Once again, Bernie Sanders is using his platform to shill for Genocide Joe. On April 10, he tweeted:
Do I have strong disagreements with Pres. Biden? Yes, I do. But I believe that we can move him toward a more progressive agenda. Our first priority must be defeating Donald Trump.
It’s been over three years and Biden has not moved toward a more progressive agenda. He has funded Nazis and is overseeing a genocide though. What part about 15,000 dead Palestinian children makes anyone think Biden can be pushed left?
The 2020 Democratic Platform is a piece of trash that I’m glad I voted no on, but even it is further to the left than the Joe Biden regime has been. For instance, it contains the following statements on Israel and Palestine:
Democrats recognize the worth of every Israeli and every Palestinian.
Democrats will continue to stand against incitement and terror. We oppose settlement expansion.
Democrats will restore U.S.-Palestinian diplomatic ties and critical assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with U.S. law.
It turns out Biden is violating US (and international) law in regards to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza and the Democrats fully support it. The US has violated the following laws in continuing to arm Israel during an active genocide: The Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, The Foreign Assistance Act, The Arms Export Control Act, The US War Crimes Act, The Leahy Law, and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act. And currently Biden is calling for another $14 billion in weapons to be sent to Israel.
Bernie’s disagreements with Biden are irrelevant when he is asking his followers to vote for genocide. This is a gross betrayal of the working class and shows that any vestige of the class struggle Bernie claimed to represent is long dead. The proletariat must maintain class independence and not support genocidal capitalist candidates.
It was childish to believe Biden could be pushed left in 2020, in 2024 it is sheer idiocy to think he is going to move any direction but right. In 2020, Democrats promised a $15 federal minimum wage by 2026. It’s 2024 and the minimum wage is still $7.25. The Democrats bowed down to the powerless parliamentarian to make sure that happened.
Trump was awful and clearly no one should vote for him. But Biden has managed to outdo Trump in the competition for worst president of our lifetime on many issues including climate change, immigration, and actively sponsoring genocide.
In a recent email, Bernie claimed climate change was a reason why we must vote for Biden:
Take one issue for example: Climate change.
Trump does not believe in climate change.
So what does that mean?
It means that not only all of the work we have done in trying to transform our energy systems away from fossil fuel will be undone, but every other country in the world is going to say “Hey if the second largest emitter in the world is giving up, than we're not going to do it either.”
Biden might claim to believe in climate change, but his actions show that he does not. He has expanded oil and gas drilling faster than even Trump did. He has increased the budget to the world’s largest polluter, the US military. He blew up the Nordstream 2 Pipeline, resulting in the world’s single largest methane leak in history. He waived 26 environmental laws to build Trump’s wall. He fast tracked the Mountain Valley Pipeline, approved the Alaska LNG project, and backed the Enbridge Line 3 oil sands pipeline project. While Democrats like to claim the bipartisan infrastructure bill was the largest investment in climate history, CNBC said, “The bill does little to curb planet warming emissions and falls short of the investments scientists say are necessary to prepare for the worst impacts of climate change.” The promised climate investments Biden campaigned on were cut out entirely.
The simple fact of the matter is that Biden has moved significantly right of even his weak platform he campaigned on in 2020. There was no pushing Biden to the left and there will be no leftward movement going forward. Anything he says this year that sounds progressive can be attributed to it being an election year. His record speaks for itself. He remains the conservative who pushed Reagan to the right on crime. He is a lackey of his capitalist donors and will push austerity measures before spending on the working class.
I hear you! Thank you for the research and clarity. So sad about Bernie.
Once upon a time, I thought that a Sanders candidacy represented that rare opportunity to begin the kinds of changes that justice, and sustainability, require. Over time, he has shown that to be unjustified hope. I regret now that I defended him against charges that he was sheep-dogging for the establishment Dems. When he says this: "... I believe that we can move him [Biden] toward a more progressive agenda", it is clear that he is indeed, merely herding the flock. And, as he knows Biden's score as well as we do, he apparently is quite comfortable lying in doing his sheepdog duty. He no more believes that Biden can be moved left than we do.