An Election as Part of a Movement

Populist movements are on the march across the neoliberal democratic world, along with various fringe or borderline areas.

In the United States, the Sanders candidacy represents a populist movement.  As such, it is similar to the Trump presidency.  In Britain, the Brexit movement toppled the neoliberal establishment.  In France, the Yellow Vests have been on the streets for over a year.  Populism has been rising in Germany.  The populist Sinn Fein party just scored an upset victory in Ireland.  Populists have dominated Italian politics in recent years.   Protests in Hong Kong are ongoing.  The Middle East has been rife with populist turmoil of one sort or another for decades.  Modi in India and Duterte in the Philippines are right wing populists, as are the leaders of Hungary (Orban) and Brazil (Bolsonaro).  Mexico and Venezuela have leftist populist leaders, while the leftist populist leader of Bolivia was recently deposed in a coup.  Civil protests are taking place throughout Chile.

Leftist populism is age related in the United States.  An Economist/YouGov poll released this week (written Feb 15) found that 60 percent of Democrats younger than 30 support either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren; among those 65 and older, the progressive candidates’ combined total was 27 percent.  Exit polls from New Hampshire affirmed this generational split, with Sanders winning 47 percent of voters 18 to 29, but just 15 percent of those over 65.

This is the context for the 2020 presidential election which finds Bernie Sanders as the leading Democrat trying to unseat Republican Donald Trump.   The old guard is under attack from both the left and the right, and from the next generation.  Reactionary forces have moved into high gear, employing vast quantities of advertising and scare tactics in an attempt to derail the populist movements.  We are told that Trump is such a threat to our democracy that we must rally behind the Democratic establishment to preserve liberal values.  In this view, establishment Democrats provide the only credible alternative to a second Trump term and the end of democracy as we know it.  This is indeed a frightening prospect.

I disagree with this reactionary political movement for two fundamental reasons:

1. In my opinion, the U.S. military intelligence complex is a greater threat to our liberal values than are Trump Republicans.
2. The Democratic establishment has proven ineffective in representing liberal values and presenting an alternative to Trumpian populism.

I will discuss the military intelligence complex below, but first I will address the argument as to whether Sandersonian populism can be more effective than the Democratic establishment  The best argument against Sandersonian democratic socialism, in my opinion, is that it's unrealistic.  I disagree with this argument, but it is a serious one.  Protest movements are by their very nature not sustainable in the long term, in large part due to the amount of energy and commitment it takes to maintain them*.  If Sanders is elected president, he will face formidable obstacles to implementing his agenda.  Congress will block him, corporations with vested interests will continue to oppose him, and the military intelligence establishment will undermine him.  A reasonable argument can be made that he will be unable to govern effectively, and that therefore his liberal ideals will be discredited.

Against this, we can see the fate of Democrats during the Obama presidency.  As a moderate, Obama swept into the presidency with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, including 60 senators.  However, his Democratic administration was openly undermined by Republicans and, ultimately Democrats overall were discredited by the electorate as Republicans came to dominate all branches of government by 2016, including especially state governments.  Moderates failed in precisely the way that reactionary conventional wisdom predicts that Sanders will fail.

Looking at American and world history shows that real change in society is possible.  Slavery was abolished.  Women got the right to vote.  In the New Deal era, Social Security was passed and laws passed to help workers and the unemployed.  Throughout the western democratic world, health care is provided as a human right (except in the U.S., although we are much of the way there).  Minority rights are protected much more than they were in the past.  These advances did not result from singular electoral victories.  Rather they were the culmination of movements which eventually prevailed over vested interests and the status quo.

This is the light in which the Sanders candidacy is most constructively viewed.  Ian Welsh discusses this in more detail.

Bernie Sanders, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter before him, wants to use mass appeal audience effects to renegotiate the country’s political and economic contract...  These movements operate by forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground. Make the malignancy of power show its face in daylight. Gandhi and the salt march. MLK and the Selma to Montgomery marches. FDR picking fights and catalyzing popular support throughout the New Deal era, starting with the first 100 days. Occupy Wall Street changed American language and political consciousness by cementing the frame of the 1% into the lexicon. Black Lives Matter reminded America who it has been and still is on the streets of Ferguson...  Sanders understands very clearly what kind of coalition and movement he needs to ignite to accomplish the vision he’s putting out in his campaign. It’s an aspirational vision...  Elites may beat Sanders himself but they will not beat the movement he’s invigorating but did not create.

