In a January 8 op-ed in the Guardian, Bernie Sanders tells us that:
Not only do we need to re-elect President Biden, we need to give him decent majorities in the House and Senate.
I not only disagree with this statement, I strongly oppose any attempt to re-elect President Biden and Democrats. Endorsing the re-election campaign of Genocide Joe is surrendering to the corporate wing of the Democratic party that Bernie claims to be against. Endorsing Biden is endorsing genocide, capitalism, austerity, and imperialism on a grand scale. It is the great betrayal of the working class.
Only a few days after Bernie’s op-ed was published, Genocide Joe went ahead and bombed Yemen without congressional approval. This is a violation of Article 1 of the Constitution and an escalation toward World War 3. As if it weren’t bad enough that the Biden regime was arming Nazis in Ukraine and the Netanyahu’s fascist government in Israel, he has now directly involved US military forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in defense of Israeli genocide.
In 2019, under President Trump, Bernie put together a bipartisan coalition to oppose the US war on Yemen. His bill passed the House and Senate only to be vetoed by Trump. Under Biden, Bernie withdrew his bill and now Biden is actively bombing Yemen - one of the poorest countries on earth.
“Today, I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen. Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.” - Bernie Sanders, December 22, 2022
Clearly the Biden administration has not been working on ending the war in Yemen. In fact, on September 21, 2023, the Biden regime announced it was going to sell $500 million in weapons to Saudi Arabia. And then on December 22, 2023, they announced they were going to ease restrictions on selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. Working with Bernie’s office on ending the war in Yemen looks like escalation and more profits for arms dealers. Bernie’s capitulation to the military industrial complex run Biden regime completely failed to result in peace. It was blatantly obvious that Biden’s administration was going to be a war administration when Lloyd Austin III, former board member of Raytheon, was appointed as Secretary of Defense. But Bernie went ahead and voted to confirm him.
Strangely enough, Bernie’s Guardian op-ed did not make a single mention of Yemen, an issue that used to be a high priority for him. Instead, he repeated establishment propaganda about “Putin’s war in Ukraine” and the “$1.9tn-dollar American Rescue Plan Act.”
Bernie did do a good job of describing how Bidenomics has devastated the working class, but his answer to “60% of our people are living under enormous financial stress as they try to survive paycheck to paycheck on inadequate incomes” is to vote for Biden, who has done nothing to alleviate this financial stress. And what about the fact that “we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation”? Bernie’s answer is to vote blue no matter who. It was the Democrats who bragged about cutting child poverty in half at the same time as making sure this measure was temporary. And yes, Bernie, “almost 600,000 Americans are unhoused and millions of working-class families are spending more than they can afford on outrageously high rents.” And what are Democrats doing about that? Not more housing, but more sweeps of homeless camps.
Our healthcare is broken. Despite spending far more per capita than any other country, we don’t have enough doctors, nurses or mental health counselors. Our life expectancy is in decline and 60,000 people die each year because they can’t get to a doctor when they should. - Bernie Sanders
Bernie is absolutely right. Our healthcare system is broken. But how does endorsing the man who would veto Medicare for all help fix that? According to a KFF pollling group report released in June 2022, “41% of adults currently have some debt caused by medical or dental bills.” The same study found that “about one in four black adults, lower-income adults, and uninsured don't think they will ever pay off their health care debt.” The US healthcare system is an attack on the poor and instead of fighting for Medicare for All, Bernie is endorsing Joe Biden.
In Bernie’s fantasy world, “As progressives, it’s important we lay out an agenda the American people would be eager to vote for – not just someone to vote against.” But some of us are aware of material reality and know that Biden’s agenda is enriching his donors at the expense of the working class. Stephen Semler has done an excellent analysis of this in The Lever.
This graph really says it all. Biden promised big and delivered nothing substantial. He did manage to increase military spending though. Is that something to vote for, Bernie?
Even Bernie admits, that his fantasy agenda is “not the agenda of the Democratic establishment and their wealthy campaign funders.” But what is his answer?
First, we work in coalition with all those who understand that we must do everything possible to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme rightwing Republican party, not just because he is “worse”, but because nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake in this election. Not only do we need to re-elect President Biden, we need to give him decent majorities in the House and Senate.
There’s no logical explanation for this - we need a progressive agenda, so vote for a rightwing corporate democrat! According to Bernie, we must vote for Joe Biden, but also “we must make it clear to the president and his administration that we expect his second term to be far more progressive than his first.”
