For Mayor Sanders, Wielding Power Meant Mobilizing Disaffected People To Vote And Ejecting Entrenched Democrats

Paul Waters-Smith noted, over at Current Affairs that if we want to build popular power, we need an organizer-in-chief and urged his readers to take a chance with a Socialist and "back the one and only chance at a pro-labor presidency we’re likely to have for a generation. We’ve got an incredible chance and it would be criminally irresponsible not to take it. There are five core reasons why a Sanders presidency represents such an unprecedented opportunity:

1- The power of the “bully pulpit” is immense, shaping the expectations and visions of what is possible for working people and rich alike, and creating the opportunity for social movements to grow.

2- Bernie 2020 is running a working class left-wing campaign, clearly aimed at governing from the streets, not in the backrooms of Washington or in Martha’s Vineyard.

3- Sanders speaks like a good organizer and labor leader, and his proposals are universal guarantees that can serve as movement rallying-cries.

4- The Sanders 2016 campaign has already proven an enormous boon to the left, and changed the country in ways that offer a small preview of the immense changes that could occur if he were elected.

5- Radical politics is not a luxury at this point in history. It is an absolute do-or-die necessity, and Bernie’s is the only candidacy that makes effective climate action conceivable. 

"We don’t get a whole lot of viable left candidates in the United States," he concluded. "Bernie is the first such presidential candidate in at least 96 years. And he’s the first ever self-described Socialist to come anywhere near the office. The potential of a Sanders presidency to remake our concept of the politically possible and breathe new life into workers’, socialist, and left-wing movements is overwhelming. And given the looming deadline to save dozens of nations from climate oblivion, it’s an opportunity we cannot afford to give up. When we look back in decades, we do not want to have to say: We saw this chance and we watched it go by. A very special moment has come, a moment that could change the future of the country and even of human society. Let us rise to the occasion, and take a chance on the first democratic socialist president so that we may never have to regret what we could have and should have done."

Waters-Smith is a dedicated Socialist. Alexander Burns isn't. But his story in the NY Times yesterday, Bernie Sanders vs. The Machine is one Bernie skeptics might want to read. Or just start by reading Burns' great Twitter storm.

Sanders learned quickly in Burlington that winning one election was not enough. He was regarded as a fluke, an interloper who could be blocked from implementing his agenda.

He responded by choosing confrontation rather than compromise.

Sanders's 1980s letters detail his political education-- and struggle to reconcile huge Ideas w/limited power.

“I have limitations as any mayor would, but I try to overcome these by expanding the role, by taking the job out of City Hall and into the streets where the people were.”

For Mayor Sanders, wielding power meant mobilizing disaffected people to vote in city elections, jolting turnout and ejecting entrenched Dems.

He reflects today: "What that tells me is that if government does respond to the needs of working people, they will come out and participate."

This is the approach Sanders wants to bring to the White House-- a presidency defined by grassroots mobilization along class lines and against legislative obstruction. He's talked about it with Barack Obama, who seems to have been skeptical.

This is the utterly repulsive alternative, that most of us have had way more than enough of. Just think about how well Status Quo Joe or Mayo Pete would fit right into this disgusting photograph. SMILE!

Medicare-For-All? "Us Not Me" Will Win The Day AND That's Not To Dilute The Importance Of A Key Historical Figure Or Two

Hillary is being left behind by history-- but embraced by Big PhRMA

Last week Alexander Burns wasted a New York Times column on Hillary Clinton's opposition to Medicare-for-All. He caught up with her at the Times's DealBook conference, where she as much as endorsed Status Quo Joe by saying she "hoped for a return to 'boring, normal times' after the 2020 election, voicing skepticism of her party’s populist wing and predicting that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for single-payer health care would never get enacted." As she knows, the single-payer plan is Bernie's and it nearly kept her from her stolen nomination. She's still bitter and vindictive and said "Democrats should pursue the goal of universal health coverage, but through other means."

She was an activist conservative Republican well into her twenties and Burns, rather than admitting she's nothing but a conservative and neo-lib fronting for the donor class referred to her as "A longtime leader of her party’s moderate wing."

