The contradictions of the U.S. left

06/11/2017
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The dream of creating a super-majority left-wing party in the United States from the ashes of the old Democratic Party could be achieved overnight if Senator Bernie Sanders stopped working against the generation of young people who energized his campaign in the United States in confrontation with Hillary Clinton.

 

That is the idea put forth by the American writer, professor and political activist Gail McGowan Mellor in an article by her published on Huffington Post on September 27.

 

It is estimated that two-thirds of voters in the US are opposed to the endless wars waged by their country, the granting of subsidies to large corporations and corruption. They want to support environment, public safety, science and social justice. If they were able to unite, they would roll in any suffrage.

 

At present, there are those who work for the creation of a new great party of the left. They do not do it with a retail approach, because those who have this commitment are 60% of the total number of voters and 78% of the independents, says Mellor.

 

But several times in the last year the projected new self-organized progressive party has been close to becoming viable and has been blocked by Sanders, who has prioritized the unification and cleansing of the deeply divided and corrupt Democratic party, to which he himself does not belong.

 

US Senator Bernie Sanders was a 2016 presidential candidate promoted by progressive democrats from the Democratic Party. They were determined to clean up US policy, get out of its endless wars, restore security networks and fight climate change. But they had not found, at the federal level of the two establishment parties, someone who did not receive money from large corporations.

 

Bernie was an independent politician (without a party) who, 42 years ago, had held local and federal political positions without receiving partisan support or corporate money. A convincing politician, well-informed and passionate, but unknown at the national level, he was raised to the political limelight and to victory by young people between 18 and 50 years of age, known as the millennials). They average 37 years of age and aim at making changes in culture and politics, without imperialist aims and in favor of a democratic reconstruction of society.

 

At various times, Sanders rejected calls from many of the "millennials", that he should leave the Democratic trusteeship and create a new party. But, instead of setting this as a goal, Sanders insisted that he could restore the Democratic Party to its old party glory.

 

Without militating in the divided and corrupt Democratic Party, whose supporters barely represent 28% of the registered electorate, Sanders decided to work to achieve its reunification. To this end, he called on his supporters to register as Democrats, to the detriment of the progressive ranks that had promoted him and that, for that reason, would be divided and weakened.

 

The Democrats had accepted him as their presidential primary candidate because it gave them a competitive image that legitimized Hillary Clinton, their pre-determined candidate. The Democratic leadership calculated that beating Bernie would be an easy task for her. In fact, thanks to the millennial generation, Bernie demonstrated, from the first month of the campaign, that in a few hours he could gather an enthusiastic crowd in any city, something that Hillary could not do despite the abundant corporate money she had.

 

But neither Sanders nor his supporters knew that the Democratic primaries, with their fabulous public expenditures, are always fraudulent and their outcome is predetermined behind closed doors. And the most serious thing is that the party sees this as its right. At various times, Sanders rejected the idea of many in the millennial generation, of getting out of the Democratic trusteeship and creating a new left party. Not a few of them thought they'd been cheated by the Democratic Party, and betrayed by Sanders. The rigged Democratic primaries ended in June 2016 with the designation of Hillary as party candidate.

 

Polls showed that Clinton and Trump were then neck-and-neck, four months before the November vote.

 

Subsequent polls have shown that in the 2016 elections, Sanders would have swept Trump. One of them suggested that Sanders would have obtained 56% of the vote, "an avalanche."

 

As an aspiring Democratic presidential candidate, Sanders told TIME magazine that what he was waging was not an election campaign but a "movement leading to a revolution for which he was trying to create political awareness."

 

October 23, 2017.

 

- Manuel E. Yepe.

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

 

 

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