Let's hope the youth show up tomorrow in Michigan
No state has lost more well paid jobs to free trade and no state has been plundered worse than Michigan by America's corporate vampire friendly free trade policies of the last few decades. Policies that Hillary supported [until flip-flopping recently] and Bernie always denounced. No state has more first hand experience with the causes and effects of the 99% vs. 1% than Michigan, it's hard to believe that Sanders pledge to reverse a status-quo of wealth distribution from the bottom to the top, responsible for entrenching gross inequality and social and economic injustice hasn't propelled him to the top.
"Sanders is educating the American people on the importance of class rather than race, religion, gender or sexual orientation when it comes to understanding the state of the nation. The only divide that matters in society, he has spares no opportunity in pronouncing, is the one that exists between the super-rich and everybody else." - RT
According to the pundits and the polls Bernie is losing the African-American vote very badly, and again, i can't understand why. It seems to me that Bernie's decades long equality message and his record as a civil rights campaigner both in and out of government should be a beacon to African-American voters, but it isn't.
Just over a week ago US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who was the DNC Vice-Chair resigned and threw her support behind Bernie saying: "There is a clear contrast between our two candidates with regard to my strong belief that we must end the interventionist, regime change policies that have cost us so much," she wrote. "This is not just another 'issue.' This is THE issue, and it’s deeply personal to me. This is why I’ve decided to resign as Vice Chair of the DNC so that I can support Bernie Sanders in his efforts to earn the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential race."
i'd have thought that an announcement like this and the Vermont senator's past support for drastic military cuts plus the fact that in 1995 Bernie introduced a bill to terminate America’s nuclear weapons program and as late as 2002, he supported a 50 percent cut for the Pentagon saying "corrupt defense contractors are to blame for massive fraud and a “bloated military budget", would sway Bernie's progressive foreign policy critics...but no, they haven't [read why here, here, here and here].
Bernie's right on so many issues and poll after poll concludes that Bernie beats Trump or Cruz whereas Hillary fares much worse.
It's all a mystery to me, but the fact remains that for Bernie to have any chance of turning his heartfelt words into reality he'd need to have very long 'coattails' to change the numbers in congress considering that the House is now dominated by the neanderthal Republicans and the Senate, though perhaps able to achieve a Democratic majority in Nov., is presently Republican controlled too.. Consequently, without a Democratic landslide neither Hillary's modest changes or Bernie's revolutionary ones can go anywhere.
Unfortunately, despite huge turnouts for his rallies, especially by young voters, those huge landslide type numbers just aren't showing up at the polls. The primary numbers show that overwhelmingly the Republican carnival is drawing the huge numbers not Bernie's class war arguments. i guess John Steinbeck put it best when he said, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
We'll see, as another great philosopher - Yogi Berra - said, "it ain't over 'til it's over" so i'll cling to my hopes for that miracle to appear. But if it doesn't, i'm more and more thinking, especially as the deluded evangelical Ted Cruz is Trump's only real opposition, that i'd rather see the loose cannon, the buffoon, that is the Donald as president than Hillary because he just might be the bowling ball the Empire needs whereas Hillary is just more of the same.
