DNC In Philly Day 2 – Jill Stein Talks To Bernie or Bust

The Party’s Over

Jill Stein Outlines Green New Deal To Bernie Sanders Supporters

“Hell No DNC, We Won’t Vote for Hillary!”

[Updates below]

Turn out the lights 
The party’s over 
They say that 
All good things must end
Call it a night 
The party’s over 
And tomorrow starts 
The same old thing again ~~~ “The Party’s Over” Willie Nelson

I went down to Philly again today, another hot one. Checking the mood after Sanders’ speech last night, which urged his supporters to get in line and back Hillary Clinton.

I planned to go to FDR Park to the civil disobedience protest planned for the Wells Fargo Center where the convention is taking place. But, after learning that Jill Stein was speaking, I spent a few hours at the Bernie or Bust rally across the street from city hall.

The Busters had several young, smart, righteous, angry, and funny speakers (forgot their names) who fired up the crowd. I wish I was taking notes or had a recorder – there were lots of great lines – but the basic political message I got was that they are independent of the Sanders campaign, are disgusted by the Clinton/DNC sabotage, and will work to oppose Clinton until November in swing states.

Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, spoke and outlined her “Power To the People Plan” and Green New Deal.

She was excellent, far more progressive from a policy standpoint than Bernie. Stein outlined more detailed substantive policy proposals, was far more aggressive in criticizing Clinton and the corporate Democrats, a militarized foreign policy, the destructive aspects of US empire, weapons trade, and the permanent war economy, an accelerating climate emergency and need for a rapid and just renewable energy transition (100% renewables by 2030, increase in jobs for displaced workers, etc), public transportation (I loved her remark about free public transit), et al than Bernie.

I bet if you gave the unattributed written text of her speech and a Bernie’s speech to all the Bernie supporters, that they’d overwhelmingly prefer Stein’s.

The sun was pounding so I sought refuge in shade around the side of a building and was soon joined by 2 reporters doing an interview of a young black Bernie Buster. After it ended, we struck up a conversation, and it turned into an extended interview with two smart young reporters from The New Yorker magazine.

Wow, what a difference from my Trenton experience – talking to sharp reporters who ask tough questions and push back with followups critically probing what I said!.

It was a wide ranging interview, but the issues they seemed most interested in were my remarks about:

1) why the policies, abandonment, and betrayal by the Democrats have created some of the Trump supporters, particularly the history and record of the Bill Clinton Administration (crime bill, ending welfare, NAFTA, shift to corporate & Wall Street funding, deregulation of the banks and Wall Street, deindustrialization, abandonment of labor, triangulation, et al) and Hillary’s role in all that and the continuity of that corporate agenda until today.

Does anyone still recall what the Clinton team did to Brooksley Born? (does Hillary the feminist support the misogyny involved in that attack?)

Does Hillary the child advocate remember and still support Madeline Albright’s comment that killing 500,00 Iraqi children “it was worth it” or the devastating effects on children of Bill Clinton’s termination of welfare“

[Update: 10/14/16 – We made exactly this point from day 1 – from CounterPunch:

Fatally missing from most liberal analysis  (and political strategy) is that the main fuel powering Trump’s campaign is popular rage at the corporate corruption of the political establishment. Clinton’s corporate campaign is incapable of tapping into this mass desire for change. Unfortunately, the failure of union and progressive leaders to offer an independent, anti-establishment challenge to Trump leaves the right-wing an open field to exploit the popular anger. – end update].

2) how the Hillary Clinton campaign smeared the Sanders campaign early on with the “Bernie Bro’s” label as a divisive racist tactic and how that both bolstered Clinton’s strong support in the black community and impeded Sanders’ efforts to make inroads and form a coalition of working class whites with progressives and the black community (the goal of Dr. King’s Poor People’s March, and an existential threat to the corporate elites who run the DNC and the country).

I wish I had thought of it at the time, but I think that meme was a Swiftboat operation as bad as John Kerry got it from the right. Bernie Sanders was an early civil rights activist, at a time when Hillary CLinton supported Barry Goldwater, who opposed civil and voting rights acts. Clinton campaign combined Swiftboat and Nixon Dirty tricks.

With the 20,000 DNC sabotage emails – with more to come – I would not be surprised if emails prove that kind of operation.

3) The Democrats’ abuse of identity politics to mask a corporate economic agenda.

[Update – 8/8/16 – for a superb essay on that topic, see: Class Dismissed: Identity Politics to the Front of the Line ~~~ end update]

4) How did I respond to the threat of electing Trump?

I responded that Clinton was not only disrespecting the Sanders people (whose 13 million votes got something like 46% of pledged delegates) and not making real substantive political and policy concessions, but was intentionally driving away and antagonizing progressives and the left.

The rapid fire assaults of the Platform Committee, the Tom Kaine VP selection, refusal to oppose TPP and fracking, and immediately making the disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz a leader in the Clinton campaign were so bad, they had to be intended to inflame and cause a Bernie or Bust exit.

I think the Clinton DNC folks want the left to break away from the Democratic Party and use that as cover for their plan to court “transactional” alliances with disaffected “moderate” Republicans who oppose Trump’s racist demagoguery and the corporate interests who oppose Trump’s economic and protectionist trade policies that would crush a big part of their global profits.

[Update: 8/9/16 – NY Times story today is EXACTLY what I suspected and warned about. Clinton does’t want or need the left or progressives:

Donors for Bush, Kasich and Christie Are Turning to Clinton More Than to Trump

People who donated to establishment Republican candidates in the primary season are more likely to give money to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, than to their own party’s candidate, Donald J. Trump. ~~~ end update]

We’ll see if any of that gets in their story. More to follow, some pics:

[Update – Chris Hedges nails it – this is exactly how I feel:

Sanders squandered his most important historical moment. He had a chance, one chance, to take the energy, anger and momentum, walk out the doors of the Wells Fargo Center and into the streets to help build a third-party movement. His call to his delegates to face “reality” and support Clinton was an insulting repudiation of the reality his supporters, mostly young men and young women, had overcome by lifting him from an obscure candidate polling at 12 percent into a serious contender for the nomination. Sanders not only sold out his base, he mocked it. This was a spiritual wound, not a political one. For this he must ask forgiveness.

– 8/21/16 – I told you this was coming – in addition to the Green Party, include the left and progressives as a whole – see point #4 below:

• Liberal Hate for the Green Party

Liberals are no longer going through the motions of criticizing the Democrat. Instead they openly show love for Hillary Clinton and disdainfully pile on Stein and Baraka with fury. The blog Wonkettecalled Jill Stein “cunty” and “a mendacious nihilist piece of shit.” The site Very Smart Brothas declared that a vote for Stein was akin to putting it in the trash. They also threw in a dig at Cornel West because he dared to criticize Barack Obama. The Huffington Post chose to deride Green Party convention delegates because they ate at McDonald’s. Gawker tried to link Ajamu Baraka to holocaust denial. His unassailable human rights credentials didn’t mean much when the media decided to go into attack mode.

[Update below]