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Bernie email sent out this morning sounds like he is seriously hinting at starting a new political party. I know people always speculate this, but this sounds about as serious as ever

Dear [PERSON READING THIS],

Tough times.

The American people understand that our economic and political systems are rigged. They know that the very rich get much richer while almost everyone else becomes poorer. They know that we are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society.

The Democrats ran a campaign protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges. Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans won. Unfortunately, the “change” that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.

Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life? Highly unlikely.

They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.

Given that reality, where do we go from here? That is the very serious question that needs a lot of discussion in the coming weeks and months.

How do we expand our efforts to build a multi-racial, multi-generational working class movement?

How do we create a 50 state movement, not politics based on the electoral college and “battleground” states?

How do we deal with Citizens United and the ability of billionaires to buy elections?

How do we recruit more working class candidates for office at all levels of government?

Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?

How do we better support union organizing?

How do we put together listening sessions around the country that intentionally seek input from people who did not vote for Democrats in the last election?

How do we best use social media to build our movement and combat the lies and disinformation coming from the billionaire class and right wing media?

How do we build sustainable and long-term issue-based organizing structures that live beyond individual campaigns?

These are some of the political questions that, together, we need to address. And it is absolutely critical that you make your voice heard during this process.

Not me. Us. That is the only way forward.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

What do we think? Considering all of the selling out he did from 2016 onward, only for none of it to be successful, I think there’s actually a possibility that he recognizes that his “legacy” is in danger. I’m actually so interested in hearing what the Hexbear community has to say about this that I’m legitimately excited to post it lmao

66 comments

  • There are political parties currently in existence in the states other than D&R. If Bernie were considering building a movement quickly he'd probably be talking to or about one, rather than nebulously asking these questions.

    While a politician speaking like Bernie used to be refreshing to me, his words now feel stale. He has been a statesman since before Christ, therefore I am unimpressed at broad and simple questions like:

    How do we deal with citizens united?

    Oh indeed, this is a question! I expect an idea. I expect a plan. I expect a lot i guess, but i don't expect he's serious. He's just throwing shit at the wall.

    Finally this guy here.

    Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?

    Gigantic "duh" aside, while it's a list of grievances, imma still invoke Betteridge's law of headlines here. If he's asking? Then he doesn't know. If he doesn't know? He aint leading shit.

    I canvassed for him so the bitterness colors this final salt-stained opinion: if i was somehow convinced he wasn't just taking up and dissipating all the leftist energy again? I no longer believe the man's got what it takes.

  • I've been thinking there's a serious split in the Democratic Party between Zionists and anti-genocide progressives. Those Senators that joined calls for an arms embargo and the House Reps that refused to watch Netanyahu speak could split and form a Party. It'd work!

    • I think that the issue of genocide in Palestine has become so culturally relevant that you are correct. It is a very clear dividing line between politically active people that isn’t bridged very often, if at all. Young, politically active people especially are pretty much in two entirely separate camps about it. If you are politically active enough to be an anti-Zionist, you likely don’t have any friends who are zionists (same is true on the inverse).

    • Am I correct in remembering an article that said Warnock and Ossof both voted to block sales? If I didn’t misread that headline, I found it sorta double take worthy because I assumed those guys were straight party operators.

    • For it to work it would need to peel off a non-trivial number of sitting legislators or governors. Then it would need to tactically contest specific districts. Something like what Bernie has already been doing in VT, or the DSA model of a party within a party.

      Still, I think he missed his moment, which was in 2016. Even in 2020 he might have secured the nomination by responding to the Obama coalition calls with a threat to make a 3rd-party run. But at this point his momentum is all gone.

      • You're right, they would basically be starting over their momentum from scratch.

        The vast vast majority of anti-genocide progressives would, in this current moment, balk at splitting the Party. They believe "if you aren't at the table, you're on the menu" and so it's "better" to be part of a party with Zionists than to strike out on their own. They lack the political will or courage to even attempt such a thing. It'd require an entirely new mass movement of people in the streets, something on the scale of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, to make them feel confident enough in striking out on their own.

        That probably won't manifest until Trump does something the sparks it, and if no one is prepared to take advantage of the energy it'll just fizzle out again.

  • His support of Biden and Israel has destroyed most of the good will I had towards him. Maybe he sees his legacy and doesn't want to die being a lackey of the Empire but IDK I could be giving him more credit than he deserves. I know a lot of us, myself included, wouldn't be here without him.

