It’s repulsive, though unsurprising, that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ended his campaign to help Joe Biden take out Bernie Sanders just before Super Tuesday. After winning Iowa on February 3rd, only slightly losing New Hampshire and going on to lose South Carolina, top Democratic donors pressured Buttigieg to drop out to consolidate the moderate vote behind Biden. Like an obedient, moneyed tool, Buttigieg “behaved,” as multi-billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg accurately put it, by ending his campaign. With the momentum from his win in South Carolina and Amy Klobuchar and Buttigieg endorsements, Biden emerged from Super Tuesday with a decisive lead over Sanders.
Pressuring Buttigieg to drop out before Super Tuesday is yet another dirty trick the Democratic Party pulled to derail Bernie, perhaps almost as undemocratic as the DNC’s successful 2016 effort to undercut him. Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote that year, she lost the general election to US presidential history’s biggest joke: Donald Trump.
And yet the Democratic Party never learns.
Again, they will run a ‘moderate’ who will fail to turn out the party base and Trump will emerge victorious. Biden will pander to his Woke supporters and run with either a ‘moderate’ women or minority – because it will look good and feign ‘change’; albeit, the appointed VP candidate will do little to help either women or minorities.
The Democratic Party has maintained its myopic tone-deafness to Americans’ desire for fundamental change. Wage stagnation, insurmountable college debt, offshored employment, AI-job takeover, perpetually rising inequality and sickness causing thousands to go broke are the fuel that helped elect Trump in 2016. These factors have contributed to Americans’ dismal view of the Democratic and Republican party establishment. Through acknowledging some of average Americans’ woes and repurposing them into xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist scapegoating, Trump gained office.
On the other hand, Bernie Sanders fully acknowledges Americans’ diminished socio-economic conditions, during a time of ironic near-full employment, and directly addresses these problems with constructive policy proposals. Unlike Biden, Bernie is far more likely to overturn the countless far-right policies of Trump, while gaining policy and legislative ground to improve Americans’ well-being.
On the electability front, which has been the recent rally cry for Biden supporters in the media and elsewhere, Biden’s lack of charisma and pro-corporate inclinations will inspire few progressives to turn out in November. Nor will Biden inspire independents, who aren’t too fond of Trump but see Biden as a status quo candidate. And, too, although Trump’s allegations against Biden’s son, Hunter, are largely unfounded, Hunter’s appointment to the Burisma board reeks of nepotism. Such legalized corruption helps drive Americans’ abysmal perspective on the status quo in the first place.
When Biden goes against Trump in November, he will fall hard. If Bernie were to face off against Trump, he’d run away with it – as moderate, progressives, independents and even some rational conservatives (like those whose votes Sanders received in the NH primary) see Sanders as the most sincere, least corrupt and least-bought candidate. While not everyone agrees on all of Bernie Sanders’ policies, he is the most likely candidate to improve average Americans’ socio-economic conditions, across the racial, class, ethnic and gender lines.
Therefore, the Democratic Party and their media mouthpieces should distill their delusion that a pulseless moderate can successfully take on Trump.
Why not let democracy decide who’s on the November ticket.
Or is that, also, too radical?
