Also ridiculing "rigged elections" and "fake news" -- two other weapons used on him -- the Vermont Senator's relationship to the Democratic Party descends from loyal support to abject subservience.
Bernie burned down his credibility when he fluffed for Hillary after the DNC-rigged primary in 2016. He then doubled down in 2020 by being a Russiagater, and referring to Joe Biden as his friend.
The most disappointing thing for me this entire presidential cycle was Bernie's unwillingness to stand up and fight. I am a center right voter for the most part and I enthusiastically voted for Bernie twice in the NH primary in both 2016 and 2020.
It could be somewhat forgiven his capitulation in 2016 as he was still an outsider and his national profile rose so fast as his ideas caught fire for really the first time. There was no such excuse this year, especially as the DNC did him so dirty four years before. Joe Biden is everything that is wrong with the corporate, establishment Democratic Party that Bernie so vehemently has fought against his whole public life. Corrupt, a tool of the financial services industry for decades, wrong on basically every foreign policy decision in the last 40 years, and a history of racist policies (he WROTE the goddamn 1994 Crime Bill)!
The fact that he spent the entire election cycle calling Joe his friend and saying he "agrees with him more than he disagrees" will forever taint my memory of Bernie. It's one thing to be agreeable and non-combative; it's quite another to just have no backbone whatsoever.
Don't know about the rest of everyone, but I'm quite enjoying 'Greenwald Unleashed' :) It's really what I've always wanted. Go get 'em Glenn. So much love for what you're doing.
Anyway...
This excellent article reminded me of another on subject. While not detracting from what positives Bernie brings to the obvious sham of 'distraction from global looting' that is US politics, he has been conspicuously subservient to the ghoulish/unforgivable machinations of the systemically corrupt dem party (perhaps just an innocent victim of the delusion of "changing the party from within"? Perhaps controlled opposition?). I'll let you all make of that what you will.
Whenever I encounter a Bernie supporter (as I once was - also was an Obama supporter which now makes me throw up a little in my mouth as I admit it), I send them this article. If you bother to read it, be sure to note the date (May 2015) and appreciate how accurately this writer calls out Bernie's eventual performance. That he once again repeats in 2020. So, is he just lame? Or is he complicit?
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdoggin for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016
The only thing standing between Trump and a landslide win at this point is an honest signature verification. Unfortunately, Glenn hasn’t told Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, and Jimmy dore about it yet so the left literally doesn’t know how close Biden is to losing. I think Glenn is aware but doesn’t want to be tinfoil hat guy.
This is my least favorite article of yours that I have ever read. With all due respect, I don't think its founded on proven facts. The gist seems to be that you know Sanders has become a sell out to the centrist Dems and will remain that way for eternity. But the reality is, politics makes strange bedfellows. What did you expect him to do when Biden got the Dem nomination? The only way to defeat Trump was to get onboard. How do you know that once Biden takes office, Sanders won't return to his more left-leaning roots?
Also, I agree with the commenter who wrote "We do face some serious dangers from the hidden parts of the state (and its corporate allies), from distorted and inaccurate news, and from anti-democratic practices in election campaigns. But the slogans of Deep State, Fake News, and Rigged Elections are so vague, and so often used without any trustworthy journalism behind them, that a lot of pretty reasonable people develop a habit of rejecting them because they've become excuses for people to believe whatever they want to believe. To alert people to the real dangers, you can't just repeat these somewhat discredited slogans; you have to develop a way of speaking that clearly rejects the worst ways of overusing these slogans while drawing attention to solid evidence for what's troubling."
I am immediately put-off when I see someone use the term "Deep State". I think it would be beneficial for you to remove it from your vocabulary or define what it means to you. It has become a term most frequently used by whackos. It brings to mind QAnon who helped to discredit the valid concerns of troubling matters in the Demo party -- via turning the Podesta emails into a grand conspiracy theory of a Dem-run pedophile pizza parlor being headed by Hilary Clinton, who would soon be jailed for it. I think it would help if a different term was used to describe the problems that are still relevant and in need of being put into check in the next four years.
Just my two cents. I learn a lot from reading your politically historical writings. I am happy that you are sharing what you know of the problematic recent history -- so they can be thwarted from repeating in the future.
I think it is pretty clear that in the age post Citizens United and McCutcheon, who controls the money within the party can control the party with an iron fist. That's why nobody dares cross Schumer or Pelosi in any way, and thus whatever the billionaire donors ask of those two is what the rest of the party falls behind. This consolidation behind the national security state, MIC and mainstream media as well places any democratic process within the Democratic party at the bottom tier of the agenda.
