But He Isn’t Running
On Friday, Bernie tweeted a congratulations to Jeremy Corbyn on his reelection as an independent— with an implied slap in the face to Sir Keir, who had run some anti-socialist multimillionaire, Praful Nargund, against him in their North Islington constituency, whuich happens to be walking distance from Sir Keir’s own.
Jeremy Corbyn- 24,120 (49.2%)
Praful Nargund- 16,873 (34.4%)
Sheridan Kates (Green)- 2,660 (5.4%)
Karen Harries (Conservative)- 1,950 (4.0%)
Martyn Nelson (fascist)- 1,710 (3.5%)
Vikas Aggarwal (Lib-Dem)- 1,661 (3.4%)
Asked whether Sir Keir will make a good Prime Minister, Corbyn replied: “He has put forward a manifesto that is thin to put it mildly and doesn’t offer a serious economic alternative to what the Conservative government is doing. And so the demands on him are going to be huge, the demands from the people are going to be huge. If you don’t give yourself space, to increase spending on the desperate social needs, I mentioned the two-child policy, but there are plenty of others, then I think there are going to be political problems. He must have known this when he agreed this manifesto which is a bit of a straitjacket around any proposals he may want to push forward.”
Bernie, who didn’t tweet a congratulations to Sir Keir, noted that “Corbyn made the mistake of believing that the Labour Party should represent labor— and was expelled. His constituents disagreed.” Sir Keir had kicked Corbyn, the longest serving Member of Parliament in London, out of the party had had recently headed, which contributed to the very low voter turnout across England with many progressives hating the Conservatives but not enough to vote for Sir Keir’s mini-Conservatives.
Earlier in the week, after Biden’s scary debate performance— which Bernie called “not terribly articulate to say the least... not focused”— Bernie called on Democrats to rally behind Biden. “He did not defend a very strong record.” Well… not that strong. Better than Trump, better than many of us feared it might be but, even beyond the genocide complicity… not as strong as it could have been.
Bernie was campaigning in Wisconsin’s swingiest district last week, the 3rd, which Trump won with 51.5% in 2020 and in which a conservative Democrat Brad Pfaff lost to MAGA Republican Derrick Van Orden two years later, 51.9% to 48.1%, the district’s 3 biggest towns in a matter of hours: La Crosse, Eau Claire and Steven’s Point. The Blue America-backed candidate there is Eric Wilson, the only candidate in the 3-way primary who supports Medicare-for-All and the only one campaigning on sane gun policies and on a cease-fire in Gaza. The other 2 are GOP-lite candidates bolsterd for establishment shills.
Dave Weigel reported that he was there “to talk hope into nervous Democrats,” noting thtat Biden didn’t have a good night and that Señor Trumpanzee was a “pathological liar.”
Weigel noted that “it was an odd moment for Sanders. Biden was the moderate candidate who beat him for the 2020 nomination by winning over Democrats on electability grounds. This time, Sanders was the one making the case that Biden was both worth supporting and able to win— even as many of the same pragmatic pundits who opposed his own 2020 run were demanding the president drop out… For Sanders-style progressives, who lost the 2020 primary to Biden and grew restless over Israel’s war in Gaza, the crisis had no bottom. A portion were already on the fence about voting for him; the Wisconsin visit was about convincing them not to stay home or turn to a protest candidate. Now they were figuring out how to incorporate questions about Biden’s health and competence into their calculation. Sanders, who shepherded some of Biden’s most popular healthcare policies through the Senate, had made the case that Biden’s domestic record was strong. in Eau Claire, he politely brushed off a Gaza ceasefire activist who asked him to rescind his endorsement. Our Revolution, the organizing group founded by Sanders after his 2016 campaign, conducted a quick member poll after the debate and found two-thirds of them demanding a new nominee. Left-leaning groups created to pressure the president on Gaza were now calling on him to quit.”
The left is still wrestling with [the Jamaal Bowman defeat at thge hands of AIPAC], and it makes the Biden problem even more complicated. The party infrastructure that defeated Sanders in two primaries, and did little to rescue Bowman from his primary challenge, is now suddenly grappling with a polycrisis: A president who’s secured his party’s nomination, but is being urged to concede it, which would create an opening on the ticket that the left has no power to fill.
Sanders, who is just over a year older than Biden, was not joining the panic parade around the president’s viability. In an interview at an earlier stop of his Wisconsin tour, he said that Biden was not a “great debater” or “great speaker,” problems that a strong and message-focused campaign could overcome. Asked about his own experience with a health-focused feeding frenzy— his heart attack after a 2019 campaign stop in Las Vegas— Sanders said that “the media takes itself a little too seriously,” and that Democrats needed to go out and defend the Biden record.
“I think you can learn a lot from Trump, in that regard,” said Sanders. “Trump goes out and talks to people, a lot of people, and he keeps talking to them. That’s what we’ve got to do. We’re going all over the state, we’re getting good crowds.” He slapped his hand on a table for emphasis. “Talk. To. People. About. Issues. Relevant. To. Their. Lives. Don’t worry about the media so much.”
One way to do that, said Sanders, was to push for progressive agenda items in the party’s platform, and to speak frequently about what could be done in a second Biden term. “When you talk about, for example, expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision and hearing, the last polling I saw on that had 90% support,” he said.
I wish Bernie would consider running if Biden drops out, but I doubt that happen. At this point, we desperately need to build a stronger progressive bench— with people like Eric Wilson— so that we’re not facing a situation like this forever, picking between mediocre neoliberals like Kamala, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro.
Since first learning about then Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders in the 1980's, I have rarely ever disagreed with him on a matter of major consequence. I profoundly disagree with him in his support for Biden's continued candidacy now. He has been a genuine hero on the Hill for 34 years (and counting) and his 2 presidential campaigns have been inspirations for us all.
In this matter, he is making a huge mistake in bolstering Biden at a critical time.
What if Labour's plan is the same as the Democrats; do nothing, and go to a change election norm? In other words, don't fix anything, and trade power with the Tories every 5 years, just like we do.