Why Bernie's Endorsements Are Important

I'm sure you've heard that Bernie endorsed 6 congressional candidates yesterday-- 5 for the House and one for the Senate. It was a big move, especially his endorsement's of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush against incumbent Democrats Eliot Engel and Lacy Clay, not to mention his endorsement of Charles Booker over Schumer's handpicked status quo candidate in the Kentucky primary to pick an opponent for Mitch McConnell. In fact, let me say a few words about that first.

Amy McGrath is a Republican-lite nothing candidate-- perfect for Schumer, not what Kentucky or the American people need however. She has nothing to offer anyone except she's better than the odious McConnell, she was in the military, and she's a she. Ted Lieu is an example of someone who served well in the military and who then came to Congress and served well there. But he's the exception. Most of the former military men and women, regardless of how great they did in the highly structured military universe, have been complete duds in Congress-- wastes of seats or worse. Everything about Booker and McGrath says Booker would be a better senator. That's why AOC endorsed him and it's why Bernie did so yesterday: "As Louisville has become an epicenter of national tragedy and protests due to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee, Charles has shown leadership by showing up on the frontlines. He was an endorser of our campaign for president and supports progressive policies such as criminal justice reform, Medicare for All, and getting big money out of politics."

Booker is expected to do very well in Louisville and in communities with significant black populations. Where he needs help is with white Democrats-- the same people who backed Bernie when he ran for president in 2016. Statewide, it was very close-- Hillary 212,550 (46.8%) and Bernie 210,626 (46.23%). She came out ahead because of black voters in Jefferson County (Louisville)-- where she beat Bernie 57.3% to 40.3%-- and Fayette County (Lexington)-- where she beat Bernie 52.8% to 45.0%. Outside of those two counties, Kentucky was Bernie country. Take Ballard County. Bernie beat Hillary 52% to 32%. Those are the kinds of counties where Bernie's endorsement will help boost Booker. Carlisle County-- Bernie 57.5% to 25.6%; Floyd County-- Bernie 54.1% to 31.4%; Harlan County-- Bernie 62.8% to 25.9%; Letcher County-- Bernie 56.9% to 26.7%; Marshall County-- Bernie 50.8% to 34.7%; Pike County-- Bernie 54.3% to 26.1%...

Bernie's endorsements for House seats included 4 who have also been endorsed by Blue America: Cori Bush (MO), Mike Siegel (TX), Mondaire Jones (NY) and Jamaal Bowman (NY) and yesterday's action underlined what Andrew Marantz wrote before the endorsements came out: Bernie Sanders is not done fighting. I wouldn't blame him if he was; but that's not who he is. He'll never finish-- and that's lucky for America. How many politicians could write in an introduction that "This is a book about hopes and dreams that will not be realized in our lifetime." Not may of them, unfortunately, think beyond their own lifetimes. Is an American curse. In business, someone is a visionary if they think beyond the financial quarter! Bernie continued that his book "examines the two major political parties-- neither of which comes close to representing the needs of working people-- and the frustrations and successes of helping to create an independent progressive political movement." I doubt you'd be reading DWT if you didn't relate to that.

Marantz interviewed him. Bernie contrasted the demonstrations that are going on today with the antiwar demonstrations of the '60s. Today's demonstrations are, he said, "focussed on systemic racism, on police brutality, and police murder. But I believe also that a lot of that anger that so many people are feeling goes beyond police murder, and it goes to the fact that we have a President who is a narcissist and a pathological liar. It goes, I think, into an economy in which many of the young people who are demonstrating today don’t have jobs, and the likelihood is, unless we make fundamental changes, they’re not going to have jobs. And it goes to a health-care system which is clearly dysfunctional, and it goes to neglect about the crisis of climate change. So I think it speaks to the over-all powerlessness that people are now feeling amidst all of the crises that we are experiencing with, clearly, a President who is a fraud and a danger to the country. You add all that stuff up, you got millions of people who are angry and are trying to fight back."

So what metrics caused the New Yorker to come up with that headline about Bernie still fighting? How about this? "As a United States senator, I’m going to do everything that I can to make sure that another major piece of emergency legislation is passed as quickly as possible to deal with the extraordinary suffering that the working families of this country are experiencing right now. It’s very easy to ignore the reality that you’ve got millions of families in Vermont, and across this country, who literally have no food in their cupboards right now; who are scared to death; and, in fact, are being evicted from their homes, from their apartments, or are losing their homes. So where my attention is right now is to do everything I can as a senator to make sure that we move forward as quickly and aggressively as we can for a major piece of legislation which addresses the crises facing working families today. That means, in my view, the need for what we call a Paycheck Security Act, which does what European countries do, and that makes sure that every unemployed worker continues to receive his or her paycheck and the benefits that go with that. For those who don’t [have health care], I want Medicare to cover all health-care needs during the crisis. I believe every family, every individual, should get two thousand dollars a month during the crisis. We’ve got to save the Postal Service, which is a huge issue, and make sure that everybody has enough food to survive on. So that’s the immediate crisis." But that was just the beginning.

Longer-term, obviously, what I am trying to do is to bring people together to defeat Trump and to elect Biden. It is no great secret that Joe Biden and I have very serious political differences, but, at this particular moment in history, what is most important is to defeat Trump, who, as you implied a moment ago, is literally a threat to American democracy, and is moving this country not only in a dangerous way but in an authoritarian way, as well. Trump has got to be defeated and, in a variety of ways, I intend to play an active role in that process.

Thirdly, it is not good enough just to elect Joe Biden. We’ve got to continue the movement in this country for transformative change, and to understand that we are way, way, way behind many other industrialized countries in providing for the needs of working families. So the fight continues for a Medicare for All single-payer program, and that becomes especially obvious when you have seen in recent months millions of people losing their jobs. They’re also losing their health care because, under our system, health care is an employee benefit not a human right. So I’m going to continue that fight, and, no question, we are gaining momentum at the grass roots. And on and on it goes.

