49
So-called socialist Bernie Sanders urges left to back President Biden for reelection
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
49 points (69.3% liked)
US News
364 readers
1 users here now
News from within the empire - From a leftist perspective
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I hate Bernie so much. Such a scumbag. Advocated for the destruction of Yugoslavia and his constant grift of pretending to give a shit about the poor tricks a lot of people. More than that I'm sick of those who suck off this guy like he's some hero of the proletariat when he's nothing more than an opportunistic con artist. I'm so sick of the lesser evilism nonsense people try and use to justify this crap. Voting for lesser evil is is all the left has done for fucking ever now and all its gotten us is a neoliberal hellscape. The democrats will never need to give the left anything because the left is spineless and gives its power away freely. If you're a guaranteed voting bloc your demands will never be even considered because they aren't real demands, they are simply polite requests. Policy is instead dictated by those who will jump ship if a better opportunity presents itself because they are the ones who may swing the other way.
I sympathize with your position here, but I would add that some observable benefit has been had in his orbit. Using myself as an example, some of the grassroots energy and political education that came from people who supported his campaign, or who saw some kind of value in it even if they thought it was a lost cause, helped lead me to the views I have now. We shouldn't underestimate the value of seizing upon working class movements to educate, provided it's not faux working class reactionary stuff. And in saying this, we don't have to give Bernie himself credit for it, of course. My point is just that we shouldn't let the disgust with the situation deprive us of leveraging opportunities to fight against the indoctrination. This next election may contain such opportunities too, where we'll encounter people who stubbornly want to do "fix it from within," but may be easier to get through to when combining the knowledge we can present with certain campaign messaging that is getting them to think about things they'd otherwise have ignored.