I just can't foresee HRC coming out on top after all of this. The election is basically being given to Trump. Bernie would of had a cakewalk.... and easily my vote.

Keith Ellison lost. Tom Perez was elected chair of the Democratic National Party. Nothing will change.

But really, I wasn't expecting a different outcome. Not with the times as they are.

Not with those in power too blind and too unwilling to change for their own sake.

Hillary said nothing about Dakota Access; it's likely she would have backed the pipeline if she was president. Hillary does a lot of things we don't associate with progressives, or environmentalists, or people who believe in human rights.

Democrats do a lot of things we don't associate with Progressives.

Donald Trump did it best yesterday. The real enemy isn't the Democrats; they're just as complicit in keeping the current system going. The real enemy is anyone who questions the system, or is perceived as questioning the system.

Remember this, in the days ahead: Bernie Sanders won the youth vote. More than Trump, more than Clinton, more than the two of them and every other candidate combined. Overwhelmingly. Surpassed all limits. That's not just one generation; that's two or three or more down the line, voting for him, people like him, and their progressive, good, policies.

It's high time to form the Progressive Party.

Mahalo.

Dear Bernie, I was originally feeling hopeful that we might bring about change within the democratic party. It appeared that you were enjoying greater influence, and there seemed to be a robust discussion about how to retool the party. You seemed to have attained more status and influence. Now, several events have lead me to believe that you won't have the influence we (and hopefully you) had hoped for:

• David Brock, HRC's campaign manager, is still exerting powerful influence on the left wing. We know he held a meeting with big donors during Trump's inauguration weekend, and this group focused on the future of the left wing. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/david-brock-donald-trump-donor-network-231588

• We also know he has retooled the media machine developed for the campaign, CTR, to address ongoing messaging for the left wing. https://www.scribd.com/document/337535680/Full-David-Brock-Confidential-Memo-On-Fighting-Trump#from_embed

• We also know that there is a gag-order in place. We are not allowed to discuss the primaries or any of our concerns about how the DNC comported itself. We learned this when Sam Ronin, one of the candidates for chairmanship of the DNC said clearly during his speech that he believed the DNC primaries were rigged. In response, another candidate, Tom Perez, agreed. Then, amazingly, Perez backtracked, and retracted his comments. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/9/14561246/tom-perez-dnc-race.

Bernie, you have been incredibly supportive of the democrats, even though they never did return the favor. I understand why you endorsed HRC and why you campaigned for her.

However, it appears to me that a) Brock and the other rich donors are driving the left-wing agenda, without any input from us; b) there is a strong messaging/media machine in place to squelch any discussion of the past actions of the DNC or past democrats. We are not allowed to be critical of Obama or Hillary, nor may we question the actions of the DNC. In fact, we just have to go along with whatever the script is, and we don't get to have input to the script.

Bernie, you have to know that this just isn't going to work. Not only is there the risk of driving away progressives for good, and hopelessly dividing the left wing, but the moderates, independents and right-wingers are also looking to us. Many of them are not happy with Trump and would like another option, but are disgusted with the democrats. They see us as a bunch of corrupt hypocrites. We have lost our moral high ground. If we want to attract them to the left, we need to make a solid case, and this can't be done with spin, messaging and status-quo policies.

I would beg you to consider parting company with the democrats. We will go with you. Please, give us a third choice. If the DNC remains intractable, please make a new party. We will work hard for you, and for our collective futures.

Bernie Sanders isn’t a radical — he’s a pragmatist who fights to un-rig the system

By Mark Weisbrot

Sanders would use both markets and government to reverse the upward redistribution of income to the already rich

As Bernie Sanders continues to increase his standing in the Democratic primary, and his opponents in both parties feel the pain, there is an effort to paint him as an extremist of some sort. Someone who might even lose to Trump because of this alleged “radicalism.” But it’s not that easy to make the case on the basis of facts.

He has a 40-year track record as a politician. The things he is saying now are mostly what he has shouted from the mountain tops for pretty much the whole time. The main difference is that now, other Democratic politicians have joined him: on a $15 minimum wage, student-debt relief, free tuition at public universities, expanding Social Security, reducing income inequality, and some even on Medicare for All.