I think one of the myths that is being exploited right now is that I hear my Republican colleagues talk about, Well, you know, yes, this pandemic has been devastating, but, a few months ago, we had this great economy. This really great economy. I don’t know how you have this “great economy” when half of your people are living paycheck to paycheck. And what we are seeing right now, the great economic message of today, is that, when you live paycheck to paycheck and you miss a few paychecks, a few weeks of work, your family is suddenly now in economic desperation. Literally. Struggling to put food on the table and pay the rent.

So we’ve got to rethink. If there is anything that I hope we achieve in the midst of this unprecedented moment in American history, it’s that we use this moment to rethink, as I have said before, some of the basic tenets and institutions of American society, and learn from this pandemic and economic collapse so that we move this country in a very, very different direction.

Mike Siegel (TX-10) was the only Texan Bernie endorsed today. I knew it meant a lot to Mike personally but I asked him if he thought it would mean anything to the campaign. "Bernie," he told me this morning, "is one of the prophets of this movement, to bring progressive politics and movement organizing into the halls of Congress. He’s the man who 'wrote the damn bill' on Medicare for All, a policy that gives us a powerful framework to demand that healthcare  be guaranteed as a human right. He’s a populist leader who has openly and consistently fought the corruption of our political system, and the billionaire donors who are distorting our democracy. And perhaps most of all, his 2020 campaign galvanized people of conscience, with the commitment to 'fight for someone I don’t know.' His endorsement is a clear signal to this district, that we are building a movement, that we are fighting for the people, and we won’t stop working and organizing until we win!"

Marantz asked Bernie about his critique of corporate media, particularly about the unfair role MSNBC plays in shills for the Democratic establishment. Bernie said it had a lot to do with Medicare for All and the transformational, fundamental changes his campaign was all about. President Bernie would be a threat to all wealthy people, not just Republicans. "It wasn’t that we were just fighting for Medicare for All-- we were taking on the health-care industry. Not just fighting to lower prescription-drug costs-- taking on the greed and collusion and price fixing of the pharmaceutical industry. Not just fighting for environmental protection, we were taking on the whole fossil-fuel industry. Not just taking on the greed of Wall Street, but we were talking about breaking up the major financial institutions in this country. So, in other words, what made our campaign unique is we took on the entire establishment, and, obviously, corporate media is part of that establishment."

So you can’t ask, Well, if the corporate media acted differently? They’re not going to act differently. They are the establishment. They are owned by the establishment. Just as one example, one tiny example: at a time when we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right, when we pay twice as much per capita as do people of other countries, and in many cases have worse outcomes,how many television programs have you seen, Andrew, that talk about Medicare for All and the contrast between our profit-driven, private-insurance-dominated health-care system and other systems? Have you seen one program on that?

So it’s not what they did to my campaign. Of course, I knew that that was going to happen. They came up with every line that they could. One of them was, Bernie can’t beat Trump, which, I thought then, and I think now, we were probably in the strongest position to beat Trump. Or, Bernie’s this, or Bernie’s that, or whatever-- “Bernie bros”-- whatever the line was. Nothing surprised me. We knew that that would happen. We knew that our Medicare for All proposal would be opposed by the health-care industry, and they and others spent millions of dollars in super-pacs lying about what I’m trying to do. Did that surprise me? No. Did the role of MSNBC or the media in general surprise me? No, it didn’t. That is the establishment that we have taken on, and that is why we have worked so hard to try to build an alternative media. I’m proud of the fact that we have a lot more viewers and followers on social media and live streams than many other Democrats do. But we worked hard at that, and we do that because I believe strongly that we need an alternative vehicle, an alternative media, to talk about the ideas that impact working society, because it’s very naïve to believe that the corporate media will do that.

...I am disappointed, obviously, that I didn’t win, and that our movement didn’t win, because I think this is a moment in history where we need transformative change in this country. So there’s nobody out there, obviously, more disappointed than I am. And I know millions of others feel the same way. But what I want people to understand is we have advanced the agenda an enormous way forward, that the campaign that we ran, as I mentioned to you a moment ago, was not, just, Oh, I want better health care and I want to improve the Affordable Care Act, or I want to build more solar panels. What our campaign was about was taking on the entire establishment, including the corporate media, including Wall Street, and the drug companies, and the insurance companies, and the military-industrial complex, and the prison-industrial complex, and the fossil-fuel industry, and the whole bunch. We took them on. And what we showed is that the American people, in fact, are prepared not just for incremental change. They want to move this country forward in a very transformative way. And what you’re seeing on the streets of America today-- beautiful young people, and others, of all races, all backgrounds, standing up in the fight for justice-- I believe you’re going to see that spreading. Not only for racial justice and police-department reform. You’re going to see it for economic justice and the ending of starvation wages in America. You’re going to see it for health-care justice and the understanding that health care is a human right, not a privilege. You’re going to see it in terms of climate justice and the understanding that we cannot allow this planet to be destroyed by the fossil-fuel industry.

We planted very powerful seeds, and those seeds are going to grow, and you’re seeing them out on the streets of America today. So I say to people who have been supportive of my campaigns that the fight has just begun, and, as I mentioned when I suspended the campaign, the campaign ends, but the struggle continues. And anybody who knows anything about history-- whether it’s workers’ rights, whether it’s civil rights, whether it’s women’s rights, whether it’s gay rights, whether it’s environmental rights-- understands that change does not happen overnight. It really does not. It changes when political consciousness changes; it changes when millions of people get involved in the process and take to the streets. That’s how change takes place. And we are in the moment when I believe that in fact is going to happen.