She can't get it through her head that the American people-- and Democrats even more so-- are demanding fairer tax policies that will cut deeply into the wealth of the criminal class the Clintons, Bidens, Bloombergs and Trumps belong to. "Clinton," wrote Burns, "was most blunt about Ms. Warren’s proposal to replace private health insurance with a single-payer system funded largely by taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Asked if she thought that proposal could get passed into law, Mrs. Clinton answered in the negative. 'No, I don’t-- I don’t,' she said. 'But the goal is the right goal.'" From 1905 to 1965 conservative Democrats like Clinton worked with the GOP to prevent Medicare, calling it impossible and a dream and then, when it became inevitable, watering it down so that Bernie's Medicare-for-All plan puts back in place everything the Clinton-types ripped out of it-- from universal coverage to dental care and equitable drug prices.

Speaking on Thursday at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C., Ms. Warren was asked about Mrs. Clinton’s remarks.

"I’m saying, you don’t get what you don’t fight for,” she said in response. “You know, you got to be willing to get out there and fight.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments suggest she remains skeptical of the populist forces on the rise in Democratic politics. While she did not endorse a candidate, she indicated a clear preference in one of the largest debates raging in the Democratic Party: whether to nominate a candidate who would make sweeping changes to the country’s government and economy, or someone who would restore something like normalcy in Washington.

“I would like us to return to a presidency where we don’t have to wake up every day worried,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding, “I’d like us to get back to sort of boring, normal times.”

Yesterday, bestselling author and a former health insurance industry executive Wendell Potter responded with a Tweet Storm. "Hillary," he began, "is remembering what happened in the 90s, when I worked at Humana and we tanked the nation’s first attempt at single payer since the famed Nixon/Kennedy failure. The industry came out with what are now its greatest hits-- like dubbing what we now call Medicare for All, 'government run health care.' Public opinion that had been rising in support of single payer dropped like a rock. Fast forward 25 years and the industry play now is the same as it was then. Why, then, should Clinton expect to feel any differently about passage of single payer?"

1- A majority of Americans who receive health insurance through their employer now say they support a switch to MedicareForAll.

2- A majority of small business owners support MedicareForAll. (96% of small employers already don’t offer health insurance because it’s too expensive, but this is still important.)

3- The number of Americans receiving health insurance through an employer is falling-- and now close to 50%, down from closer to 70% two decades ago.

4- And those that do get coverage through an employer increasingly find it too expensive. The average family insurance plan now costs more than $20,000 annually.

5- And furthermore, those people find it too expensive to use. Nearly 100 million Americans are now “underinsured”-- meaning their deductibles and copays are so high they can’t afford to go to a doctor or hospital if they need to.

6- A majority of Americans support MedicareForAll even after it has been attacked. Simply remind people they’re out-of-pocket costs, premiums and deductibles will go away-- and they’re all for it.

"Finally, and this is harder to track, we didn’t have politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ten and 25 years ago with the power those two have now. Their social media followings, their email lists, the media they draw-- it all contributes to getting out the truth about the broken for-profit health insurance system the industry was able to lie about for years. There’s now a chorus of voices, led by Sanders and Warren, that are saying, 'enough!'"

And history will remember Hillary, if at all, as nothing but a First Lady and a GOP victim

Shan Chowdhury is the progressive candidate taking on transactional, crooked conservative New Dem Gregory Meeks in southeast Queens. He's campaigning strongly for Medicare-for-All. This morning he told us that "When Hilary Clinton talks about bringing it back to normal, boring times, I think about how both parties passed the 1994 crime bill or when our military ventured into a series of senseless wars. Brushing aside the reality of what working class families have to go through is unconscionable. It tells the American people we don't deserve to have healthcare because protecting the profits of the healthcare industry is in their best interest."