His actions speak even more consistently than his words: he understands that politics is about compromise. He fights hard for what he has promised to voters, but then takes the best deal he can win if it will advance the ball down the field, and prepares to fight again the next day.

That’s why he supported Obamacare when it was the best deal on the table — expanding insurance coverage to 20 million Americans](https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/chart-book-accomplishments-of-affordable-care-act), without the life-threatening exclusions for “pre-existing conditions.” This despite the fact that Obamacare was still quite a distance from Medicare for All — “health care as a human right” — that had been his passion and signature issue for decades.

But he is a “socialist,” his opponents cry, leaving out the first part of the term “democratic socialist” that Sanders always uses when this issue is discussed. There is much room to induce confusion here because the term “socialist,” in English, has a number of different definitions that have all become common usage over the years.

It can be used to mean anything from “communist,” as in the former Soviet Union, to the European social democratic or socialist parties that have governed for much of the past 70 years in countries such as France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K., not to mention the Scandinavian countries.

It should be clear to anyone who is not trying to frighten voters that Sanders is a social democrat of the latter, European variety. There will be no U.S. government takeover of the means of production under a Sanders administration.

The biggest expansion in government will be in public funding of health insurance. Like traditional Medicare, where less than 2% of expenses are administrative costs, public health insurance will be much more efficient than the current six times as much spent by the private insurance industry. And we won’t have 8 million people falling into poverty every year due to medical expenses, or worse, tens of thousands actually dying because of lack of access to affordable health care.

Sanders’ program is targeted at correcting a very harmful transformation of the U.S. economy that has taken place over the past 40 years.

Unlike the first three decades after World War II, when income gains were broadly shared as the economy grew, most of the increase in income has gone to those who already had much more than their share. Since 1993, for example, the top 1% of families captured an astounding 48% of the growth in this country’s income.

No wonder so many Americans feel like the system is rigged against them.

That right-wing transformation was mostly launched by the Reagan team, but it came to be accepted, and even deepened by some liberal political leaders as well. Perhaps this normalization of the radical changes of the past few decades is why some commentators perceive Bernie’s program — designed to reverse this damage — as “radical.”

Here it is important to note that the fight over this right-wing transformation has never been so much about “the market” versus “the state.” Almost every economy in the world is a mixture of both.

But the Reagan “revolution” and the counter-reforms that followed (e.g., the WTO, NAFTA, financial deregulation, permanent normal trade relations with China, anti-labor legislation and practices) were not so much about changing the relative weight of market and government.

Rather what changed most is that both markets and government were harnessed vastly more to redistribute income and wealth upward. The result is an America that is unique among high-income countries in the percentage of people who are employed full-time and yet struggling to get by, not to mention the more than 10 million children in poverty and more than half a million homeless people.

Sanders, in his reform program, seeks to use both markets and government to reverse this massive upward redistribution of income and wealth.

Of course, government has to take the lead with public investment where private investment would not be forthcoming — as in the transformation of some energy infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions.

But other important parts of Sanders’ program move the economy away from government toward more market-based solutions: for example, reducing the role of government-granted-and-regulated patent monopolies in driving up the price of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and health-care costs. Or breaking up other monopolies in favor of more market competition, in the technology and financial sectors.

Sanders also favors a less interventionist role for the Federal Reserve in the labor market, as the Fed has triggered almost all U.S. recessions since the end of World War II (except for the last two) by raising interest rates when this was unnecessary.

And he has led the way to reduce one of the most powerful and destructive abuses that our government has unleashed upon Americans and the world: the terrible, unnecessary, “forever wars” that most Americans now reject. Some of his best allies in this fight have been conservative Republicans who are skeptical of this aspect of “big government” — as has been true in the historic fight to stop U.S. military participation in Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen.

In short, Sanders is much more pragmatic and less ideological than his opponents would like to admit. But we can expect to hear more — from various quarters — of this labeling him as a “radical,” if he continues to gain on his competitors in the Democratic primary.

