Time for consciousness-raising and direct action that can elect savvy, progressive reform candidates
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Octavio-Cortez, both hailing from New York (my home state, too), are a potently-appealing team of class warriors. For that is what America needs to transcend excessive focus on right vs. left, liberal vs. conservative, let alone obsessions with race, gender, culture wars and regional differences. The 83 year-old guy in the twilight of his long career and the young, vigorous leader of progressive Democrats are barnstorming the country, drawing huge crowds and getting this simple message out: until 1300 billionaire oligarchs, with money-grubbing, anti-democracy libertarians leading the cruel oligarchic coup, are neutralized and political payola neutered, the besieged middle and working class will stay under the thumb. Literally, trillions of dollars since Reagan have “migrated” to the top tenth of one percent – and every disaster, economic or political, since then has accelerated inequality of wealth and income. What need not be a zero sum game is exactly that – and in only one direction.
Left-leaning populism (echoing its 1890’s heroic kin who dared take on Robber Barons) gets a new (and belated) shot in the arm. No, Sanders is not perfect, and AOC makes deals with elitist powers, but their protest rallies are a refreshing torrent of effective activism challenging the cowardice of the “vast leftwing conspiracy” (establishment Democratic leadership). Either true democratic populists topple the growing dominance of the unspeakable richies – from inheritance, new monopolies, stock machinations, unjust tax breaks, or nefarious contrivance – or everyone, everywhere faces a harsh future, across global culture, arts, politics, economics, foreign affairs, climate change and imperialistic seizures, with or without violence.
In a fundraising pitch, Sanders argues that big crowds reinforce the push for real changes for real people:
Huge numbers are “not just saying NO to oligarchy, but saying YES to raising the minimum wage, YES to expanding Social Security, YES to guaranteeing health care as a human right, YES, to cutting the cost of prescription drugs, YES to paid family and medical leave, YES to equal pay for equal work, YES to more affordable housing, YES to making childcare and higher education affordable to all, YES to taking on the existential threat of climate change.”
The Sanders/AOC rallies, full of Dems and independents, are America’s most visible “working class movement” – a dramatic contrast to the appalling, unprecedented Trumpist assault on workers, safe working conditions, government employees, women (pregnant or not), pensioners, poor people without health care, decent housing, and basic nutrition, illegally-deported dissenters, abused asylum seekers with or without papers, critical journalists plus law firms that dared prosecute Trump criminality. Per the Wash Post,
“We are living in a moment of extraordinary danger, and how we respond to this moment will not only impact our lives but it will affect the lives of our kids and future generations,” Sanders told 36,000 people. “We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of our country.” The Trump administration “is moving us rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society — and Mr. Trump, we ain’t going there.”
Neither the message nor vision is new, but importantly Sanders, AOC and others are invading red House districts in Utah, Idaho, and Montana, plus contested CA seats to begin larger reforms by reforming who gets elected. The anti-oligarchy movement wants to replace House primitives where Dems have lost ground, whether with Dems or independents. The challenge is not only to slavish Trumpists but to tone-deaf Dems who refuse to organize against the worst of big business, now rampaging against workers, resources, and the environment to amass unsustainable profits no lavish life-style will ever spend.
Reform campaign funding and bad taxation
Thus the growing Sanders/AOC class-war juggernaut confronts super PACs payola billions while pushing its humanistic, “democratic socialist” agenda to rebalance unjust wealth inequality by taxing billionaires, closing loopholes for crony capitalism, and redeeming federalism as positive life support, even life lines, for the vast majority, conservative or liberal, driven yearly into poverty, bad health, and shorter lives.
Former Sanders’ adviser Faiz Shakir explains the huge crowds and massive attention to good populism, opposite the rightwing, super-nationalist, elitist variety, that channels the wrath of regular people “toward the billionaire class and ‘the hubris and lack of humanity’ in people like Musk.” As in 2016, when he was unfairly elbowed aside by spineless Democratic stalwarts, Sanders’ popularity surpasses the rejected Dem brand because he’s “a class-based populist warrior against concentrations of wealth and power,” Shakir said.
That’s the focus of the Sanders/AOC vision: that class rigidity, and controls by the super-rich to concentrate even greater wealth, causes much national misery, driving the decimation of the middle and working class populations with dead-end jobs and stolen political influence. Talking about hard economic realities, especially the U.S. government viciously (illegally) stripped of critical social support programs, these rallies dare talk class war and class oppression via money and power, both in campaigns and in policy betrayals.
Positives trump just dumping Trump
As Amy Walter, heading the Cook Political Report, puts it, this protest movement offers a far more “compelling” and “unifying message” from Dems than that “Trump was evil,” committed to reverse why nearly half judged a criminal superior to the younger, smarter, far less compromised Kamala Harris.
As a recent Sanders’ interview made clear, while Democrats have done “a pretty good job” fighting for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights, they have failed “the needs of the working class of the country, creating more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever seen.” Democrats, he said, have “got to accept their fair share of the blame” for what he describes as a “corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaires to buy elections.” And later in Nevada, Sanders declared, “You have a two-party system, both parties dominated by big money equally.”
Ocasio-Cortez in Los Angeles emphasized positive politics, “This isn’t just about Republican attacks on working people. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too,” [as] this “movement is not about partisan labels” but for electing Dems and independents who “know how to stand for the working class.”
AOC and Sanders are buttressed by other Dems and independents favoring newcomers like Nebraska’s Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and union leader who threatened Rethug senator Deb Fischer – and whom Sanders calls “a model for the future.” Joining the left-populist brigade, who for years included the always articulate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), are Senator Chris Murphy (CT), Rep. Maxwell Frost (FL), Chris Deluzio (PA), Pramila Jayapal (Wash. State), Ro Khanna (CA), and Greg Casar (TX). In March Rep Deluzio spoke with fervor in the House that it was time for progressive Dems to embrace a “spirit of economic populism” by “fighting for a life that people can afford,” “bringing corporate power to heel” and “taking on the corruption that pervades this town.”
COMMENTS