8mo ago

The king Bernie Sanders based take.

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The last great presidential candidate. The only once I’ve ever actually liked.
Hopefully more senators like AOC will come around that were motivated by Bernie and can take the party over.

I hope liberals learn from this and start organizing. The billionaire-funded Democrat party will never pin blame on the capitalists that fund them to get working class votes.
As this article points out:
Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros. The top contributors to Bernie’s campaign often held jobs at places like Amazon and Walmart. The unions loved him. And— never forget — he earned the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement that Trump also received the day before the election this year. It turns out, the Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real! While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie. For many of them now that the choice is between Trump and the dried out husk of neoliberalism, they’re going Trump.
Read Blackshirts and Reds
- We need at least one new party in this country, and one that runs for local elections first to build a bench of people who can run for higher office.
  Even if I didn’t believe the national Green Party was just a spoiler (regardless of how they started out,) they spend all their time and energy pushing a presidential candidate every four years rather than working on ground game.
  I think states like Texas are actually fertile ground if you focus on what people are dealing with in their day to day life and start small-county commissions, town council positions, even sheriff if you have a county where the local sheriff is unpopular and your party platform is looking at criminal justice reform.
  I also think pushing for changes to use ranked choice voting with proportional representation would generate long-term change. Single Tranferable Vote has worked well in Ireland, and historically it worked well in multiple American cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote?wprov=sfti1
  
  I think the problem isn't the cities, it is the rural bits in between that won't want to give up their excess power per vote in the current system.
- Liberals and neoliberals are the problem. The only solution is for progressives to start a new party. The DNC just showed that it is incapable of learning, constantly courting the right that will never actually vote for them, or telling billionaire donors to fuck off.
  Liberals are just conservatives that refuse to take their masks off. Neoliberals even more so. These are the "white moderates," and the "supporters of the MIC," that Martin Luther King Jr., and Eisenhower warned us about.
  Bernie showed us the way forward. Billionaires are merely dragons to be slain and ignored.
- I've been seeing suggestions for that book a lot. I was even going to see if I can grab it from my local library, but it's just an e-book for some reason. I guess I can read it on my tablet but i prefer physical books. I do want to support my library though by using them, so it's a tough choice lol.
  
  You can always check out the e-book version even if you go find a physical copy to read instead. I saw a librarian asking people to do stuff like that since the active use of library services let's them argue for better funding and services.
  Also, see if they have a physical copy at another branch. My local library is part of a network that spans across multiple towns, and they can often get books sent to them from other branches if they don't have a copy themswlves.
- Please note that the "Bernie bros" that became right wing could have been psyops. I've seen a few ones stupidly admitting it, because Trump would have struggled against Bernie, maybe even have lost in a landslide.

The right are perpetually angry. They are angry when they win and angry when they lose. It's a hallmark of their cult. There's no pleasing these people because they don't know what they're angry about, they just prefer to be angry.
- Every fascist needs an enemy. The threat is required to rally around their flag and blame someone else for their failures. When there's no obvious threat in sight, it has to be produced - else there's no other way to maintain popularity among subordinates while also sanctioning them.
  
  The enemy in fascism is always all powerful and inferior at the same time.

Seeing Bernie speak truth to power is incredibly refreshing, especially since he points the finger not at the voting public, but at his own team mates, who absolutely did drop the ball multiple times.
I hope people actually take his words on board.
- A lot of my in-laws are Trump supporters, but do you know who they support more than Trump? Bernie. They want a lot of the same things that progressives do. Obviously there are Trump supporters that are racists and fascists, but I'd bet the majority just want a better deal for the working class, and they fell for Trump's promise that he's the one to do it.
  
