through Iowa drew more than 2,000 people at each of the events.

Biden’s relatively staid endorsement events here couldn’t be more different from the razzle dazzle rallies showcasing Ocasio-Cortez. But they’ve featured political heavyweights designed to highlight Biden’s messaging about his experience and electability.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry-- who won the Iowa caucuses en route to the 2004 Democratic nomination-- was the headliner among a group of Democratic officeholders who embarked on a "We Know Joe" bus tour this week.

Former Gov. and ex-Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and his wife Christie, recently toured with Biden through rural Iowa in small, intimate venues. Rep. Abby Finkenauer-- a rising Democratic star in the state-- campaigned with Biden in mid-size events, the largest bringing about 700 people.

Finkenauer isn't a rising star in Iowa or anywhere else. She was a lazy hack in the Iowa legislature who was swept into Congress in the 2018 anti-red wave. Since getting to Congress, she has run up an entirely putrid record-- earning an "F" from ProgressivePunch. With Van Drew out of the party, she now has the 13th worst voting record of any Democrat in the House. That's the kind of garbage the Biden campaign is pushing forward as their version of AOC. AOC outdraws her 10 to 1 in her own district! No one cares about Abby Finkenauer. She means nothing to anyone; she was just an alternative to the lousy Trump asskisser who the voters wanted to replace. "Biden advisers and surrogates," parroted Korecki, "have framed the endorsements as clear markers of the differences between Sanders and Biden, with Ocasio-Cortez representing the left flank of the party and Finkenauer representing the mainstream-- she knocked off a Republican incumbent in a Northeast Iowa-based swing district, the kind of place that the Democratic nominee will need to defeat Donald Trump in November."

Glad they brought it up. IA-01 was a nice blue district that went for Obama 58.5% to 40.4% in 2008 when the PVI was D+5. In 2012 the district went for Obama again-- 56.2% to 42.5%. It wasn't until Wasserman Schultz and her corrupted DNC stole the nomination for Biden-in-a-skirt that IA-01, started turning red, (PVI is now D+1). Trump beat Hillary 48.7% to 45.2%. This is Bernie country, not Biden country. In 2018 the two big counties where virtually all the Democratic votes come from, looked like this:

• Linn- Bernie 52.3%, Hillary 47.4%
• Black Hawk- Bernie 52.9%, Hillary 46.7%

The Status Quo Joe people are right about one thing: IA-01 is the kind of place that the Democratic nominee will need to defeat Donald Trump in November-- and the candidate best suited to do that is the candidate of change, Bernie, not the candidate of "nothing fundamentally will change."