(ThyBlackMan.com) “You wouldn’t listen to me, AND YOU SHOULDN’T” Bernie Sanders advice to his supporters regarding what to do if he ever tried to tell them how to vote.
On August 5th, Bernie Sanders wrote an op-ed for the LA Times in which he urged his voters to vote for Hillary Clinton. This essay can be found HERE.
Bernie Sanders is factually INCORRECT regarding his main thesis in this editorial. Sanders writes:
“Clinton understands that Citizens United has undermined our democracy. She will nominate justices who are prepared to overturn that Supreme Court decision, which made it possible for billionaires to buy elections.”
Citizens United was decided in 2010. However, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page in an exhaustive 2104 Princeton study which analyzed data drawn between 1981 and 2002, found that:
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” See HERE . Rephrased, the cumulative effects of the neoliberal policies enacted from the Reagan Administration onward, had ALREADY conver
ted the United States into an oligarchy well BEFORE the Citizens United decision.
In fact, the root precedent for Citizens United, Buckley V. Vallejo, was decided in 1976. In that decision, the Court majority held that money was a form of speech, and so protected under the First Amendment. See HERE. Overturning the Citizen’s United precedent would fall far short of breaking the control of money over American politics. That would require an EXPLICIT repudiation by a future Court of the core precedent of Buckley.
The prospects of THAT under either a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton Presidency are precisely ZERO. This is so because in June 2016, in McDonnell vs. United States, the US Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY decided to make it nearly impossible to prosecute elected officials for corruption. See HERE for details. The present Court has no will to fundamentally change “business as usual” in American politics. This certainly would not change under a Clinton Presidency.
Clinton’s judicial nominations would be effectively vetted by Goldman Sachs, et al. They would exist, judicially speaking, SOLELY to look out for ELITE interests. Hillary Clinton serves an elite faction, who for the most part, are socially liberal. Given this, Clinton’s judicial picks would have latitude to judicially enact socially “liberal” policies, so long as those decisions would not affect the bottom line of elites in general.
Therefore, urging a vote for Clinton because of her Supreme Court selections is farcical, as the UNANIMOUS McDonnell decision (cited above) which effectively AUTHORIZES political corruption, clearly illustrates. Given this reality, Sanders is being deceptive in making the peculiar arguments he does.
In an interview months ago, Bernie Sanders instructed his supporters “”not to listen to me if I ever tried to tell you who to vote for“” He continued, stating, ‘You wouldn’t listen to me, AND YOU SHOULDN’T.” See the short video HERE. Bernie Sanders, you were correct then. Your words are still correct NOW. Your unfortunate propaganda piece in the LA Times is, according to your own advice, something that should be rejected.
The entire Clinton campaign is centered on FEAR. Fear of Trump, fear of Isis, fear of fear itself. Hillary Clinton is a wholly owned and controlled agent of neoliberal corporatism. Goldman Sachs and many other financial institutions did not pay her many millions of dollars because they liked her smile–or her ideas! They paid her in ADVANCE for services to be rendered. Now, they are hell-bent on recouping their costly investment by installing her as puppet in Chief in the White House. Such is oligarchy!
A further falsity in Sanders’ LA Times piece, is that Clinton MUST be supported to stop Donald Trump. This strongly implies that Clinton is some sort of ‘anti-Trump’. Actually, the white-hot (pun intended) rage of tens of millions of blue-collar, mostly Anglo-Caucasian Americans which Donald Trump has effectively channeled, is a result of the neoliberal economic policies that Clinton EXISTS to slavishly serve. Hillary Clinton IS an agent of the problem which CREATED Trump and all the demagogues yet to come. As such, Clinton can NEVER be the solution. A Clinton Presidency would simply exacerbate the accelerating decline of this class of Americans.
Meanwhile, climate change is accelerating, our middle class is fast hollowing out, and oligarchy is becoming deeply entrenched. Clinton, like Trump represents not just a war on American Democracy, but in reality a war against nature, against our planetary biosphere. Given this appalling reality, we simply do not have the luxury of waiting four or more years for a Progressive Revolution.
NEITHER Trump NOR Clinton is an acceptable choice. Neither will avert our impending doom. Revolution, if necessary, ACTUAL REVOLUTION, in which the existing government is abruptly removed from power, will soon be all we have left.
For the moment, however, political revolution has at least one more act left to play out. I strongly encourage ALL voters to NOT vote for EITHER Trump OR Clinton. Instead, vote for EITHER Jill Stein, the Green Party Presidential candidate, or for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate.
I realize many Progressive readers will have issues with Johnson. Just remember that not everyone is a progressive. Conservative voters, upon rejecting Trump, need to have an alternative to voting for Clinton. That alternative is Johnson. Readers wishing to see a detailed account of how this would play out should see my previous article, HERE.
Amidst our spiraling existential crises, our window of opportunity for taking effective action is nearly closed. ACT people! ACT DECISIVELY! ACT NOW!
Written by Michael Byron
Official website; http://www.MichaelPByron.com