  That's quite interesting that there is a lot of cross over between Trump and Bernie, but Trump does at least pretend to care about the working class.
- Blaming the voting public does nothing other than to help us feel better about ourselves. "It's not our fault, the people are just stupid and naive. They were always going to vote for Trump, there's nothing else we could have done". It's what we've been doing the past three election cycles and it isn't working.
  We can't make them change. Change only comes from within. We can't keep telling them they're better off with us. We need to pass legislation so that the average, uniformed voter can see it for themselves.
- That's one thing that I like about grandpa style lefties and don't like about Lemmy: blaming trumpists for wanting a change in the political system. Lemmy and MAGA crowd share common fears about the future and have absolutely different solutions.
  Why the fuck one wants to highlight the difference and not the thing that's in common. People achieve unimaginable results when working together.

I want Bernie for president and I'm not even American.
- We tried. And almost got him. But then the DNC Services Corp rigged the game against us to stop him.
  
  I’ve said this before but the DNC is actually just another wing of the Oligarchy. They exist to provide a fabricated conflict so that people think it’s a divide based on ideals, not on class divide it truly is. Look at the wealth of all of the leaders in the DNC. It’s pretty much the same circles and wealth as the RNC.
  
  TWICE!
  
  Is there a chance for him to win vs Trump if he was chosen as the primary?

I think the Democrats are too far right, but that's not what lost them the election. What lost them the election is that voters think the President controls the price of groceries, and if cheaper groceries means killing a lot of brown people, that's a small price to pay.
- Trump is going to prove that the President controls the price of groceries by enacting tariffs on imported food and getting rid of all the people who catch, raise, and harvest our food. He's going to make grocery prices go through the roof.
  
  I'm sure that will be blamed on someone else. Probably trans people.
- Democrats were also in favour of killing Palestinians. They had the chance to stop all of this and didn't. The choice in the election was slow genocide that's currently going on, or probably a faster one, when Trump gets into power.
  But at the end of the day, genocide happening in a year or 3 doesn't change how horrific it is, doesn't change the fact that they will be gone.
  
  I really don't understand this whole Palestine argument. You have the choice between two candidates who both have very similar positions on the issue in a country that has historically never held any other position on it, regardless of who was in power and somehow you make that the one deciding issue for this election even though it literally makes no difference on the issue who you vote for in the election.
  
  Tankies helping trump this election cycle has put a SHITLOAD of Palestinian blood on their hands.
  Feel free to disagree, just watch the casualty count skyrocket in late January

....something, something, Bernie warned us about this in a video 20 years ago, something, something, status quo.....

It is so incredibly refreshing to hear someone with (however limited) power say what I've been seeing with the naked eye.
A four-hour drive through rural America last week showed me this: trump signs in the very poorest and the very richest yards, for miles and miles. There was the occasional Harris sign for obviously middle-class dwellings but not all.
- He describes the plight of these people correctly, and while they haven't been offered enough by the dems, they aren't choosing the republicans because they are offering them more. They're choosing them because they fear change and the Republicans promise to protect them from change. The fear comes from ignorance / lack of a decent rural education system.
  
  Not American, but I saw it as the opposite: that US voters are sick of the status quo. They want a radical change candidate who'll shake things up. They want anything but business-as-usual.
  Not to discount stupidity and racism. There's that too, but I have to hope it's mostly borne out of fear.
  
  Yeah, that is a very weird position to hold, the status quo is shit for me but I don't want change. Not disagreeing with you though that it is that way.

I’m tired of being told how awesome the economy is. It’s great for the rich, but the cost of necessities like housing, food, and healthcare has outpaced the CPI, so we all feel worse. A cheaper big screen tv doesn’t help much if you can’t afford the basics.
Aggregate economic data only says so much. Lots of INDIVIDUAL people are suffering. While the CPI is one basket of products, everyone has their own, and this everyone has their own rate of inflation. So saying wages have kept up with inflation is a fallacy on 2 fronts. Some saw income outpace the CPI, others it did not and they’ve lost income. But even among the former group, everyone had a personal rate of inflation that may well be higher than the CPI.
Instead, the wealthy and politicians look at averages and medians and assume it’s just negative feelings. But we were alive in the 90s. We were alive in the early 2000s. We know about the 50s and 60s. We know the economy used to be better for working people. We want better.
Trump, of course, will not deliver that. But Harris didn’t inspire confidence she would, either.
- My wife is a teacher, so we use her healthcare, but I still peek in at the healthcare at my job when enrollment comes along, just to be diligent.
  It went up 20% this year, from $600 to $720. If you make $30K a year and got a 3% cost of living adjustment, you make less this year than last year from healthcare alone.
  Food, gas, rent, cars, childcare, utilities, everything is up. I guess it's cool that US steel or something might be doing well, and the stock market is up, but that minimally affects the day to day of most people.
  
