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Bernie Revolutionaries, Give Your Love to Jill Stein
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_revolutionaries_give_your_love_to
_jill_stein_20160723/
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Posted on Jul 23, 2016
By Patrick Walker and Kevin Zeese
Interest in Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein picked up in the
days following Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton. (Gage
Skidmore(https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/) / CC BY-SA
2.0(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/) )
If Bernie Sanders sounded one of the very few authentic notes in recent U.S.
politics, it was in his call for political revolution. We need a political
revolution not just against Donald Trump but also against the repulsively
corrupt likes of Hillary Clinton. Because of the former secretary of state's
veiled but solid-as-granite lackey service to the 1 percent, she is probably
just as responsible for sustaining Trump's thuggish, scapegoating brand of
populism as is the real estate mogul himself.
As the most unpopular pair of presidential candidates in U.S. history,
Clinton and Trump are perfect foils. Clinton provokes the blind, unfocused
resentment and rage that engenders support for Trump, sneakily thwarting the
healthy, legitimate aspirations of most of the people by pretending those
aspirations
are(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/08/enacting-sanders-agenda-woul
d-catapult-economy-shatter-inequality) -for reasons too complex for us
brainless peons to understand-simply unachievable. Trump plays the ogre all
too effectively-offering simplistic fixes and scapegoating minorities and
women. He is the Republican best-suited to draw fear-based voters to a
candidate as all-around loathsome as Hillary Clinton.
WATCH: Truthdig Sits Down With the Green Party's Jill Stein
(Video)(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/truthdig_sits_down_with_the_gre
en_partys_dr_jill_stein_20160607)
Yet Trump and Clinton, both privileged members of the multimillionaire elite
(whatever Trump's genius for lowbrow populism), share one crucial trait in
common: They are members of the elite establishment who manipulate voters
with disrespectful, false rhetoric. Trump is a billionaire with a lowbrow
lout persona, who has grown his wealth by employing crony capitalism, paying
low wages to his workers, ripping off students and-when necessary-declaring
bankruptcy to stick it to his creditors. His reality-show shtick as a boss
sadistically intoning "You're fired!" is the real Donald.
By contrast, Clinton's scathing contempt for everyone who is not a member
of-or aspirant to-the moneyed, global elite seeps from her every pore. Not
even her hubby Bill's evident pleasure in glad-handing the people that he is
conning-the stock in trade of a born swindler-lends redeeming charm to her
scripted and forced encounters with members of the great unwashed.
Trump's and Clinton's scarcely concealed contempt for average voters is
perfectly mirrored in what they offer those voters: diddly squat.
Trump offers entertainment value-his celebrity personality, outsize ego,
outrageousness and unpredictability-to voters who more than ever need an
honest, serious policy thinker with a correct diagnosis and remedy for a
corrupt political system careening toward disaster. On the more dangerous
side, he offers a channel for resentments and a barbarous jingoistic
patriotism ("Make America great again!") that could lead to wars but will
almost certainly lead to hostility and violence toward minorities and
foreigners-above all, to Muslim ones. Such is his ego that in a corrupt
system on a collision course with climate catastrophe, he feels qualified to
be president despite utterly lacking political experience, skilled advisers
and or the feeblest attempt at such a diagnosis or remedy.
EXPERIENCE: She's Not Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump-Behind the Scenes With
Jill Stein
(Multimedia)(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/behind_the_scenes_with_jil
l_stein_multimedia_20160701)
Ask any of Clinton's supporters what she offers, and their answers
ultimately amount to saying she is not the monster that Trump is. Maybe they
will cite her defense of abortion or her strong likelihood of appointing
saner Supreme Court justices, although they will surely be corporate lawyers
and prosecutors who believe in executive power and big business. Probably
they will speak of her experience in high office. What they often resolutely
refuse to speak about-angrily asking if you want to elect Trump if you
mention it-is that she is her own kind of monster. She is monstrous in her
corruption by money, in her contempt for transparency and in her militarism.
The Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, correctly calls Clinton a "Wall
Street, war and Walmart" candidate.
In an age screaming for honest, transparent politicians uncorrupted by money
and accountable to informed voters, Clinton rakes in scads of political
money and is positively Nixonian in her
deviousness(http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/27/with-clintons-nixonian-em
ail-scandal-deepening-sandes-must-demand-answers/) and her efforts to
remain invisible to the public. As with Nixon, the air of an untrustworthy
crook fully envelops Clinton. A viral Facebook meme, noting that she has had
more FBI interviews this year than press conferences, nicely sums up the
matter.