To survive within the totalitarian political parties you must prove your fealty by lying to you constituents and spreading propaganda, even propaganda you know will be used against you. Either you are on board with the Establishment/Deep State/Elite Class agenda, or you end up like Tulsi Gabbard, cut off at the knees, ignored, blacklisted and de-funded.
Since the Democratic Party is a dictatorship of billionaire donors and power security state interests, nothing democratic, that benefits the public in a meaningful way we will pass through it, nor can we expect any honesty or transparency over vital issues. Either we form a new party, or a new citizens assembly and scrap the House and Senate.
Bernie continues to be a huge disappointment to multi-millions of his supporters. By now he is a distant and hopeless apparition.
I do have a suggestion to Tulsi Gabbard, an exact opposite of Bernie's incompetence – from one of her numerous ardent admirers
Tulsi was a rising star at DNC in 2015 until she declared her support of democratic-socialist Bernie and was instantly “excommunicated”; soon Hillary brazenly proclaimed that Tulsi is a “Russian asset”
Now that Trump has defeated himself -- Tulsi could do an invaluable service to our country - to have a video conference (or three sequential) stating:
1. The entire (stupid and so dangerous) anti-Russian narrative and Ukraine impeachment “entertainment” were deliberate fabrications – the entire Democratic structure knew it from the start
2. Requesting a major investigation of chronic and deep corruption within DNC – starting with Biden-Hunter corruption
3. Announce that she will join a third party and hopefully become presidential candidate in 2024
Bernie has the right policies and the moral core, but he has no killer instinct. For all his anti-establishment rhetoric, deep down he still wants to be liked by the same establishment that has been openly trying to destroy him and crush his movement. What the left needs is Bernie’s ideas and moral honesty, but combined with Trump’s killer instinct. And a new people’s party, not owned by billionaires/big corporations and the war machine.
Glenn - Sanders does not run to be president. Sanders runs to raise money to support his lifestyle. Running for president is a great way to campaign to remain a senator, an office without term limits. Ron Paul had the same modus operandi at the other end of the bookshelf, and Rand is continuing the family business. Warren plays the same supporting role too. You get to build a national following, maintain a high profile, collect a stack of IOUs and project an undeserved moral leadership role. It makes running to keep the senator gig almost free.
If you make it to the White House, the best you get is one more campaign. Then irrelevance like Jimmy Carter, waiting for the tap on the shoulder like Bill Clinton, or the void of Sainthood (Obama). The Clintons complained about being broke after their term-limited career ended, and the Deep State has Epstein, amongst a wardrobe full of skeletons, to rattle should they ever step out of line.
Who needs the grief of winning, if you are a professional politician?
In the 2020 campaign Sanders' wife picked up 15% on all his ad spend. He flew for thousands of miles, and I bet Mrs Sanders ran his travel bookings on her Amex, with a % fee as well.
In 2016 Sanders was gifted a house. He's worth millions. Like Biden. On a senator's salary. Sanders did that by being in the swamp, scratching backs, running the tollbooth, campaigning but not quite winning the top gig. It's a performance. He plays the role of Bernie Sanders to perfection. And he can run again in 2024.
Sanders once attacked “millionaires and billionaires.” Sometime around 2017, he dropped the millionaire part from his criticisms. That’s when he was bought and paid for. He was once an important, anti-establishment voice. Now he’s nothing but a weak sellout traitor to his own cause.
Bernie Sanders has been around Burlington, Vermont for decades. I’m just surprised so many people took him seriously as time has shown that he’s a talker and not into doing any heavy-lifting. Bernie and his grifter wife have become millionaires with substantial properties, cash assets, and retirement systems, I will give them that, though. His form of traveling evangelism has served him well.
Unfortunately Bernie has always been a spineless Democratic party sycophant who spouted some good rhetoric while supporting all the worst machination of the DC establishment - the original AOC.
One of the worst examples of this behavior by Bernie was 10 years ago, when he struck an agreement with Ron Paul to introduce into the Senate a real audit of the FED, which would, for the first time, give the people a look behind the financial curtain. At the 13th hour, Bernie broke his pledge and capitulated to Obama, Chris Dodd and the banks by modifying the bill to allow them to maintain their cloak of secrecy.
Any doubts that remained about Bernie should have been snuffed out in 2016 after his own party rigged the primary against him and shit all over him, but he still went out to campaign for Hillary Clinton.