  My raises, baring promotion, are 2% a year. I did the math. I’ve lost $10,000 a year to inflation at this point. In aggregate it’s around $22,000 at this point.
  
  And yet every newscast has a stock ticker. Even NPR gives the stock index ratings several times a day.
- We don't really have to worry about what Trump offered, he got less votes than last time on the same tired platform. The problem was Democrats through and through not being left at all. Losing millions of votes that way. Some people can play the lesser of two evils game, but as we just saw there are not enough people who can vote while holding their noses.
  I held my nose, but the numbers clearly show it was a Democrat failure to communicate, empathize, and/or initiate with voters.
  
  I held my nose, but the numbers clearly show it was a Democrat failure to communicate, empathize, and/or initiate with voters.
  But they got Dick Cheney on board!

America needs more people like Bernie, too bad Republicans and Democrats are hopeless and don’t get it

The Democratic party has failed us. We need an actual workers party and we have about 3 years to build it.
Join PSL if you have not already
- I have my first PSL meeting on Sunday, I'm really anxious (hello social anxiety) but I'm bringing my husband. Organize or die is what I'm thinking! I'm sorry your post brought out miserable people
- Capitalism does not need to go. Croneyism needs to go. Our government has for decades been catering to the corporations that run America, from Amazon to the Railroad. They helped these massive corporations consolidate their markets by regulating small and new players out of existence. They take their money and make sure they don't lose their spots on top.
- You guys don't deserve it. This election proved to me that you're leftists can be every bit as hateful as your right
  
  Yeah the people advocating for the end of a genocide and social healthcare are the hateful ones 💀
  
  It's easy to paint a huge group of people with a broad brush, but that's exactly the mindset that got us here.
  
  Why do liberals have to get in the way and make enemies of us? We'll have to go through you all then.
  Leftism isn't a stranger to being attacked on all sides and being pushed to the margins, but we're still here generation after generation even as the most rich and powerful nations organize their militaries and media against us.
  
  The DNC isn't entitled to Americans votes. They lost us and lost folks to the Republicans because they promised to fix the economy and are actually talking to people directly. The DNC is fucking dead to me.
  I voted Kamala but I knew she didn't stand a chance. I knew we were cooked when it was Biden/Kamala
  
  You're from El Salvador. Should I suggest that El Salvadorians deserve MS-13 because you're stupid brown people who can't get away from drugs?
  No, you bigoted piece of shit.
  
  Leftists can definitely be as stupid as rightists, and we're seeing it in full technicolor in this thread. "Waaaahhh, there weren't any good options. I should be able to click on something perfect!"
  
  That's a solid take.
  Far left and far right are just "far".
  Far from truth, reality or the burden of existing in a social system with people they don't agree with.
  This makes them mad and they traded their honor and honesty to pwn the libs.
  The only difference between tankies and the magats is a red hat made in a Chinese sweatshop.

He’s spot-on. I’m pissed and do want change.
- Both sides do.
  
  It's just a shame that was the only real option on the ballot.
  
  This is exactly what happened - not that there weren't any real options on the ballot, but that people are fucking idiots. You don't even get that this comic is about you.