Why do we expect this? If we already capitulated and voted for the guy, why should he enact a progressive agenda? Pushing Biden left didn’t work in 2020, why will it work in 2024? It’s not as if he will be running for re-election in 2028. Any promise made by him on the campaign trail is worthless. In September 2019, while on campaign in New Hampshire as reported by the Associated Press:
Biden denied the donor’s association to the fossil fuel industry before calling the young woman “kiddo” and taking her hand. He said, “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”
Today, under Biden, “The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.” Biden also campaigned on a $15 minimum wage, codifying Roe V. Wade, and ending our forever wars in the Middle East. On February 7, 2021, he tweeted “As President, I will use military power responsibly and as a last resort. We will not go back to forever wars in the Middle East. #DemDebate.” Biden might like to call voters lying dog-faced pony soldiers, but we know who the real liar is.
Bernie once campaigned against this monster, but he is now fully behind him. It appears that Bernie has forgotten everything he ever learned from Eugene V. Debs. Bernie might have had a picture of Debs on his wall, but Debs had a picture of Karl Marx on his desk and did not stray from his teachings. In a campaign speech in 1912, Eugene V. Debs said, “In this campaign there are but two parties and but one issue. There is no longer even the pretense of difference between the so-called Republican and Democratic parties. They are substantially one in what they stand for.” This statement remains accurate today, but Bernie wants us to believe lesser evilism is the answer. There is no lesser evil, the working class suffers under both capitalist parties.
Do they not all alike stand for the private ownership of industry and the wage-slavery of the working class? - Eugene V. Debs
The statements of Debs are timeless because they are a criticism of the capitalist system. Bernie’s op-ed does not mention capitalism once. Bernie does not seem to be very angry with capitalism.
To the extent that they control elections the franchise is corrupted and the electorate debauched, and when they succeed to power it is but to execute the will of the Wall street interests which finance and control them. The police, the militia, the regular army, the courts and all the powers lodged in class government are all freely at the service of the ruling class, especially in suppressing discontent among the slaves of the factories, mills and mines, and keeping them safely in subjugation to their masters. - Eugene V Debs
Our hope lies in the working class, not in politicians like Bernie Sanders. The working class has had four years of Biden and four years of Trump. They suffered greatly under both capitalist presidents. The words of Debs echoe throughout the capitalist hellscape today.
Since the last national campaign they have had four years more of capitalism, of political corruption, industrial stagnation, low wages and high prices, and many, very many of them have come to realize that these conditions are inherent in the capitalistic system and that it is vain and foolish to hope for relief through the political parties of that system. These people have had their eyes opened in spite of themselves. They have been made to see what the present system means to them and to their children, and they have been forced to turn against it by the sheer instinct of self-preservation.
They look abroad and they see this fair land being rapidly converted into the private preserves of a plutocracy as brutal and defiant as any privileged class that ever ruled in a foreign despotism; they see machinery and misery go hand-in-hand; they see thousands idle and poverty stricken all about them, while a few are glutted to degeneracy; they see troops of child slaves ground into luxuries for the rich while their fathers have become a drug on the labor market; they see parasites in palaces and automobiles and honest workers in hovels or tramping the ties; they see the politics of the ruling corporations dripping with corruption and putridity; they see vice and crime rampant prostitution eating like a cancer, and insanity and disease sapping mental and physical powers of the body social, and involuntarily they cry out in horror and protest, THIS IS ENOUGH! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE! And they turn with loathing and disgust from the Republican and Democratic parties under whose joint and several maladministrations these appalling conditions have been brought upon the country.
The message of socialism, which, a few years ago was spurned by these people, falls today upon eager ears and receptive minds. Their prejudice has melted away. They are now prepared to cast their fortune with the only political party that proposes a change of system and the only party that has a right to appeal to the intelligence of the people.
Bernie who???
The man is a ghost to the working and middle class. Obama and Sanders were the one-two punch knock-out blows to the progressive movement. The fact is, that one simply can't morally vote for Sanders, Biden or any of the other corporate politicians of either party because they have voted to fund genocide. That one issue morally sweeps aside whatever other things they may have done or positions taken.
With the bombings in Yemen yesterday, the Middle East is being pushed into widespread war by Sanders' "good friend" 'Genocide' Joe and his boss Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby running this country.
If you haven't already, no time to spare. Things are about to get really tough in the country and the big censorship campaign will drop into place. Here is one suggestion for people to work with: "A TRUE RADICAL! Given What Our Nation Is Sliding Into, Mutual Aid Is The Essential Radical Act" https://mark192.substack.com/p/a-true-radical-given-what-our-nation