Kim Williams is another progressive running for a seat occupied by a corrupt conservative Democrat, in her case, Blue Dog Jim Costa. Williams' campaign is premised on issues opposed by Republicans and Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party like Costa, Medicare-for-All being an especially important one. "Clinton," she told me, "stated that she wished we could return to a presidency 'where we don’t have to wake up every day worried.' The problem is that the good people in my district, who breathe the dirtiest air in America and can’t access decent healthcare or good paying jobs, will wake up everyday worried if we don’t bring about real change. This is another example of comfortable millionaires telling those facing medical bankruptcies to quiet down with little regard or understanding for the lived experiences of working class families in America. There’s a reason so many of us have had enough with the status quo, and Medicare for All will absolutely be enacted if we send the right people to represent us."

Saturday progressive Will County Democrat Rachel Ventura co-hosted a Medicare for All event with another Blue America-backed Chicagoland candidate, Robert Emmons, who's running to unseat Bobby Rush. Rachel told us that she and Robert "sat and listened to powerful stories from victims of the for-profit healthcare system. One woman, Wendy Schuster, a resident of Joliet said that she was paying about $20,000 a year in out of pocket healthcare expenses. As a cancer survivor Wendy said that fighting claims was a full-time job even though she had insurance."

Wendy shared a more disturbing, and sad story about her 38-year old cousin who was diagnosed with a hernia. The simple laparoscopic surgery to fix the hernia was not covered by his for-profit insurance company. They denied the claim stating that it was not medically necessary. On October 22nd, her cousin went home sick and started bleeding. He tried controlling the bleeding with towels, but it was not enough. Because his insurance company had denied him the care he needed to repair the hernia, her cousin bled to death, and was discovered 48 hours later.

Every year, over 40,000 Americans die just like Wendy’s cousin because the Hillary Clintons, the Joe Bidens and the Bill Fosters of the world rather fight for the for-profit healthcare industry than fight to fix the broken system.

Another victim of the for-profit insurance industry and resident of Joliet, Janet Diaz, said that she was angry at the healthcare industry. As a Certified Nurses Assistant, Diaz worked at Silver Cross Hospital and had excellent health insurance. She was injured at work and the insurance companies passed the buck back and forth between workers compensation and her Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance plan. In the end, she got stuck with nearly $250,000 in medical bills. She had to quit-claim deed her home to her parents to protect her home from the for profit healthcare industry. Diaz concluded by saying, “we need our Senators and our Congressmen to have the same insurance that we have, and the same insurance that the homeless guy down the street has, and until that happens, we are not going to get the good healthcare that we need. Medicare for All is the only way to go. Medicare for most does not cut it.”

We also heard from a union electrician from Aurora, Mike O’Connell who described himself as a cancer survivor who had to use his “Cadillac insurance” plan. Even though he had used his insurance, O’Connell did not agree with the AFL-CIO messaging that union members prefer private insurance over Medicare for All. Mike used a slide to show us that over 28% of his paycheck was going to pay for healthcare costs, including $24,000 per year that went to private insurance companies. He showed us that under a Medicare for All plan that he would instead be paying only $8,200 per year. “Medicare for All would let me put $19,097 more in my pocket every year,” said O’Connell. “I support Medicare for All. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

These stories are tragic, and I feel like America is becoming numb to these tragedies and they are becoming the norm. The unwillingness of our political leaders to do anything is barbaric. What is even more tragic is that the solution is right in front of us and it is an easy solution, Improved Medicare for All. We have the money and we can afford to change things. Once again, we see a broken system in America where we allow wealthy donors to dictate the quality of life, or life itself for everyone else.

Robert Emmons and Rachel Ventura 

UPDATE from Columbus, Ohio:

Morgan Harper is the progressive reformer running for Columbus seat occupied by old school, do-nothing Democrat Joyce Beatty. A few minutes ago, Morgan told us that "Almost every single person I meet while door knocking in OH-03 cites health care costs as their main issue. The employer-based system we have is not working. It gives insurance companies all of the power. Medicare for All would ensure that everyone in this country has access to quality health care, and that we are able finally to control the costs of care. I am firmly committed to making this goal a reality when I get to Congress. We have to do better."