I think Bernie is giving too much credit to Americans. IMO the election doesn't show that the Dems abandoned anybody, it shows that half the voters in the country are fucking idiots. To help them you would have to trick them into letting you. Unfortunately most people with that ability are assholes who are only going to use the amorphous mass of stupidity for their own benefit.
- The election Margin was under 200k people in 3 states. Correctly people in safe states voted for what they wanted not what they had to do.
- this is the real based take. may the salt of your enemies enhance the flavor of your meals.

How can this man be so based. The world simply didn't deserve him.

i hope Bernie discovers Fediverse and stop using the broken bird site
- ...i get his correspondence via email...

He would have won music video https://youtu.be/moNHfeBJ81I
Feel the Bern music video https://youtu.be/dzgBkpY-6mE

Why more people didn't vote for Bernie Sanders still confuses me. His policies would benefit the majority of the working class and end poverty for millions of Americans.
- We weren't allowed to.

Based

Anybody got the actual press release for this? I can't find it. Only the X post with screenshot.
https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1854271157135941698
Can't find them here.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/media/press-releases/

And what did the working class do this election?
They gave the keys to the kingdom to the con men, and that includes the twitter and amazon assholes.
That'll fix things! That'll show 'em!
- Yeah because democrats abandonned the working class entirely.

This would sit a lot better if he didnt sell out for a beach house from Hillary.

Too late Bernie, there was a need to speak way before this election started. yet you preferred to side with Biden when everyone could see that he was cooked, and preferred to blindly endorse kamala, her policies and her campaign through out the few pas months, you didn't even negotiate a damn thing for your endorsement even when knowing you have a sizable following.
- He made it clear where he differed from Biden and Harris, but encouraged his supporters to vote for them. Are you proposing that he should have encouraged his supporters to ditch Harris, giving Trump an even more sizable lead?
  
  He shouldn't have endorsed them without getting anything in returns for his people. a tangible and meaningful policy, he is known for advocating for universal healthcare, but I saw no push from him on the party for that. if that's a big ask, choose another impactful policy, find other progressives, form a group and advocate together. what did the progressives do against the party for a few elections now? nothing, they let themselves get run over by the Democratic party apparatus times and again. I don't want to be mean but at this point I don't see them to be different to other careerist politicians.
  This is what politics is about. not only him, but this goes for the squad as well. mark my words : AOC will end up becoming just another Pelosi.

He is wrong here sadly. Its the voters fault for picking fascism by not voting
- May I remind you that Trump also won the popular vote? 70+ millions people voted for Fascism, out of 260 millions adults in the US.
  Roughly 1 out of 4 person voted for Fascism. There is a problem right there.
  
  Yeah, the problem is that the Republicans are the only ones acknowledging the hurt people are feeling right now, and providing any answers for it, even if their questions and answers are complete bullshit. The Democrats are completely derelict of their duty to counter that bullshit with real answers, so the bullshit goes completely unchallenged and people vote for the guy with answers.
  The average voter doesn't believe fascism can happen right here, right now. It's unpleasant to think about so they don't, and the media they consume doesn't provoke that sort of thought. It's ignorance, not malice. You can't expect the entire country to be as terminally online as we are.

I lean left, but I have never been able to get behind Bernie.
- Bernie is center-left at most. If he's too left, you don't lean left at all. If he's not left enough, that makes sense.
  
  Bernie is against corporate corruption and wants to expand social programs. He doesn't want to flip the table of capitalism. Just improve the lives that have to live within it.
- So fucking what? I'm sure lots of guys have had half naked women sitting on their lap at one point during their life.
  https://lemmy.world/comment/13227686
  This you? You are a neoliberal at best. You don't lean left in any way, shape, or from. You lean right.

Don't call Bernie a king..
- I think it's more of a synonym for "the GOAT" or any other superlative rather implying he has a divine right to rule. E.g. "if you come at the king, you best not miss"
  
  I am, in fact, aware of the sociopolitical aspects of the phrase, thanks a bunch, lib.