As a Bernie supporter, here is what I'm going to do and will encourage others to do:

1. Protest on social media, and in person outside my local DNC office with #StepDownHillary

2. State a preference for Trump/Stein/Johnson if I get polled, regardless of whether I support them or not

The DNC primary was stolen from us, and it is time that we stole the nomination back in the best interests of the country. Polls are showing that Hillary is not going to be able to defeat Trump, no matter how much election fraud and media persuasion she uses.

The Left needs to unite and ask boldly for Bernie to head our cause and party and defeat Trump. Why choose evil when you can choose good? Yes, this is unprecedented and difficult to achieve, but if enough of us are doing this, we can make it happen.

I know you american Sanders supporter might be quite deppressed since Tuesday. So i wanted to tell you as french leftist citizen that a lot of people in France have a lot of gratitude for you. Benie Sanders campain was a very pleasent breath of fresh air. Before a lot of people didn't even know that the progressist heart of america was still beating. Your campain was so succesful that in the last few weeks of the primary french mass media did spoke about Bernie and your movement. You know, in france the mass media only spoke a lot about Trump, month after month non stop since summer 2015.

Its always like that, the olygarchy always prefer the far right than the progressists. Even when the progressist have the momentum they prefer to speak about the far right. For exemple in Greece, when the Syriza was at 20% media only spoke about the neo-nazi of the Golden Dawn, in Tunisia they spoke about the islamist far right and not about the french front. And in France, a lot of you probably know Marine Le Pen, but not Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They are quite at the same level in the polls but foreing media only spoke about our french version of Trump. (you can see a lot of interview or article in english media about Le Pen). And since the US election trump supporters are pretty active on internet, doing a so called "meme war for Le Pen".

So, for theses reasons i wanted to introduce you to our own leftist old man : Mélenchon.

Member of Socialist Party for twenty years, he became senator for few years. He left the socialist party in 2008 (Since François Mitterant the Socialist parti became more and more right wing, this party ideology is now very similar to clinton).

He was candidate for the 2012 president election. At first nobody knew him, he was on the polls at 2% four months before the election, at the end he got 11% of the votes. Between 2012 and 2014 he continue to support socials movements in the country and became more popular, unfortunatly he had some clash with the French Communist Party on environemental issues and strategic issue (in France a lot of communist are pro-nuclear and prefer to be allied to Socialist party on election time) and the movement loose the momentum.

Since fall 2015, Melenchon and the movement behind his project got a new dinamic. Inspired by sanders campain they did an internet platform www.jlm2017.fr.

Now, six months before the election (election time is April 2017), Melenchon is between 15% and 18% on the polls. So he is the third candidate, behind the right candidate and the far right LePen. You maybe dont know, in france, election has 2 votes. The first one in april and the second in May when we have to choose bettween the two candidate who got the most votes at the first election. So we have a real good chance to have a real political revolution in France.

He is a friend to Oscar Lafontaine in Germany, pablo Iglesias in Spain, and was also a close friend of the tunisian progressist leader Chokri Belaid, who very sadly was murder by far right militant.

In few words he is Socialist, Environementalist, and propose to the people to rewritte by themself a new constitution.

I wanted to link you some video to make you know more about him. But I dont find a lot of intresting video with english subtitles.

If you have time i recomend you to watch this video, its a debate with a belgium philosofer about the people and the institution. Very intersting if you are curious to know more about Mélenchon.

Nota Bene : in France the meaning of "republican" has a very different meaning. "Republican" refer to the values of the great revolution of 1789.

If you speak spanish, you can watch this video, where Mélenchon was invited in 2015 on the Iglesias Show La Tuerka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEKI-lM8Qc

Thats it, i wanted to talk to you about him because i think that the struggle for progressist values in international and we are more strong if we know each other.

PS : We also have a sub since last month, r/melenchon, there are only french people yet, but you are welcome there. All french people on reddit can speak english

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-medical-bankruptcy-washington-post-fact-check-878120/ https://www.salon.com/2019/08/26/twitter-sleuths-uncover-an-anti-bernie-conspiracy-infuriating-the-pundit-class/ https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/29/how-nyt-reporter-sydney-ember-uses-corporate-sources-attack-bernie-sanders