How can anyone expect a guy who won't stand up for himself to stand up for you?
I could easily write for a few weeks pausing only to sleep and eat, about the reasons Bernie is and has always been, his whole life, a raging fraud, a sinister, lying, creepy, greedy, neurotic little scumbag weasel. Part of the reason I haven't done so yet is because I've been constantly postponing the job of sorting approx. 10 000 bookmarks about US politics. I spent somewhere between a 1000 and 2000 hours defending him during the 2016 primaries. I finally saw through him when his own staff did, when they (except a few who couldn't afford to quit their day job) told him to go fuck himself and quit, some in tears, the fall of 2016. I started an unbelievable tumble down a rabbit hole into a world I was almost alone in until Jimmy Dore showed up there after I (and a few others) had bombarded him for a long time with probably less than a percent of what there is to know about Bernie to realize he's not weak or afraid or playing 4D chess, he's a hustler and a fraud and he's completely aware of it and so is in large part the Democratic Party, especially Hillary, Biden and Obama. Though Bernie has achieved what he wanted to achieve and probably won't run for president in 2024, it's vital people find out the things there are to know about him in order to be equipped to identify the Bernie Cult 2.0 (and future versions), which is headed by AOC and the squad, which will have the same amount of impact on the Democratic party as the first one, which was at best none, but in reality, it pushed it to the right by helping cover up how far to the right they really are and instilling a fear into them what would happen if they in any way showed any kind of of willingness to compromise with rationality and decency. According to a study referred to by the WSJ, 70% of Americans are furious with both parties. They're fine with that,but they're not fine with giving those voters an option to do something about it, a candidate to vote for they don't control. So far, based on how AOC votes in Congress, she's 5.2% a progressive and 94.8% Nancy Pelosi. Based on what she says, she's a wonderful new Bernie Sanders and a victory for women. I'm gonna stop writing now, for now. I'm gonna start sorting my bookmarks instead.
I wonder though how much the Russia smears really contributed to his loss. I’m sure it factored a little bit and I think Sanders handled it poorly by dignifying it instead of attacking it as farce. But despite the 24/7 media frenzy on Russia for many years, I think I recall seeing primary polling showing it as a low priority among most voters. I could be wrong though so if anyone disagrees please chime in.
Bernie burned down his credibility when he fluffed for Hillary after the DNC-rigged primary in 2016. He then doubled down in 2020 by being a Russiagater, and referring to Joe Biden as his friend.
The most disappointing thing for me this entire presidential cycle was Bernie's unwillingness to stand up and fight. I am a center right voter for the most part and I enthusiastically voted for Bernie twice in the NH primary in both 2016 and 2020.
It could be somewhat forgiven his capitulation in 2016 as he was still an outsider and his national profile rose so fast as his ideas caught fire for really the first time. There was no such excuse this year, especially as the DNC did him so dirty four years before. Joe Biden is everything that is wrong with the corporate, establishment Democratic Party that Bernie so vehemently has fought against his whole public life. Corrupt, a tool of the financial services industry for decades, wrong on basically every foreign policy decision in the last 40 years, and a history of racist policies (he WROTE the goddamn 1994 Crime Bill)!
The fact that he spent the entire election cycle calling Joe his friend and saying he "agrees with him more than he disagrees" will forever taint my memory of Bernie. It's one thing to be agreeable and non-combative; it's quite another to just have no backbone whatsoever.
Don't know about the rest of everyone, but I'm quite enjoying 'Greenwald Unleashed' :) It's really what I've always wanted. Go get 'em Glenn. So much love for what you're doing.
Anyway...
This excellent article reminded me of another on subject. While not detracting from what positives Bernie brings to the obvious sham of 'distraction from global looting' that is US politics, he has been conspicuously subservient to the ghoulish/unforgivable machinations of the systemically corrupt dem party (perhaps just an innocent victim of the delusion of "changing the party from within"? Perhaps controlled opposition?). I'll let you all make of that what you will.
Whenever I encounter a Bernie supporter (as I once was - also was an Obama supporter which now makes me throw up a little in my mouth as I admit it), I send them this article. If you bother to read it, be sure to note the date (May 2015) and appreciate how accurately this writer calls out Bernie's eventual performance. That he once again repeats in 2020. So, is he just lame? Or is he complicit?
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdoggin for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016
https://blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary
The only thing standing between Trump and a landslide win at this point is an honest signature verification. Unfortunately, Glenn hasn’t told Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, and Jimmy dore about it yet so the left literally doesn’t know how close Biden is to losing. I think Glenn is aware but doesn’t want to be tinfoil hat guy.