  • i can't comment much on the goal or whatever, but the whiplash many dems are experiencing--and the absolute failure of the party leadership to do anything but scold / have disingenuous takes about what it means--has left a vacuum for a lot of vaguely, passively center-left people emotionally invested in national politics who believed the dems were their best and only choice.

    the productive takes i have heard bouncing around my own orgs/community are that "we must figure our own problems out, because no help is coming." they are productive in the sense that it is a call to action in the here and now, not wasting effort on any of the symbolic BS around national protests or other dem pageantry. to identify material problems and work to do something about them.

    washington is going to be a shitshow. same as it ever was, but the mask will be off and that's going to traumatize people who still want to believe in at least some of our national institutions. this seems like an attempt to steer those people into some project. i assume what it does will be dictated by how many buy in and to what degree. i won't pretend to have hope for it, but i'm not going to piss all over it just yet for not openly aligning itself to the immortal science of maoist third worldism. i'm saving my piss for the reactionaries and the revanchist crusaders.

  • The democratic party is 100% captured by bourgeois interests. The political battlefield is sort of drawn with these two parties that are both completely bourgeois but there are new issues arising all the time with events. Which ever one of these parties identifies a new issue will propose a solution from a fundamentally bourgeois worldview and they may not be particularly interested in carrying these proposals out if they are not fundamentally bourgeois concerns. The first actor of the two parties may propose basically the same solution, and the second one may tinker with it, but they operate on the same framework. As long as issues are defined by these parties and their various propaganda networks, bourgeois concerns will always be considered a higher priority than issues that affect normal proletarian human beings and solutions will be the ones that benefit bourgeois interests. And the propaganda channels have turned the average american into an open nazi with respect to the border and Gaza.

    For example, if there is a liquidity crisis in the banking sector, it will be dealt with immediately. But why is a liquidity crisis in the banking sector a more urgent problem than the 34 million Americans dealing with food insecurity? Liquidity crises can cause serious economic dysfunction but we already have serious economic dysfunction when 34 million people are food insecure in the presence of such abundance.

    A socialist movement needs to do a better job discovering the real issues that real people face and propose and agitate solutions to these problems that strengthen proletarian class power before the bourgeois media and parties can poison the well with their stupid bullshit. As long as we allow our political discourse to be carried out in the existing framework of bourgeois parties and bourgeois propaganda networks we cannot possibly win. But if we are surfacing these problems quickly, it will undermine the legitimacy of a media that doesn't cover anything and political parties that do not deal with them.

    • nice hyperbole tankie but saying the democratic party is “100% captured by bourgeois interests” is plainly untrue. what about the other .03% of their party platform that kind of almost in theory supports women’s rights?

  • I don’t think it’s going to be an actual party. I think this is partly a pressure campaign to get the DNC to change, and partly he (and others) are sending out feelers to see how much of the movement is still there/can be re-established for a non-party movement. A mix between a ground-up operation to find and hold candidates, collaborate various orgs, influencing politics within DNC etc.

    Maybe I’m wrong though.

    • I feel like he already attempted that after 2016 though and this is the aftermath. The whole “Our Revolution” thing and using what influence he had to influence the DNC already was attempted

  • Harsher language than what he has previously said about Dems, even that statement he put out after Kamala's loss. I think it's unlikely he plans to start an actual party, though. This reads more like he will go back to being more independent, at best he joins the Greens (which would be better than starting his own party, I trust the Greens' judgement a lot better than Bernie's at this point).

    • I think Bernie joining the Greens would actually be less effective at building a third party in America than flat out starting his own. Not because I think that joining the greens would be a worse move in terms of party infrastructure somewhat preexisting already, but because the Greens are already pretty unpopular with a lot of Dems who would otherwise support Bernie without the party label of somebody who MSM has been spoonfeeding fake Russia conspiracies and stories about how the Greens have spoiled 2 of the last 3 elections for the Dems

      • What the hell is the point then, though, whatever he does to separate from the Dems will be criticized by the blue dogs anyway. Whatever he does from here, people will say he's a Russian useful idiot even if he stays away from the Greens.

  • Even if he did form a party, it would probably just be aligned with the DSA type soc dems that will still insist parties like the PSL are too radical.

    I think he's just using this opportunity to talk as much shit about the Democratic Party as he can get away with before sulking back over to them and eventually retiring.

66 comments