[Peace-discuss] Countering Rightward Drift In The United States: This Struggle Is Long Term

[J.B. Nicholson]

I concur with David's response. A few points David brought up which I wanted to 
expand on:

David Johnson wrote:
> The U.S. ruling class knows that Americans are getting angry and fed up- The
> massive loss of jobs ( even shitty ones ) due to the pandemic, lack of access to
> healthcare, lack of decent paying jobs due to offshoring, an entire generation
> with student debt peonage and many of those young people with medical debt as
> well, the inability to get access to post high school education, the extreme
> difficulty ( compared to other developed countries )to form Unions, police murders
> of unarmed citizens, Flint and other cities facing water crisis, decaying
> infrastructure everywhere, climate change becoming more noticeable ( wildfires
> etc. ), a rigged electoral system, endless wars, and the list goes on.
There are a lot of people begging other working class and poor people for help on 
GoFundMe. GoFundMe's CEO Rob Solomon said in January 2019 that 1/3rd of the sites 
donations were to cover medical costs 
(https://time.com/5516037/gofundme-medical-bills-one-third-ceo/ and 
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crushed-by-medical-bills-many-americans-go-online-to-beg-for-help/) 
and GoFundMe apparently seeks to capitalize on their popularity in begging for 
healthcare payment money by making it easier to find such posts 
(https://www.gofundme.com/discover/health-insurance-fundraiser).

Barack Obama and Joe Biden recently campaigned for Biden in Flint, Michigan to "blast 
Donald Trump for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and said how "better" the Joe 
Biden and Kamala Harris tandem would be for America compared to the president" (per 
https://sputniknews.com/us/202011011080940832-obama-biden-slam-president-trump-at-their-first-joint-campaign-event-in-michigan/) 
and Pres. Trump followed up on Twitter:
> Following the speech in Flint, Trump took to Twitter to criticise both Obama and
> Biden for their failed policies in Flint (referring to the Flint water crisis) and
> for endorsing Rick Snyder, who, according to the president, was an incompetent
> Michigan governor.

 From https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1322616235423539200
> Biden & Obama owe a massive apology to the People of Flint. The water was poisoned
> on their watch. Not only did they fail them, Biden proudly accepted the
> endorsement of disastrous Gov Rick Snyder! Unlike Biden, I will always stand with
> the People of the Great State of MICHIGAN!

So both presidents Obama and Trump say something comparable; Obama claimed at a 
speaking engagement in Flint during his presidency that he "had their [Flint 
residents] back" which is in line with Trump "always stand with the People of the 
Great State of MICHIGAN!". Neither president gave Flint residents Medicare for All or 
potable water. And Flint is not alone in this predicament, Flint is perhaps just the 
best known example. Disaster after disaster adversely affects the poor and we're 
supposed to pick a favorite by arguing over who is slightly less criminally negligent 
on purpose?

Shortly before the 2016 election, establishment comic John Oliver stumped for Hillary 
Clinton by criticizing everyone else who opposed her instead of telling us why we 
should vote for her. He admitted he didn't have much to complain about with Dr. Jill 
Stein's 2016 campaign but he criticized Stein's call to cancel student debt (which 
was about $1.26 trillion) via quantitative easing and used that as the means to 
dismiss Stein's entire campaign (because he couldn't let a compliment stand!). Not 
only was that view not widely shared at the time but years later we'd see the US add 
trillions to the economy in the CARES Act. Most of the CARES Act largesse was given 
to the wealthiest individuals and businesses with a virtually ignorable pittance for 
the poor and working class. You won't find many commentators who have criticized the 
CARES Act on the basis of "How will we ever afford this?", a question that 
establishment media drumbeats when there's something beneficial for the 99% like 
Medicare for All (which we're already more than paying for in how much we pay HMOs 
which deliver care that is consistently lower-rated than Medicare). Around the time 
of the CARES Act vote, House Democrats went on the liberal shows (like Democracy Now) 
and the floor of the House to tell us what a disaster passing the CARES Act would be. 
Then they obeyed House Speaker Pelosi and voted for the CARES Act and hid the roster 
of who voted for the CARES Act via a voice vote. AOC's widely-distributed arm-waving 
House floor speech stands out because of how many liberals took that speech to mean 
that AOC voted against the CARES Act and AOC's reason for being elected in the first 
place. But the audio of the voice vote is clear: no women voted against the CARES 
Act. The no votes were from no more than a handful of men. And apparently nobody 
challenged Pelosi by calling for a roll call vote. There was great agreement in the 
House and Senate -- the CARES Act had no trouble passing.

