[Peace-discuss] Black Agenda Report - Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016

[David Johnson]

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News, information and analysis from the black left.

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the
Democrats in 2016 

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 05/06/2015 - 16:09

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By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Vermont senator and ostensible socialist Bernie Sanders is playing the
sheepdog candidate for Hillary Clinton this year. Bernie's job is to warm up
the crowd for Hillary, herding activist energies and the disaffected left
back into the Democratic fold one more time. Bernie aims to tie up activist
energies and resources till the summer of 2016 when the only remaining
choice will be the usual lesser of two evils.

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the
Democrats in 2016

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

"The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential
primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for
re-election."

Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know
exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic
nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary
will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the
hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie
Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary
Clinton campaign.

Don't believe us? Then believe
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-fallout-baltimore/story?id=3
0757510&singlePage=true> Bernie himself interviewed by George Stephanopoulos
on ABC News "This Week" May 3.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you lose in this nomination fight, will you support
the Democratic nominee?

SANDERS: Yes. I have in the past.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not going to run as an independent?

SANDERS: No, absolutely not. I've been very clear about that.

Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a
card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when
there's no White House Democrat running for re-election. The sheepdog is a
presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the establishment
Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are
herders, and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and
voters back into the Democratic fold who might otherwise drift leftward and
outside of the Democratic party, either staying home or trying to build
something outside the two party box.

1984 and 88 the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In 92 it was
California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004 the designated sheepdog
was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it's Vermont
senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give
left activists and voters a reason, however illusory, to believe there's a
place of influence for them inside the Democratic party, if and only if the
eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.

Despite casting millions of voters for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al
Sharpton and other sheepdogs, those leftish Democrat voters are always
disregarded when Democrats actually win. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, a
vicious "welfare reform," no peace dividend or push for DC statehood,
lowered unemployment but mostly in part time and low-wage jobs, and mass
incarceration of black and brown people. President Obama doubled down on
bailouts of banksters and GM, and immunized them from prosecution but failed
to address the most catastrophic fall in black household wealth in history.
We got health care for some instead of Medicare for All, the Patriot Act
renewed instead of repealed, a race to privatize public education, drone
wars and still more mass incarceration of black and brown people. And if
President Obama gets his way, we may soon have a global job-destroying
wage-lowering NAFTA on steroids, with the TTP and TTIP.

The sheepdog's job is to divert the energy and enthusiasm of activists a
year, a year and a half out from a November election away from building an
alternative to the Democratic party, and into his doomed effort. When the
sheepdog inevitably folds in the late spring or early summer before a
November election, there's no time remaining to win ballot access for
alternative parties or candidates, no time to raise money or organize any
effective challenge to the two capitalist parties.

At that point, with all the alternatives foreclosed, the narrative shifts to
the familiar "lesser of two evils." Every sheepdog candidate surrenders the
shreds of his credibility to the Democratic nominee in time for the November
election. This is how the Bernie Sanders show ends, as the left-leaning
warm-up act for Hillary Clinton.

Intent on avoiding the two-party "lesser evil" trap this year, about two
hundred activists gathered in Chicago last weekend to consider the future of
electoral organizing outside the Democratic and Republican parties. Many of
the participants were Greens, including former presidential and vice
presidential candidates Jill Stein and Rosa Clemente, the former Green mayor
of Richmond California, and many others. There were also representatives
from Seattle, where Socialist Alternative's Kshama Sawant won election to
Seattle's city council, as well as Angela Walker, a black socialist who
received 67,000 votes for Milwaukee County sheriff in 2014, and many others,
including some who took part in the recent Chicago mayoral election.

There was trans-partisan interest in a 50-state ballot access drive to put
the Green Party's Jill Stein on the presidential ballot for 2016
presidential race. Currently the law keeps Greens and others off the ballot
in more than half the states. Precise details vary according to state law,
but if a third party candidate after obtaining one-time ballot access
receives about 2% of total votes, a new ballot line is created, granting
ballot access to any potential candidate from school board to sheriff to US
congress who wants to run as something other than a Republican or Democrat.
That, many participants agreed, would be a significant puncture in the legal
thicket that now protects Democrats against competition on the ballot from
their left. But a nationwide trans-partisan ballot access campaign to create
a national alternative to the two capitalist parties is something left
activists must begin serious work a good 18 months before a November
election, essentially right now.

Whether or not a national ballot access campaign is undertaken by Greens and
others, a Bernie Sanders candidacy is an invitation to do again what's been
done in 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Bernie's candidacy is a blast
toward the past, an invitation to herd and be herded like sheep back into
the Democratic fold, to fundraise and canvass and recruit and mobilize for
Bernie, as he warms up the crowd for Hillary. Bernie is a sheepdog.

The question is, are we sheep?

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state
committee member of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA
and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

 

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