[Peace-discuss] What I glean from The Two Bruces

[J.B. Nicholson]

I wrote:
> 2. As the late Bruce Dixon explained in 
> https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary years ago, 
> Sanders is playing out the sheepdog role his campaign was intended to carry out. In 
> the end Sanders would always throw the race: ditching Medicare for All, constantly 
> complimenting Biden, and firmly backing Russiagate, as a few examples. Sanders would 
> deliver his audience to the DNC who would pick up a "where else you gonna go?" mantra 
> ("Maybe you have to swallow a little bit" of Joe Biden per his wife Dr. Jill Biden). 
> I maintain that so much of what Sanders has done recently is done chiefly to keep in 
> good stead with the Democratic Party.
> 
> So of course "no one went for a knockout blow" (quoting that Politico article). The 
> whole point was to use Sanders' commanding lead and vastly higher donations (Dore 
> said Sanders raised more in one month than Biden raised in his entire 2020 campaign) 
> to promote the DNC's reliable neocon/neolib insurance plan -- Biden.

Black Agenda Report (highly recommended reading, by the way) -- 
https://www.blackagendareport.com/ -- mentioned Dixon's prescience too:

https://www.blackagendareport.com/end-sanders-and-maybe-beginning-mass-independent-left

> Sanders punked out early this time around, with language as contradictory and 
> dishonest on-its-face as Trump-speak. “I will stay on the ballot in all remaining 
> states and continue to gather delegates,” said Sanders in his surrender
> statement[1]. “While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we must continue
> working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention.”
> But of course, you cannot keep piling up significant votes and delegates while 
> simultaneously conceding victory to a corporate flunky – thus making Sanders’s 
> “suspended” campaign unfit for even “protest” votes.
> 
> For the second time in two presidential cycles, Sanders has lived up to Bruce 
> Dixon’s depiction of him as a “sheepdog” for the Democrats. “Sheepdogs are 
> herders,” wrote Dixon, the BAR co-founder who died last June, “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.” 
> That’s Sanders to a T.
> 
> Sanders bowed out of the race the minute his momentum stalled, at the very same 
> time that the greatest combined health and economic calamity in U.S. history was 
> gripping the nation by the throat – a teaching moment if one ever existed, if 
> health care and economic inequality were really Sanders’ top priority. He did 
> acknowledge the ballooning crisis: “In terms of health care, this current, 
> horrific crisis that we are now in has exposed for all to see how absurd our 
> current employer-based health insurance system is. The current economic downturn 
> we are experiencing has not only led to a massive loss of jobs but has also 
> resulted in millions of Americans losing their health insurance.”

[1] https://portside.org/node/22615/printable/print or https://archive.md/vVb1y 
(archived copy since these campaign posts typically don't stick around long after the 
campaign has ended but this document will be useful long after this campaign is over)