Realistically, we the people have limited power in comparison to the .1% who own most of the wealth.  Whether we vote for Bernie or for Bloomberg or for Trump, they will continue to hold disproportionate power and continue to act in their own self-interest.  What we can do is make our preferences clear, and push for a better society for all by exposing problem areas to a wider audience.

Viewed from the global perspective, there are similar movements for change in many places, abetted by advances in communications technologies which expose problems to large audiences.  As the predominant global superpower, the U.S. leads the reactionary response to protest and unrest across much of the world.  The neoliberal establishment blames the ascendance of Trump in the U.S. on Russia.  China is blamed elsewhere.  Iran is seen as a major culprit in the Middle East.  Populism in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy is blamed on racism.  Problems in Central America and South America are blamed on corrupt dictators, and so forth.  There is little self-awareness as to dysfunction of the U.S. led international system of neoliberal economics and politics.

The Democratic party establishment has demonstrated this lack of self-awareness to an extraordinary extent since the 2016 presidential election.  Trump's victory was blamed on Russia, Sanders, racism, and the FBI, although it was later revealed that the leadership of the FBI (including Director Comey) was anti-Trump and pro-Clinton.  Most troubling, the Democrats and the mainstream media have relied on faulty leaks from the FBI, CIA, and British intelligence sources to make their anti-Trump, pro-neoliberal establishment case.

I have written about this, providing detailed examples, many times.  For example, Robert Mueller played a lead role in trying to discredit Trump.  Mueller was given tremendous credibility by the Democrats and media despite his poor track record.  For example, as FBI Director in 2003, he asserted:

Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion.

When his investigation of Trump was concluded last year, finding no evidence of Trump conspiracy with Russia, it was widely dismissed by Democrats and the media.  Our democratic system has already been severely compromised by the intelligence community such that we ignore their being wrong and move on to their next batch of "leaks".   The impeachment process, initiated by a CIA "whisteblower" over investigation of possible corruption in Ukraine. was a massive distraction from the serious problems facing the country.  It demonstrated that Trump faces massive opposition in the public sphere, in contrast to the intelligence community which is largely unaccountable.

Thus, I disagree with the scare tactics promulgated by the Democratic establishment regarding Trump as a threat to our democratic system.  The greater threat to our democracy can be seen in the Democratic campaign for president in 2020.  Pete Buttigieg has become a favorite of the intelligence community and invested in the app which has prevented the Iowa caucus from being conducted fairly.  In a widely acknowledged fiasco, the Democratic establishment ended up giving Buttigieg more delegates than Sanders, despite Sanders winning more votes and documenting mathematical errors with regard to determining delegates.

Mike Bloomberg has entered the Democratic race and is throwing tons of money into a desperate attempt to stop Sanders.  No major media outlets endorse Sanders, nor do they cover his campaign fairly.  Vested interests are everywhere throwing money and misleading commentary in an attempt to preserve the status quo.  Hillary Clinton and Lloyd Blankfein are amongst these purveyors of fear.

Of course, political campaigns have always been rough and tumble events.  Thus, Republicans will say that Trump's lying and funding by vested interests are fair.  Democrats will say that stopping Trump is imperative and justify Bloomberg's Trump-like performance.   The U.S. as an empire cannot escape the desire of other countries (U.K., Israel, Ukraine) to affect the U.S. political scene.  That's reality.  But secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies are best positioned to take advantage of this landscape, not a relative outsider such as Trump.

Again, a Sanders victory will not magically clear this up.  But it will provide an opportunity to expose real problems, including election misbehavior, to a wider audience.  The mainstream media will have to extend the Overton Window to encompass Sanders' bully pulpit.  This would be a great restorative measure for the U.S., and thus for the world as a whole as we struggle to evolve more effective democratic principles and reduce the need for populist protest.