Nearing 2018, Clinton loyalists have taken it upon themselves to slander the most liked politician in America (who stands for the most statistically favorable issues.) Choosing to rehash the June 2016 primaries with slanderous narratives about Sanders while “Queen Hillary” drinks chardonnay in the woods, goes on a book blame tour, and turns down the Women’s Convention. All, has given rise to brazen North-Korea style propaganda outlets such as Verrit – the left’s own Breitbart. Thus, putting the proverbial nail in the coffin on a center-left already much indistinguishable from the right. At such a turbulent, pivotal time in American history post-election stress is best alleviated by pushing ‘Bernie tax-returns’ myths, not by fighting for healthcare, Puerto Rico, and real issues.
This perpetual smear campaign against progressives by the elite is nothing new. The party establishment has been gatekeeping against populist insurrection since the late 1800’s, when unchecked capitalism-turned-cronyism had robber barons and party bosses annihilating the middle-class. To our own shrinking middle-class, rich TV pundits say, ‘don’t support your best interests.’ Debate-question-leaking media outlets do their best mental gymnastics to convince people single-payer tax hikes aren’t actually less expensive than premiums. They have them rallying against their best interests, and for corrupt politicians who oppose a $15 minimum wage (which doesn’t even match inflation), restoring Glass-Steagall, vote for interventionist regime change wars, and give secret speeches to Wall Street.
It’s a cycle that will never break until politicians no longer have incentive to be beholden to anyone but their constituents. Just follow the money; corporations own politicians, Clinton-donors own the media, and undemocratic superdelegates are not a thing of the past. Nothing will change until the common factor is taken out of the equation and Citizens United is repealed. Until then, we’ve got to stand up for the truth and hold our representatives accountable. Which is why it’s important to fact-check the pettiest, most ludicrous claims from centrists.
“Bernie made Hillary lose the election”
Clintonites content that running a primary, opposition campaign.. against an opponent..in an election somehow made Hillary Clinton lose the general election. Among Russia, Barack Obama, Comey, sexism, self-hating women who voted “for the boys,” the Clinton-run media, voter suppression, the DNC which colluded with her, the Electoral College for not letting her know Wisconsin had electoral votes, Anthony Weiner who are also to blame of course. Pay no mind to the fact that a court conceded the DNC had the right to rig the 2016 primary against Sanders. Or that the left-wing media is run by Clinton Foundation donors, Hillary will find a way to victimize herself.
The logic follows that Bernie Sanders made Queen Hillary look bad by comparison by contrasting her neo-liberal policies and history, with his own progressive history and vision for America. Bernie Sanders was a detriment to her in the general because he exhumed corruption in a broken system and factually outlined policy differences between the two candidates. Because logic. I mean he “promised ponies,” Clinton mocked, ponies which happen to be the where the numbers are at might I add.
–Fifty-eight percent of Americans support single-payer, 88% oppose cuts to Social Security, voters in red states want Medicaid expanded, 68% think the wealthy pay too little taxes, 64% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,58% support breaking up big banks, 63% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, 53% support labor union law, 64% think corporations don’t pay their fair share.
Did Donald Trump not face competition and relentless attacks from 16 other Republicans and the entire mainstream media? The entire idea that a primary candidate, running a campaign is to blame for a general election loss, is laughable, and drips of bitterness. Her loss was foreseeable to anyone who understands her polling numbers were scraping by within the margin of error. (While they showed Sanders handedly defeating Trump by at least 10 points.) To anyone who understands that centrism lost democrats sixty-nine House seats and 13 Senate seats. That (faux) populism won over a disenchanted electorate – many who had previously voted for Obama. Who else had a populist, working-class message and wasn’t absolutely lying about it? Sanders, who made economic inequality the platform of his campaign, would have obliterated policy-outline-free Trump. Centrism, is why she lost, not the only remaining beacon of honesty and integrity in Washington which her history pales in comparison to.
Let’s blame the “damned emails” guy who wholeheartedly campaigned for her and has unwaveringly remained one of Trump’s toughest critics. Sadly, politics is not a gentleman’s nor an honest man’s sport.
Gun Control
Hillary propagated the narrative that Bernie Sanders ‘has been largely a very reliable supporter of the NRA,’ during the election. That is an outright lie. He has a D- rating from the NRA, supports increased gun control, wants instant background checks, and wants to eliminate the gun-show loophole. It’s literally on his website: he’s “voted in favor of a nationwide ban on assault weapons, a nationwide ban on high-capacity magazines of over ten rounds, and nationwide expanded background checks that address unsafe loopholes.”
