America Missed Out So, So Bad By Not Electing Bernie President

The Democratic Party’s Job Must Be The Economic Struggle 

My friends in Europe all say ‘who the hell is Kamala Harris— what about Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. We never even heard of her.’ You don’t vote, I remind them— and you’ll hear all about her soon, don’t worry. And Bernie… what he stands for is not what the political establishment would stand for. He wants a real political revolution. They don’t. Progressives don’t have the power over the Democratic Party that reactionary proto-fascists have over the Republican Party. The GOP had little trouble fully transforming itself into an appendage of the MAGA movement to accommodate Trump, who they saw and see as a winner. The Democrats, too abjectly cowardly to roll the dice, would never do that for Bernie. Just watch this clip from Thursday’s Late Show.

“Re-electing Biden and Democrats,” he said, is not enough. We need to transform the Democratic Party to force those those doors open so that ordinary people, young people, people of color, working class people can come in and drive an agenda that says ‘We’re not going to be the only major country on earth not to have health care for all people. We are not going to have more income and wealth inequality than any time in our history. [audience goes wild… imagine the Clintons, Obama, Biden— not to mention the billionaires— shuddering.] We’re not going to have college unaffordable, housing unaffordable. This— creating a government and nation that works for all— that’s not utopia. It really is not. We are the richest country in the history of the world. We have all kinds of technology that can improve human life and our job is to make government work for everybody, and not just the billionaire class… Now our job is the economic struggle and to tell the billionaire class and their greed they can no longer think they;’re going to get it all. This country belongs to all of us.”

Earlier, he told Colbert that “There was once a time when the Democratic Party was the party of the working class. Those days are long gone. The Republican Party was the party of the rich and the bankers and now they claim, suddenly, to be the party of workers and that’s certainly not true. I think the result of that is that people are demoralized. 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. People can’t afford healthcare, can’t afford to send their kids to college, can’t afford housing. People are hurting and looking to Washington and they’re not getting much in response.” 

He called for getting the billionaire class out of the political process. Ha! Bill Clinton transformed the Democratic Party alright… and it’s been all downhill ever since. Is Kamala the answer? Maybe the answer to stopping Trump, but does she stand for something transformative outside of her career track? Too much to ask? Personally, my optimism doesn't exactly runeth over.

Eric Wilson, once a Bernie campaign volunteer, is running for Congress in the western Wisconsin swing district against extreme MAGA nut Derrick Van Orden. “Senator Sanders couldn't have said it better,” he told us. “People are demoralized and are living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford healthcare and housing. We can't keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting it to change. We need to get big money out of politics. I am the only Democrat in my race that supports a wealth tax. I'm the only one in my race that is 99% funded by individual contributions and from the beginning of my campaign pledged to not take corporate PAC money. I am fighting to drive the agenda that ACTUALLY works for all Americans. I am the only Democrat in my race that is pushing against the grain to fight for Healthcare for All. I'm the only one that supports tuition free education. We can do better as a country if we are willing to fight for what we believe in. I'm not going to continue to prop up the system that isn't working for all Americans.” Please consider contributing to his campaign here.

“Republicans,” wrote Erica Payne of Patriotic Millionaires the other day, have done a lot of damage to the American tax code over the years by giving massive and harmful cuts to the wealthy and corporations. But if they win back the White House and get the chance to implement Project 2025, that damage will be supercharged to another level.” She  noted that Project 2025 would “institute massive changes to the tax code. While this part of the Heritage-led manifesto is receiving far less media attention than others, it’s no less alarming. Below are just a few of the major tax changes that Project 2025 would usher in:

• Create two brackets with lower rates for ordinary income taxes— There are currently seven brackets for taxes on ordinary income, with a top marginal rate of 37%. There already aren’t enough brackets, with the 37% rate covering all income over $731,000, but Project 2025 would make a bad situation worse by reducing the number of brackets to just two— with a 15% tax on taxable income below $168,000 and a 30% tax on taxable income above that level. According to estimates from Brendan Duke, the Senior Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, under this policy, a family of four with $100,000 in annual income would pay $2,600 in additional income tax, while a family of the same size making $5 million a year would receive a $325,000 tax cut.

• Reduce the corporate income tax rate to 18%— The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanently reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, and in so doing, gave wealthy shareholders and executives a windfall. Project 2025 would further reduce this rate to 18% and give an even greater bonanza to the rich.  

• Reduce the tax on capital gains and dividends to 15% — Currently, there are two tax brackets for capital gains and dividends: 15% and 20%. Project 2025 would do away with the 20% bracket entirely and tax capital gains and dividends at 15%. Taxing capital gains over $1 million at such a low rate is already an absurd giveaway to the wealthy that values wealth more than work, but considering how few Americans even own stock, and considering the vast majority of the publicly traded stock in this country is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, this is just a further gift to the rich with no benefit for the average American. 

• Repeal all tax changes made by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act— Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act took important steps in making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share in taxes. Among other things, it created a 15% corporate minimum tax and a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks. Project 2025 would do away with all of it.

• Reduce the estate and gift tax to 20% and make permanent the TCJA’s exemption amount increase—The top marginal rate on the estate and gift tax is currently 40%. The TCJA temporarily increased the threshold at which estate and gift taxes kick in: in the 2024 filing season, this threshold was $27.22 million for a married couple. As if letting that much wealth pass from generation to generation tax-free wasn’t absurd enough, Project 2025 would reduce the top rate on estate and gift taxes to 20% and also make permanent the TCJA’s exemption threshold hike.