Glenn,
This is my least favorite article of yours that I have ever read. With all due respect, I don't think its founded on proven facts. The gist seems to be that you know Sanders has become a sell out to the centrist Dems and will remain that way for eternity. But the reality is, politics makes strange bedfellows. What did you expect him to do when Biden got the Dem nomination? The only way to defeat Trump was to get onboard. How do you know that once Biden takes office, Sanders won't return to his more left-leaning roots?
Also, I agree with the commenter who wrote "We do face some serious dangers from the hidden parts of the state (and its corporate allies), from distorted and inaccurate news, and from anti-democratic practices in election campaigns. But the slogans of Deep State, Fake News, and Rigged Elections are so vague, and so often used without any trustworthy journalism behind them, that a lot of pretty reasonable people develop a habit of rejecting them because they've become excuses for people to believe whatever they want to believe. To alert people to the real dangers, you can't just repeat these somewhat discredited slogans; you have to develop a way of speaking that clearly rejects the worst ways of overusing these slogans while drawing attention to solid evidence for what's troubling."
I am immediately put-off when I see someone use the term "Deep State". I think it would be beneficial for you to remove it from your vocabulary or define what it means to you. It has become a term most frequently used by whackos. It brings to mind QAnon who helped to discredit the valid concerns of troubling matters in the Demo party -- via turning the Podesta emails into a grand conspiracy theory of a Dem-run pedophile pizza parlor being headed by Hilary Clinton, who would soon be jailed for it. I think it would help if a different term was used to describe the problems that are still relevant and in need of being put into check in the next four years.
Just my two cents. I learn a lot from reading your politically historical writings. I am happy that you are sharing what you know of the problematic recent history -- so they can be thwarted from repeating in the future.
His behavior now makes me question what the fuck he was playing at during the two primaries he ran in.
I think it is pretty clear that in the age post Citizens United and McCutcheon, who controls the money within the party can control the party with an iron fist. That's why nobody dares cross Schumer or Pelosi in any way, and thus whatever the billionaire donors ask of those two is what the rest of the party falls behind. This consolidation behind the national security state, MIC and mainstream media as well places any democratic process within the Democratic party at the bottom tier of the agenda.
To survive within the totalitarian political parties you must prove your fealty by lying to you constituents and spreading propaganda, even propaganda you know will be used against you. Either you are on board with the Establishment/Deep State/Elite Class agenda, or you end up like Tulsi Gabbard, cut off at the knees, ignored, blacklisted and de-funded.
Since the Democratic Party is a dictatorship of billionaire donors and power security state interests, nothing democratic, that benefits the public in a meaningful way we will pass through it, nor can we expect any honesty or transparency over vital issues. Either we form a new party, or a new citizens assembly and scrap the House and Senate.
Bernie continues to be a huge disappointment to multi-millions of his supporters. By now he is a distant and hopeless apparition.
I do have a suggestion to Tulsi Gabbard, an exact opposite of Bernie's incompetence – from one of her numerous ardent admirers
Tulsi was a rising star at DNC in 2015 until she declared her support of democratic-socialist Bernie and was instantly “excommunicated”; soon Hillary brazenly proclaimed that Tulsi is a “Russian asset”
Now that Trump has defeated himself -- Tulsi could do an invaluable service to our country - to have a video conference (or three sequential) stating:
1. The entire (stupid and so dangerous) anti-Russian narrative and Ukraine impeachment “entertainment” were deliberate fabrications – the entire Democratic structure knew it from the start
2. Requesting a major investigation of chronic and deep corruption within DNC – starting with Biden-Hunter corruption
3. Announce that she will join a third party and hopefully become presidential candidate in 2024
Bernie has the right policies and the moral core, but he has no killer instinct. For all his anti-establishment rhetoric, deep down he still wants to be liked by the same establishment that has been openly trying to destroy him and crush his movement. What the left needs is Bernie’s ideas and moral honesty, but combined with Trump’s killer instinct. And a new people’s party, not owned by billionaires/big corporations and the war machine.
Glenn - Sanders does not run to be president. Sanders runs to raise money to support his lifestyle. Running for president is a great way to campaign to remain a senator, an office without term limits. Ron Paul had the same modus operandi at the other end of the bookshelf, and Rand is continuing the family business. Warren plays the same supporting role too. You get to build a national following, maintain a high profile, collect a stack of IOUs and project an undeserved moral leadership role. It makes running to keep the senator gig almost free.
