Article by Catlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone | Professional

Updated 19 Nov 2016

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dems-move-leverage-bernie-sanders-popularity-party-regroups/story?id=43614247

Corporate media seems to think that Bernie Sanders can be used to lure the progressive revolution back into the fold. They are wrong

ABC News, whose staff were seen repeatedly colluding with the Clinton campaign in leaked documents released by WikiLeaks, is now openly asserting that the Democratic establishment has got Bernie Sanders in its pocket, which means they’ll be able to “leverage” his support to “regroup” the party. The opening sentence of the article in question, which I swear I am not making up, begins as follows:

“As much as his supporters might disagree, Bernie Sanders is now officially part of the establishment–”

Seriously. They actually wrote this out, in the king’s good English. Here’s a hyperlink to the article if you don’t believe me.

Someone from ABC News wrote those words, probably re-wrote them in a second draft, thought about it, had some coffee, came back to her computer and thought “Yeah, that’s good.”

Then she passed it on to her editor, who I assume was neither on powerful hallucinogenic drugs nor locked in a padded room wearing a straight jacket, and who proceeded to say something to the effect of “Yes, that’s an acceptable article that isn’t even a little bit insane. We should definitely publish that.”

The good people at ABC, who are essentially employees of the neoliberal establishment at this point, honestly seem to think that this will work. This is why so many people now refer to these glorified propaganda conglomerates as “old media” or “legacy media”; they honestly seem to think they’re still living somewhere between 1996 and 2003, where people don’t have the ability to network and share information like they have now. They still think they can just tell us all how reality works and we’ll all just go “Oh, okay. Shoot, for a second there I thought we were mounting an extremely successful revolution against the establishment, but one of the Wolf Blitzer clones has informed me that I was wrong. Guess I’ll have to fall in line!”

Can I just interrupt myself for a second to talk about the creepy photo ABC used for their article? Tell me Chuck Schumer doesn’t look like Smeagol following Frodo through Mordor:

“We wants our progressive base back, my precious…”

As evidence that the progressive revolution has failed and that Bernie Sanders has officially joined the dark side, the author of this insipid shill piece cites the fact that Sanders and Schumer talk regularly and have worked together in the Senate, the implication being that since Schumer is essentially a neocon with a ‘D’ next to his name, Bernie officially hates progressives now. This conveniently ignores the fact that Bernie “the Amendment King” Sanders has an extensive history of collaborating across the aisles with all members of the Senate and the House, Democrat and Republican, to get important pieces of legislation passed. It is therefore irrelevant that Schumer is an extremely corrupt scumbag who voted for the Iraq invasion, the Patriot Act, the Wall Streef bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, since Sanders has always succesfully worked with that exact sort of person to get things done in the legislative branch of the federal government.

But that isn’t the point here. The point is that even if Sanders fully joined up with the neoliberal establishment, it wouldn’t matter. People are woke as hell now, and these droning legacy media automatons still don’t realize it. As Bernie himself has said, this movement isn’t about him. It never has been. I can’t tell you how many Hillary supporters I’ve spoken with who could not comprehend why I wouldn’t just fall in line like a good little slave and support Clinton as my master Bernie Sanders commands.

They just don’t get it, and that’s why they’re going to keep losing and failing until they learn their lesson. There is a genuine revolution happening in America, and it’s not happening along the manufactured left/right party lines of the establishment false dichotomy. The new division is between those who still buy into the lies of the establishment, which wears a neoliberal mask when it’s speaking to liberals and a neocon mask when it’s speaking to conservatives. If the Democrats want to regain their progressive base, they’re going to have to stop kowtowing to the demands of the international plutocrats and start listening to the American people. It really is that simple.

It’s a little late to win us back into the folds of the establishment, guys. You could perhaps have refrained from sabotaging Bernie’s campaign and then lulled us into complacency like you did with Obama, but we’ve seen too much now. By rigging the primary, then getting caught and having unbelievable levels of corruption and cronyism exposed by a deluge of leaks and scandals, it is now abundantly clear to everyone with open eyes that there is no working with the Democratic party as it exists today. There are now three possibilities:

1) You change. You expunge all the corruption and criminal elements from your ranks, clean out the DNC, admit you were wrong and pledge to do better. You have as of this writing done none of these things.

2) You keep losing elections, lose party viability, and die as a party, making way for a new progressive party on the left to emerge.

3) You completely ignore your progressive base and decide to move further to the right to get votes from centrists and Republicans. This will collapse the already fragmented Republican party, and the Democrats will become the new party on the political right, leaving a gaping hole on the left for a new progressive party to emerge.

Either way, we win. You’ve already lost, and now it’s just a matter of watching which of the three possibilities play out. The phony posturing you’ve got your media goons doing is not fooling anyone. But please, keep trying. Corporate media has already shown America that it’s been wrong about everything every step of the way, so the more you expose yourselves, the better.

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