It is no wonder that in the arid political desert constituted by Clinton and
Trump, Bernie Sanders seemed not merely an oasis but a miracle-working
political savior capable of transforming that desert to bloom. By his own
repeated avowal, Sanders is not a savior, but he is an honest, experienced,
transparent politician with an on-point diagnosis and remedy for the deeply
corrupt politics of the age. In fact, what made Sanders seem almost a savior
was his rare, humble insistence that he was nothing of the kind, that his
campaign was not about him but about us, and that in a political system so
deeply corrupted by corporate money, politicians like him had no hope of
fixing it on our behalf if we did not become engaged in political
revolution.
Not only did Sanders' call for revolution seem spot-on, but it was
refreshing to hear a mainstream politician honestly confessing his
limitations, speaking primarily of our needs and insisting on the importance
of our role. He spoke, in short, neither as a self-important demagogue
(Trump) nor as a shady oligarch tolerating our presence just long enough to
extort our votes (Clinton). Rather, he was a serious adult speaking to other
serious adults, someone who liked us enough to show concern for our needs
but respected us enough to warn us that change would not be easy. The result
was a politician better known for prickly gruffness and unruly hair than for
polished charm and who inspired actual love in his supporters.
But given how unlovable-and given how downright hostile to Sanders'
progressive
agenda(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/09/we-have-just-written-half
-gop-platform-progressives-dismayed-dem-party-platform) the Democratic
Party is, it's time for his supporters (above all, his revolutionary ones)
to face reality and transfer a major portion of that love to someone at
least as deserving: Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Does doing so imply
that we must renounce our affection-and lasting sense of gratitude-for
Bernie Sanders? Of course not. Nor does it even mean we must disagree with
his decision to run for president as a Democrat. Seeing the immense
obstacles that Democrats and Republicans both undemocratically place in the
way of third parties, one of the authors of this piece (Patrick Walker)
strongly believes in the "Sanders
paradox"(http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/08/the-sanders-paradox-a-brief-
for-bernie/) : that Bernie absolutely needed to run in the antiprogressive
Democratic Party to convey a progressive message to as wide an audience as
possible.
But a progressive message and the political revolution needed to transform
that message into policy are two very different animals. Here, both authors
totally share Jill Stein's evidence-based common sense: that it's impossible
to carry out a political revolution in a counterrevolutionary
party(https://www.rt.com/op-edge/334275-us-trump-super-tuesday/) . Or,
perhaps to put a finer point on Stein's political wisdom, it's equally
impossible to carry out an anti-Clinton revolution in a "Clintocrat" party.
Perhaps the worst of Sanders' "Faustian
bargain"(http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/watch/chris-hedges-bernie-sanders-cu
t-a-faustian-bargain-with-democrats/vp-AAcqe1B) in running as a Democrat
was the need he felt to mute his criticisms of Clinton. For example, he
refused to touch the scandal emerging out of what he called Clinton's "damn
emails."(http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/10/13/bernie-sanders-democr
atic-debate-sick-of-hearing-about-hillary-clinton-emails-19.cnn/video/playli
sts/cnn-democratic-debate/)
Those "damn emails" were, in fact, damning emails, and it is at least
conceivable-given the scathing statements of both the State Department
inspector
general(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/state-dept-inspector-general
-report-sharply-criticizes-clintons-email-practices/2016/05/25/fc6f8ebc-2275
-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html) and FBI director James
Comey(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/07/05/james
-comey-full-statement-clinton-email-fbi/86707988/) -that Sanders might now
be the nominee had he taken up the issue in the right way.
Now, seeing that it was probably the secret wish of most Sanders supporters
to see Clinton indicted-to spare us her horrible presidency-Jill Stein
probably succeeded in gaining many Berniacs' love simply by writing an
article arguing that Clinton should have been
prosecuted(http://www.jill2016.com/stein_prosecute_clinton_for_reckless_abus
es_of_national_security) . But beyond Stein's endorsement of Sanders
supporters' fondest secret hope, her thoughtful article gives Berniacs a
deeper reason to show her some love. Transcending the superficial, partisan
Republican criticism of Clinton's email server (an approach Sanders rightly
steered clear of), Stein comes very close to the principled way in which
Sanders could have and should have framed Clinton's real email scandal: as a
money-in-politics and political corruption issue.