Sanders has only been criticized for not blaming manufacturers for crimes committed with their product. Should car manufacturers be blamed if someone runs you over with their car? It a completely illogical attack. He’s voted for the Brady Bill when it finally called for instant background checks and supported it holding retailers who knowingly sold weapons to criminals accountable not when it punished those who sold weapons to those who passed background checks and later used them in crimes. It’s called nuance.
Abortion
He’s most recently been ostracized for endorsing Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill that requiring doctors to merely inform women of their right to an ultrasound prior to an abortion. Not mandating them to receive one. The Senator with a lifetime pro-choice record, who’s strong proponent of women’s healthcare – from contraceptives to voting no on restricting UN funding for population control policies – has been dubbed a misogynist republican. All for endorsing a Democratic candidate who supported a bill which inform women of their right to an ultrasound. The center-left is absolutely deranged.
Bernie Bros Narrative
Per Wikileaks, during the Democratic primary the Clinton campaign coordinated with columnists using identity politics to undermine Bernie Sanders through fabricated race and gender narratives. See Hillary’s heinously condescending remarks on women who didn’t vote for her because their “fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for “the girl.” How sadly out of touch. She still can’t grapple with the fact that she lost to one of the most disliked candidates in history because she herself was one of the most disliked candidates in history.
Data Shows High Favorability from Minorities Towards Bernie and Decreasing Favorability Against Democrats:
This entire idea that leftists are nothing but straight white males is also a fabricated narrative attempting to whitewash the millions like us. In a leap of logic, it labors to label a diverse movement as ‘racist’ for being “too white” completely ignoring the real numbers. On top of remaining the most popular politician in America across the polling board (from Harvard to Fox), he is viewed favorably by 73% of African-American voters, and 68% of Hispanics. These are trajectionary election winning numbers. Furthermore, the data often shows these groups choosing that they “don’t know enough to rate,” which hits the nail on the head on why Bernie lost against the name-brand Clinton political
Machine. All while surveys show a 38% favorability with the Democratic party across the board and “fewer black women saying that the Democratic Party ‘best represents’ their interests.”
Could it be that economic inequality is decimating the middle-class as the wealth gap grows between minorities and Caucasian workers? African American women earn 64 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents for every dollar made by a white male. Despite what pundits might say, brown people are smart enough to think for themselves. They’re seeing past the corporatist Democrats identity-politics-entrenched bromides, and looking for real economic justice and the undertaking of corruption.
Paid propagandists try as they might, to convince us tokenism is a measure of progressiveness while their candidates sell us wars, bail out banks, vote against lowering pharmaceutical prices, and decline to prosecute mortgage fraud criminals. This is their version of social justice. True equality, as democratic socialist Martin Luther King Jr. advocated, requires economic equality, which Democrats no longer pretend to address. (Per the ongoing DNC progressive purge.)
“He Hasn’t Accomplished Anything”
The center left loves pushing the soundbyte that Bernie was not an effective legislator. Nevermind that he was christened the “amendment king” from 1995-2007 when he “passed 17 amendments by a recorded roll call vote — more than any other member in the House.” Or that in the current Congress, he ranks fourth in the number of roll call amendments passed.
Of course, that pales in comparison to Hillary’s tremendous Iraq war and its subsequent hundreds of thousands child casualties. Or her great feat in making Honduras the murder capital of the world after her 2009 Honduran coup d’état.
Tax Returns
This is the laziest attack of them all. Bernie released his tax returns in April 2016 and they showed he made just $205,000 in income. According to all his financial disclosures he’s one of the poorest people in Congress. Calls for his tax returns only happened after the Sanders campaign called on her to release her secret Wall Street speech transcripts. I’m not even sure what the angle is in this attack. Hillary has made $13 million in Wall Street speeches but let’s attack the guy making $205,000 a year.
The power of these relentless attacks crumbles against Sanders consistent fight for the majority of Americans – even those who’ve fallen victim to centrist propaganda. They’ve chosen to ostracize him and purge progressives from the DNC because as Sanders put it back in May, “They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.” The reason Democrats don’t mind losing political clout by ostracizing his base and his widely favorable ideas, is because it’s their duty to protect the interests of their campaign financiers.
If they want to win, they must reject centrism which doesn’t win anymore as evidenced by the 2016 election. (Did Trump win by pivoting?) They must wholly embrace progressive policies (which is is where the electorate numbers are at), policies with majority support that will even court the most deep-red Trump counties. Democrats must embrace the fact that the parties have been moving apart for the last 40 years, and few and fewer moderates get elected. Centrism failed Democrats for the past 8 years, and Bernie-style-politics is the dying party’s last hope. Bernie Sanders now has higher favorability ratings than Hillary Clinton among her own voters for crying out loud.
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