Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.
First, there can be no comparison between events today and those of
past times. Sanders is no FDR. And despite the mess the Working
Class is in, the Empire is not close to a revolution, as was the case
in 1932. Trump certainly has a following, rallying many of the Right
Wing Fringe Groups. But these people are disrupters, not
revolutionaries.
The fact is that all of the rest of the Republican candidates, Hillary
Clinton and even Bernie Sanders are controlled by the Empire's
manipulators. Under the current Corporate Capitalism, so tightly
owned by the Ruling Class, the best the Working Class can hope for are
a few crumbs from the Master's table.
To bring this nation out of the current Dark Age and into the sort of
Land working class families can find a future filled with hope, calls
for nothing less than a total reform of government, the removal of
current systems and those in control, an end to Corporations that are
Too Big to Fail, and a Working Class Movement to plan and establish a
People's government.
We are a long, long way from such a movement. It will take great
effort and much energy to develop ways of offsetting the deeply
entrenched propaganda that the Empire has set in place. It will take
planning and years of work to turn back the effects of the Mass
Media's saturation of our everyday lives.
Our greatest hope for success is also my greatest fear. Greed will
most likely continue to squeeze the blood out of our Souls, until
Greed has gone too far. Then working men and women will rise up and
crush the Ruling Class. But if we have not done our work well, the
new Power will soon be wooed by Greed and succumb to His Evil Ways.
And then we will begin all over again.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/9/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8006/800602.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 6 February 15, 2016
(front page)
Capitalist crisis fuels demand for
change, turn to Sanders, Trump
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
The growing support for Bernie Sanders as the presidential primary
voting begins is an indication of the depth of the social crisis of
capitalism and the disarray it is causing within the main parties of
U.S. imperialism. Sanders, who campaigns on the platform of the Occupy
Wall Street movement, scored a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in the
Democratic Party caucuses in Iowa Feb. 1.
At the same time Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination
is not going away, despite coming in a close second to Ted Cruz, part of
the “Tea Party” wing of the Republicans, in Iowa.
What gives wind to Trump and Sanders is the broad discontent and anger
among workers and others fueled by years of smoldering depression
conditions, in which jobs, wages and conditions of life have stagnated
or worsened.
Clinton, once considered a shoo-in for the Democratic Party nomination,
is now scrambling to counter Sanders by presenting herself as the
practical way to carry out his platform. In her “victory” speech in
Iowa, where she beat Sanders by a hair, Clinton declared, “I am a
progressive, who gets things done.”
The editors of the New York Times and Washington Post came out in
support of Clinton in the days leading up to the Iowa vote. “Bernie
Sanders’s Fiction-Filled Campaign,” was the headline on the Post
editorial Jan. 27, which accused him of promoting “fantastical claims”
while “playing the role of uncorrupted anti-establishment crusader.”
“It’s the establishment view,” responded Jane Sanders, political adviser
and wife of Bernie Sanders, in an interview on MSNBC Jan. 29. They say
“anything that is bold is not doable. We just disagree.”
Jane Sanders also took issue with a commentator who compared her
husband’s campaign to 1972, when George McGovern, riding the crest of
anti-Vietnam War sentiment, secured the Democratic Party nomination but
lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon. The better analogy is to 1932, she
said, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency during the Great
Depression. “People were looking for bold leadership and that’s
happening now.” Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was a package of reforms to
rescue capitalism from collapse and thwart rising labor militancy from
growing into independent working-class political action.
Under the impact of depression conditions facing workers, Trump has been
gaining support within both the Republican and Democratic parties. A
recent study by AFL-CIO affiliate Working America of households in
working-class neighborhoods outside Cleveland and Pittsburgh said that
while a little over half of voters were undecided, 38 percent who had
made up their minds backed Trump. The next highest share was 22 percent
for Clinton.
Officials from the 2 million member Service Employees International
Union endorsed Clinton in November. But Trump is gaining a hearing among
some of its members. “There is deep economic anxiety among our members
and the people we’re trying to organize that I believe Donald Trump’s
message is tapping into,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry told the Times
Jan. 29.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering throwing his hat
into the ring as a so-called independent. If it looks like Trump or Cruz
will win the Republican primary and Sanders is the Democratic nominee,
Bloomberg “has told allies he would be likely to run,” reported the New
York Times. He has set a deadline for early March to decide after
results from some of the primaries are in.
Bloomberg, who served as New York mayor from 2002 to 2013, was in the
forefront of leading the bosses’ drive against workers’ rights and
living conditions in the city. He ran as a liberal Republican in 2001
and 2005 and four years later as an “independent,” but was on the ballot
line of the Republican party. During this time he toyed with the idea of
running for president.
If he runs, Bloomberg plans to spend at least $1 billion of his own
funds, the Times reported, to get on the ballot in all 50 states. This
is entirely different from what working-class parties face when trying
to gain access to the ballot under the restrictive laws in many states.
Related articles:
‘Build a party to lead the revolutionary struggle’
Paper showcases UK Communist candidate
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