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This is Kshama Kawant and Socialist Alternatives' message accompanying
their petition urging Sanders to run as an independent if Hillary is the
Democratic Party nominee: http://movement4bernie.org/. I understand that
another, similar petition is circulating.
I support this action, and I for one have phone banked and contributed
to the Bernie campaign, for reasons I've already stated on this list,
but I emphasize that I have been doing so mainly because Bernie is the
one who, uniquely, has incurred appropriate enmity from capital because
he's 'aroused the sleeping dogs of class struggle' (as economist Paul
Samuelson once fearfully put it), carefully steering among issues to
garner maximum support for a broad left agenda; he has made it possible
for millions, including many who have never before entered the political
process, to realize that they have numbers, potential strength and
political clout; that the demands made in the Sanders campaign are
reasonable and necessary; that the failure, and extreme unlikelihood
that the major parties and their candidates can or will act on them is
directly related to what Bernie terms the billions from Wall Street
being shoveled to our 'representatives' in government, including Hillary
but not Bernie; that it's not us who created this mess and should
therefore support the lesser evil (which of them is which?): it's those
who voted for her in the primaries, instead of the major party candidate
with the only message responsive to massive need and the most support
among independents and youth in the polls, who bear that responsibility;
and even though some polls show that right now 30% or so will either
join a 3rd party movement or will sit the election out and the rest will
vote for Hillary, nevertheless they can all if they choose be the
nucleus of a third party in US politics. My experience has been that,
once the process becomes evident to us, we rarely go back to the old
crap. If any opt for Hillary or Trump, there's not much else besides
what select Bernie supporters, Kshama and her party, the Greens and a
few others are doing that can be done to turn it around.
Otherwise, it's very dead and dull around here on the left, and the
agenda and likely missteps of the powerful are exceedingly dangerous. I
have read what Diana Johnstone and Doug Henwood have written about
Hillary; she is as treacherous as I had known her to be and then some.
But our political options are limited: the Democratic Party of course
was fashioned in its origins of, by and for capital and propertied
interests, with the rest of us being shoehorned in much later, on
capital's terms. Bernie, though certainly leaving much to be desired,
appears to have tacked and jibed in politics as an independent of sorts
for 45 years, mainly with the desired direction guiding him. It is
exceedingly hostile ground. It is nevertheless the process through which
fateful decisions affecting all of humanity are made and which therefore
cannot be shunned.
I agree with most of what Politico, Michael Yates, Paul Street and
others whose critical opinions have been posted here say about what the
reality of a campaign within the Democratic Party entails - except to
the extent that they might ignore or dispute any of the above (and to
the extent that Paul Street suggests that Bernie's campaign was a
contrivance inuring to the benefit of the party).
We can hope that Bernie supporters including Socialist Alternative (and
the Green Party) are using the Bernie mailing list to get their most
persuasive arguments to those who have supported him; also that the
Green Party can get on the ballot in every state, although I understand
now that, two months before the nominating convention and five and a
half months before the election, they're on the ballot in only 21
states. I will help and I expect those on this list stateside will.
This is an opportunity for which we may have to wait a long time for a
recurrence, in the bowels of capital - which we can be sure will stop at
nothing to prevent repetition of this sort of powerful opening, to which
so many are responding.
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