• Freeze IRS funding and replace top officials with appointees— Project 2025 calls for the budget of the IRS to be held constant in real terms, which essentially means that it would rescind the funding allocated to the agency by the Inflation Reduction Act. This money has already been used to recoup over $1 billion in unpaid taxes by the very wealthy and significantly improve taxpayer services. It would also replace many of the top positions at the IRS with presidential appointees, ensuring institutional policy and process knowledge would not be retained from administration to administration.

“Trump,” noted Payne, “has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 in recent days… [but the proof that] Trump is more amenable to Project 2025 than he’s letting on can be found in his new running mate, J.D. Vance. Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has made a name for himself over the last few years as one of the biggest MAGA disciples. He also has close ties to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. Just days after the Heritage Foundation and its allies published Project 2025 last year, Vance gave a speech at the organization’s 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit where he said: ‘[The Heritage Foundation] is going to play a major role in helping us figure out how to govern at the White House, at the Senate, at the House, and all across our great country.’… [I]f there’s one thing to glean about Vance from his past record, it’s that he’s willing to renege on even his most noble positions if it means advancing himself.”

Basically she was defining a DC careerist and opportunist” “When Trump first ran for president in 2016, Vance didn’t vote for him and also made strong remarks against him. But he has since very obviously changed his tune. In 2020, Vance jumped on board the election denial train and has yet to hop off. And after his billionaire benefactor, Peter Thiel, introduced him to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Vance received Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 Senate bid. This is all to say that, even if Vance is saying now that he doesn’t support some of the tax elements of Project 2025, he’s given us no reason to believe he’s a man of his word, and he’s been awfully cozy with the Heritage Foundation lately. We’re certainly living in a distressing, chaotic, and tumultuous time in America, and Project 2025 and the actors behind it— including Trump and Vance— are playing a large role in driving our national angst. The plans for the conservative movement have never been written down in clearer, starker, or more alarming terms, and we must do everything we can to fight back against this regressive agenda, take the political power back from the billionaire class, and achieve economic prosperity for all.”

Vermont state Senator Tanya Vyhovsky told us this morning that “Bernie is right, we cannot have true democracy with the levels of income inequality that we have. When I ran initially, I knew that the structures of power were not made for me and I ran anyway. Serving has only shown me more how much I am not supposed to be there and that is wrong. I was asked last night how I legislate and after thinking for a few minutes I knew that the answer was with the people like me who never had a seat at the table. Our democracy is in crisis— we are only going to save it by bringing everyone is and that is what I am doing here in Vermont. We don't need more politicians sponsored by the uber-wealthy we need more grassroots public servants who legislate directly with their people.”

Chris Larson is also a sitting state Senator (in Wisconsin). He told us, “Once again, Bernie gets it. The planet’s richest man, Elon Musk, just announced he is plowing $25 million a month to prop up Donald Trump’s campaign to retake the presidency and gain the US Senate. If we let that happen, Republicans plan to make their tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and implement their fever dream as outlined in Project 2025. With the green light from their bought Justices on the Supreme Court, they will further shift power and wealth to those that already have it at the expense of the middle class and those who have been struggling paycheck to paycheck. Here in Wisconsin, when this brand of Republican gained power in 2010, they gerrymandered the legislature, gutted campaign finance laws, and used the court to prevent the corrupt Scott Walker from being held accountable. It took us 14 years and a lot of hustle to get where we are now, with a bare majority on our Supreme Court, a moderate Democratic governor, and new maps that are finally fairer. We cannot allow what happened here to happen nationwide. If the wealthy buy the last levers of power in America for Trump and the extremists running alongside him, they may never give us a chance to regain power again. These next 15 weeks are crucial to the future of our country, for our ability to strengthen our democracy, and to finally give a fighting chance to the people who have been left behind for too long.” 

Former Congressman Alan Grayson, a candidate for Florida state Senate, feels much the same way. “We all must come to grips with the fact that no matter how much of a rugged individualist you may be, there are serious problems in your life that you can solve only one way— by working together through the political process,” he told us. “For instance, if the cost of the insulin that you need to stay alive is too high, only the government can solve that problem, not you. If college education or home insurance is unaffordable, only the government can solve that problem, not you. The fundamental difference between the parties is not only which demographic comprises of them, but also whether they want to help. The Democrats want to help you— at least the good ones do. The Republicans want to help blastocysts and assault rifle manufacturers, not you.” 

Ben Braver, is running for the Florida state Senate as well.

“America,” he reminded us, “is the land of opportunity because it promotes the general welfare. We the people are able to create, trade, and consume, because we are safe, free, and educated. Through human ingenuity and organisation we imbue value onto objects (both physical & digital) thus creating wealth, which cycles through our hands. Granting wealth personhood-via acts like citizens united-necessarily diverts political attention and economic resources from the creators of that wealth-actual persons. Pretending to free our marketplace through ‘personal responsibility’ corporations use the wealth we created for them to buy politicians who trickle it up, draining our ability to create more wealth. New age Robber Barons have sacrificed our economy on an altar to itself, restoring the inequality of the gilded age. Understanding that for anyone to prosper we all must, is the core ideal of the Democratic Party. We support unions, social equality, and public utilities because that is how we promote the general welfare, it is how we foster prosperity. Democrats must renew our commitment to progressive ideals; by investing in the people and equalizing political power we will conserve this land of opportunity.”

Jackie Kellogg is a candidate for the Florida state House in Miami. As a Biden delegate for the DNC, I 100% agree, #1 defeat Trump, #2 end the pay to play corruption that does not represent the will or the needs of the majority of the people, #3 our responsibility is to the next generation, which both parties are failing. My heart races when I hear Sen. Sanders, he is the soothsayer of our times, we can not allow greed to win or we will lose Democracy, as a mother of three, what else is there but to fight for them?”

You can contribute to Alan’s, Chris’, Jackie’s, Ben’s and Tanya’s campaigns here— all those greta candidates on the same page!