> But they are so arrogant and obstinate that they pulled out all of the weapons (
> nonstop corporate media propaganda, massive voter disenfranchisement, and outright
> ELECTION FRAUD ) to stop even a mild reformer like Bernie Sanders and refuse to
> even compromise on Medicare for All like what the other 33 developed countries in
> the world have except the U.S.
I wanted to point out here how mild Bernie Sanders is (and how easily the liberals in 
the media conflate his efforts as working in our interests). His foreign policy is 
shameful, really nothing to celebrate. He, for example, echoed CIA talking points on 
Twitter when it came to the nascent Venezuelan coup attempts:

https://nitter.snopyta.org/SenSanders/status/1099380342018912257
> The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro
> government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the
> country, and refrain from violence against protesters.

https://nitter.snopyta.org/SenSanders/status/1088573769243914240
> The Maduro government has waged a violent crackdown on Venezuelan civil society,
> violated the constitution by dissolving the National Assembly and was re-elected
> last year in an election many observers said was fraudulent. The economy is a
> disaster and millions are migrating.

But after a US-backed coup has been carried out, he'll wag his finger (when nothing 
he says could be interpreted as a threat to the establishment) as Zach Carter shows 
with a video clip of a Sanders interview in 
https://nitter.snopyta.org/zachjcarter/status/1195899676802854912

I think the late Bruce Dixon had it right in 
https://blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary where he wrote that 
Sanders is the sheepdog for the Democratic Party. Change a few of the names in that 
article to update it to current-day names in the news, and the article holds up.

Sanders is known for his support of Medicare for All but this time around he 
abandoned that support in writing and in voice when he told his campaign followers 
"Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. 
That fight continues into the future.". It's not clear when "the future" is. He also 
released a video statement saying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQV83U5Dk) "This 
is not Medicare for All, we can’t pass that right now." around 41m44s. Well, we 
could, but it would take a political will among the Democrats that doesn't exist. 
After his sheepdogging 2020 campaign (repeating what he did in 2016 which explains 
why he's not complaining about being 'cheated' in the DNC corporate primaries) his 
Sanders/Biden "task forces" drove home how Sanders and the Democrats don't care:

 From 
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/biden-sanders-unity-task-force-recommendations-353225
> The task force recommendations don't include the kind of wide-scale systemic
> upheaval that won Sanders such a fervent following in his two presidential
> campaigns - while provoking an outcry from moderate Democrats and Republicans
> alike. A single-payer health care system such as "Medicare for All," a "Green New
> Deal" overhauling environmental policy, and doing away with Immigration and
> Customs Enforcement are not among the policy proposals.

and from 
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/889189235/democratic-task-forces-deliver-biden-a-blueprint-for-a-progressive-presidency
> Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal co-chaired the health care task force. She has
> long pushed, like Sanders, for a single, government-run health insurance program
> but didn't bring that recommendation to the table in any of the meetings or
> negotiations.
Biden pledged to veto any Medicare for All bill that crossed his desk as president. 
Trump apparently won't push for Medicare for All either. That's collectively pushing 
the bar of what passes for competition lower and lower.

These are the choices from the Trump/Pence campaign or those we're supposed to see as 
'resisting' Trump (also known as "the lesser evil"). There's not only great agreement 
on this election-deciding issue but Biden played a big role in why we have Pres. 
Trump now.

We could have had better years ago: HR676 (John Conyers' Medicare for All bill which 
was glowingly reviewed by those advocating for Medicare for All, and called a "gold 
standard") could have been passed into law under Obama/Biden. The Democrats had a 
veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress for a time during the Obama/Biden 
administration. Instead they chose to let HR676 sit on the metaphorical shelf and 
never brought it to the floor for a vote. I see them doing the same thing with 
Sanders' and Jayapal's Medicare for All bills today. This incentivizes me to think 
that both major corporate parties see Medicare for All the same cynical way -- it 
shall not pass because their funders are HMOs and Medicare for All threatens 
continued HMO campaign funding (whether direct or indirect through bundlers).

So as 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B 
tells us:

> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups
> representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S.
> government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have
> little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for
> theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but
> not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
In other words, the 99% only really get what we want when what we want coincides with 
what the elites want.