If you make it to the White House, the best you get is one more campaign. Then irrelevance like Jimmy Carter, waiting for the tap on the shoulder like Bill Clinton, or the void of Sainthood (Obama). The Clintons complained about being broke after their term-limited career ended, and the Deep State has Epstein, amongst a wardrobe full of skeletons, to rattle should they ever step out of line.
Who needs the grief of winning, if you are a professional politician?
In the 2020 campaign Sanders' wife picked up 15% on all his ad spend. He flew for thousands of miles, and I bet Mrs Sanders ran his travel bookings on her Amex, with a % fee as well.
In 2016 Sanders was gifted a house. He's worth millions. Like Biden. On a senator's salary. Sanders did that by being in the swamp, scratching backs, running the tollbooth, campaigning but not quite winning the top gig. It's a performance. He plays the role of Bernie Sanders to perfection. And he can run again in 2024.
Sanders once attacked “millionaires and billionaires.” Sometime around 2017, he dropped the millionaire part from his criticisms. That’s when he was bought and paid for. He was once an important, anti-establishment voice. Now he’s nothing but a weak sellout traitor to his own cause.
Bernie is a cuck.
Bernie Sanders has been around Burlington, Vermont for decades. I’m just surprised so many people took him seriously as time has shown that he’s a talker and not into doing any heavy-lifting. Bernie and his grifter wife have become millionaires with substantial properties, cash assets, and retirement systems, I will give them that, though. His form of traveling evangelism has served him well.
Unfortunately Bernie has always been a spineless Democratic party sycophant who spouted some good rhetoric while supporting all the worst machination of the DC establishment - the original AOC.
One of the worst examples of this behavior by Bernie was 10 years ago, when he struck an agreement with Ron Paul to introduce into the Senate a real audit of the FED, which would, for the first time, give the people a look behind the financial curtain. At the 13th hour, Bernie broke his pledge and capitulated to Obama, Chris Dodd and the banks by modifying the bill to allow them to maintain their cloak of secrecy.
Any doubts that remained about Bernie should have been snuffed out in 2016 after his own party rigged the primary against him and shit all over him, but he still went out to campaign for Hillary Clinton.
How can anyone expect a guy who won't stand up for himself to stand up for you?
I could easily write for a few weeks pausing only to sleep and eat, about the reasons Bernie is and has always been, his whole life, a raging fraud, a sinister, lying, creepy, greedy, neurotic little scumbag weasel. Part of the reason I haven't done so yet is because I've been constantly postponing the job of sorting approx. 10 000 bookmarks about US politics. I spent somewhere between a 1000 and 2000 hours defending him during the 2016 primaries. I finally saw through him when his own staff did, when they (except a few who couldn't afford to quit their day job) told him to go fuck himself and quit, some in tears, the fall of 2016. I started an unbelievable tumble down a rabbit hole into a world I was almost alone in until Jimmy Dore showed up there after I (and a few others) had bombarded him for a long time with probably less than a percent of what there is to know about Bernie to realize he's not weak or afraid or playing 4D chess, he's a hustler and a fraud and he's completely aware of it and so is in large part the Democratic Party, especially Hillary, Biden and Obama. Though Bernie has achieved what he wanted to achieve and probably won't run for president in 2024, it's vital people find out the things there are to know about him in order to be equipped to identify the Bernie Cult 2.0 (and future versions), which is headed by AOC and the squad, which will have the same amount of impact on the Democratic party as the first one, which was at best none, but in reality, it pushed it to the right by helping cover up how far to the right they really are and instilling a fear into them what would happen if they in any way showed any kind of of willingness to compromise with rationality and decency. According to a study referred to by the WSJ, 70% of Americans are furious with both parties. They're fine with that,but they're not fine with giving those voters an option to do something about it, a candidate to vote for they don't control. So far, based on how AOC votes in Congress, she's 5.2% a progressive and 94.8% Nancy Pelosi. Based on what she says, she's a wonderful new Bernie Sanders and a victory for women. I'm gonna stop writing now, for now. I'm gonna start sorting my bookmarks instead.
I wonder though how much the Russia smears really contributed to his loss. I’m sure it factored a little bit and I think Sanders handled it poorly by dignifying it instead of attacking it as farce. But despite the 24/7 media frenzy on Russia for many years, I think I recall seeing primary polling showing it as a low priority among most voters. I could be wrong though so if anyone disagrees please chime in.