For once I disagree with Bernie.
You can blame the DNC for being useless and out of touch but they always have been, nothing changed there. You can blame them for their shitty messaging and not listening to the concerns of working people ... ditto.
What changed in this election is that millions of people, who know Trump is a a liar, a criminal, a rapist, a narcissist ... I could go on and on. Well, they decided to vote for him because none of those negative traits were sufficiently off-putting.
This was a test of the collective character and morality of the nation and the United States failed that test miserably. Put it down to a poor standard of public education, Russian/Iranian/Chinese propaganda, accelerationism, racism, misogyny, whatever mix of reasons you're comfortable with. Could the DNC have done better? Absolutely. Would the DNC doing better have won the election for Harris? Probably not, given the margin of victory.
- Trump's vote was largely static. He didn't add significant support in any way. We already knew a third of the country was filled with regressive assholes. The reason he won was that over 15 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 sat this one out. This was 100% a messaging failure and the DNC deserves all the blame. Sanders is absolutely right here. We wanted to hear about unions and job protection and taxing billionaires, not see Harris try to court right wingers while paling around with that fucking ghoul Liz Cheney and her war criminal father. They fucked up, they lost.
  
  Trump’s vote was largely static. He didn’t add significant support in any way.
  That's my point. Trump is a known quantity now and he didn't lose support. That's a failure of the US electorate.
  Ask yourself why Harris had to run a near perfect campaign to even stand a chance of winning while Trump ran a campaign that should've seen him lose badly, in a more informed and moral country, and still won.
  
  I've been wondering about exactly this, do you have any statistics you can point me to? No hard feelings if it was a thing you saw but didn't save.
- Nah, you’re wrong to blame the voters.
  It’s time to take an honest look at DNC leadership and ask some difficult questions - why aren’t they interested in doing more to actually win votes? Will they ever learn that pandering to corporations for bribe money is a losing strategy?
  Besides, Trump actually got fewer votes this time around than 2020. So your premise is flawed there too. It’s just that Harris and the DNC got way less. Dems lost this one and if you ask me it’s because of their Israel First policy and fierce commitment to ongoing genocide and denial of reality. Couple that with insane inflation directly and negatively impacting people's material conditions, and somehow Trump was able to pose as the change candidate. Politically, that’s all that matters when the people are miserable.
  
  The people who voted for Trump do deserve the blame. In some sense, they deserve the biggest share of the blame. After all, they voted for him.
  The Democratic Party failed us all, though. They also deserve a significant slice of blame.

Alright this is gettin a bit much, Bernie endorsed all of this shit. The change he's talking about was on the ballot and he was pushing the conservative coddling moderate.
- He was trying to do everything he could to prevent Trump. That meant holding his tongue so as not to encourage people against strategic voting. It's a very dumb system we have, but it's not Bernie's fault we're in it.
  Now that the general is over, he can speak his mind again. And probably a hint of getting ahead of the Democratic Party's inevitable blaming of the left for this loss rather than an ounce of introspection.
  
  Not everything, one thing, the same thing everyone here was trying to do, the same thing the DNC was doing, trying to appeal to conservatives. This is the result, no one wanted conservative democrats, but everyone was holding their nose and pushing for it.
  Now after the fact people are trying to act like they support progressives.
- He specifically said he doesn't endorse it other than because on each topic, trump is worse.
  
  You know who else trump is worse than? Everyone! Bernie, AOC, jill stein, cornell west, any progressive.
- What else was he to do? Sometimes the lesser of 2 evils is the only choice.
  
  Endorse an even lesser evil, perhaps even popular good? Why was Kamala the only person in the world that wasnt Trump?

So why did you endorse it all Bernie? Washing your hands clean now as if nothing happened? We were all saying this months ago. But you said it was Kamala's turn.
- Because Kamala was better than Trump and months out from the election is too late to challenge the fundamentals of a political party
  
  No it was never too late. There should have been an open primary With three months left there was plenty of time.
  Kamala was massively ahead of Trump within 2 weeks of her swap in. Then she started losing in the polls when she opened her mouth and stated her name was Joseph Robinette Biden.

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