No reasonable person takes the irresponsible risks Clinton took with highly
sensitive national security secrets for "convenience"; Clinton is decidedly
not some air-headed Sarah Palin. No, the risks Clinton took with her email
were quite reasonable considering:
1.her urgent need to hide her lackey service of the 1 percent (both through
and outside the Clinton Foundation) while at the State Department;
2.and her firm assurance that "very
important"(https://theintercept.com/2016/07/05/washington-has-been-obsessed-
with-punishing-secrecy-violations-until-hillary-clinton/) members and
servants of the 1 percent like her are above the law that applies to others.
In the first days since Sanders endorsed Clinton, Bernie supporters are
showing a lot of love to
Stein(http://usuncut.com/politics/jill-stein-campaign-surge/) . In the first
24 hours, donations to Stein "exploded nearly 1,000 percent," according to
U.S. Uncut, with many of the donations coming in Sanders' symbolic $27
increments. "There's been an explosion of Berners coming in through every
portal of the campaign, and it's really exciting," Stein said. U.S. Uncut
added that a "recent live
stream(https://www.facebook.com/drjillstein/?fref=ts) posted to the Stein
campaign's Facebook page(https://www.facebook.com/drjillstein) has been
viewed over 300,000 times in less than a day. Her page itself has added
approximately 44,000 new likes in the past week. Her Twitter
account(https://twitter.com/DrJillStein) has over 145,000 followers as of
this writing, increasing by the tens of thousands just this week, with 5.6
million impressions on July 12-13 alone. There have also been 10,000 new
signups for her email list since yesterday."
Stein is the antidote to Clinton's Democratic Party, Stein's
platform(http://www.jill2016.com/platform) is more progressive than
Bernie's and certainly more so than the Democratic Party's. The Democrats
rejected a platform plank that opposed the massive global corporate coup,
the Tran-Pacific Partnership. They also rejected proposals from Bill
McKibben that would have imposed a carbon tax, declared a national
moratorium on fracking as well as new fossil fuel drilling leases on federal
lands and waters. They opposed indexing a $15 minimum wage to inflation.
They opposed Palestinian rights and are now to the right of George W. Bush
on
Palestine(https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/george-w-bush-v-clinton-led-de
mocrats-on-palestinians-equality-and-the-israeli-occupation/) as they
refused a plank calling for the "end to occupation and illegal settlements."
The Democrats also refused to support single-payer health care, improved
Medicare for all. In the end, the document was so bad that Cornel West and
Bill McKibben refused to sign on to it. This is definitely Clinton's
Democratic Party and not Sanders'.
Both of the authors of this article agree that the only way not to waste
your vote in 2016 is to vote for Jill Stein. Our two tasks are: to make sure
she gets on the ballot(http://www.jill2016.com/ballot_access) in as many
states as possible (she is on the ballot in 23 states and is working to get
on it in more than two dozen others); and to get her to 15 percent in the
polls so the Democratic-Republican controlled Debate Commission cannot
exclude her from the debates.
In the words of songwriting legend Neil Young (a Sanders
supporter(http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-17/neil-young-s
orry-donald-but-i-support-bernie-sanders) , by the way), "It's gonna take a
lotta love/ To change the way things
are."(http://www.metrolyrics.com/lotta-love-lyrics-neil-young.html) Love of
democracy, love of honest candidates and elections, love of the planet, love
of government transparency, love of equality under law and love of people
who are not members of the 1 percent. Given how much the Democratic Party
that Sanders ran as a member of is tyrannized by enemies of those things,
it's gonna take a lotta love for third-party insurgents like Jill Stein. We
urgently hope Bernie's revolutionaries show her that well-deserved love for
standing up to the corporate duopoly.
Patrick Walker, a veteran antifracking and Occupy Wall Street activist, is
co-founder of Revolt Against
Plutocracy(https://citizensagainstplutocracy.wordpress.com) and co-creator
of the Bernie or Bust
pledge(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdgL4VZHVsHhuSLetahCs5evTfWr
yfREU1GySuYigb6lH1bmA/viewform) , which spawned the nationwide Bernie or
Bust movement.
Kevin Zeese has worked on multiple Green and independent campaigns,
including as spokesman for Ralph Nader in 2004. Zeese is co-director of
Popular Resistance(https://www.popularresistance.org) , which grew out of
the Occupy movement. This article represents his personal views.
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