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Bernie Sanders blames election loss on Kamala Harris choosing billionaires over the working class
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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politics
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I've been saying it for the past two US election cycles .... the US is a one party state with two different organizations representing just one political party.
The Chinese have the Chinese Communist Party
Russia has a ruling class of Oligarchs
The US has the Republican/Democrat Party
All three operate in the same way
“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” - Julius Nyerere
“ The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats.” - Noam Chomsky
People have been saying it for decades and decades, if not a century or more.
Thanks for that .... now I have credible references to attribute this thought.
I knew it wasn't smart enough to think this, it's just haven't read enough to know or see where others have said it before.
Don't be so down on yourself, you can get to the same conclusion independently
But I do recommend reading Chomsky. Or at least watching some lengthy YouTube videos of him speaking
I do watch and listen to a lot of Chomsky .... but the guy has so much content, you'd have to relive his entire life to hear everything he said and read everything he ever wrote. The man is amazing. I just wish he were a lot younger than he is.
It's all just a form of "divide and conquer." Their tactics are plain to see if you are looking for them.
The Corporate Oligarchs are the common denominator between the GOP and Democrats. The Democrats, corporate beholden though they are, are preferable merely by not being fascists.
I think they have us stuck between the fire and the frying pan. Once in the frying pan, we are sooo glad not to be in the fire, and we get 4 more years of Dems, while the Republicans secretly march us closer to the cliff. Now their end game, Project 2025 is on fast track to actualization. The Dems make us lazy because we think they'll help but they don't. I feel like the Democrats hung us out to dry. I read in the New York Times, a Democrat suggested the best strategy for Trump was for the party to "roll over and play dead." I translate that as, "the party doesn't care." Some party members like AOC show backbone, but the rest of them not so much.
Any arguments they have are about which side should get the booty after shaking down the populace.
This is literally the attitude that allowed the Nazis to take over the German government.
They convinced people that the left and right coalitions that formed the Weimar government made it unstable, indecisive, and corrupt. That made people apathetic about supporting any party or vulnerable to the strong-man image the Nazis used to portray Hitler.
The common denominator to all these scenarios are the wealthy owner corporate class that discreetly shovel money towards the ones they want to win.
The common denominator is that the fascists sowed division so that there could be no unified opposition to them.
I mean the liberals did a pretty good job of sowing division by arming fascist paramilitaries, letting them assassinate socialist leaders with impunity, and running a conservative candidate. When liberals talk about unity, they mean u ifying with them, against the left.
Even if that were true, it all needs to be put aside to unify against the fascists. They pose an existential threat to democracy itself.
"I stand against fascism and want more rights for the common person." "I am willing to aid fascists when it makes me money or helps win elections"
Yeah let's unite with them, surely nothing bad will happen.
If you don't unite with them then history shows what you fear is guaranteed to happen.
Except the conservative the liberals were supporting, Hindenburg, won without the socialists support, while the socialists ran their own guy with the slogan "a vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler is a vote for war". And then Hindenburg put nazis in all the major positions of power, in the name of unity.
History shows us:
It also shows us that socialists won't compromise to meet liberals in the middle, while the right unifies.
No, Socialists will not compromise with the people handing power to the fascists. Our objectives are mutually exclusive, we want socialism, liberals want capitalism and will support fascists to maintain capitalism.
Liberals are part of the right, Lenin was correct a century ago: social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.
Then you will lose to fascism and fascists kill socialists. The capitalism vs socialism debate is meaningless if democracy is lost.
The SDP were the next in the camps after socialists. Working with liberals cannot stop fascism because liberals create the conditions for fascism and would rather fascists in power than socialists.
And you would rather fascists be in power than work with liberals. It's easier to blame others than to compromise for the greater good of stopping fascism. This attitude is exactly the problem I am talking about.
The two arent equivalent, because socialists dont work with fascists or create the conditions fir fascism like liberals do, and supporting liberals supports the rise of fascism.
Liberals will work with whoever gives them the best chance to retain power. That could be socialists or fascists. By refusing to work with them, you leave the fascists as their only option to retain power. You create the exact environment fascism wants - a divided left.
Liberals are not the left, the longer they remain in power, the more fascism grows. When liberals work with fascists, they give them power. When liberals tell socialists to work with them, they mean "shut up and help us maintain the conditions that give rise to fascism". Do you think if the socialists supported Hindenburg, Hindenburg would have given power to the people who dont want billionaires to exist? I dont get how this isn't getting through, working with liberals is just another path to fascism.
I would argue that fascism is an inherent weakness of democracy that must be constantly guarded against. The public will always be vulnerable to those who would manipulate their worst impulses. Hate, fear, vengeance.
All who wish to preserve democracy need to band together. Anything else is secondary.
You're not looking at this from a materialist perspective; people don't just fall to hate, fear, vengeance or decide to support capitalism or socialism or whatever because they have a big discussion and decide that's the best idea and would have decided something else if only someone made the right argument at the right time. Ideology, culture, etc, the superstructure, is determined by the structure, the relationship with means of production.
Liberalism is not a stable system; the rate of profit declines over time if new markets aren't being added or capital destroyed. In response to declining conditions, the "middle class", due to their privilege, aren't going to question the system that privileged them, that leaves them with weird conspiracies blaming minorities and foreign countries for their declining conditions. The big bourgeoisie will always prefer this to socialism.
We could debate this all day, but it is irrelevant to the question of democracy. If we want democracy, everyone must band together to fight fascism. Fascism kills democracy.
Liberalism is incapable of fighting fascism, if liberals were to support the socialist project (this doesn't happen), fine lmao, but for socialists to abandon creating an alternative to fascism to support liberalism, which is what liberals really mean when they say "work together", is self-destructive.
We've seen what happens when liberals get their way; fascism grows stronger and any alternative is crushed, until liberals are ready to hand over power.
This is factually untrue if you learn history. The only times fascism was defeated is when capitalists, socialists, anarchists, liberals, leftists, etc join together against fascism.
You know liberals and capitalists are kinda the same thing? Liberalism is the philosophy of capitalism, and anarchists and socialists are both leftists?
Also the entire lead up to WW II had the socialists trying to ally with literally anyone to deal with Germany, but was rejected, as France and Britain signed Non-Aggression Pacts with Germany and gave them and Poland Czechslovakia in hope that Poland and Germany would invade the USSR and deal with what they perceived as a greater threat. Britain literally tried to join the winter war on the side of Finland and Germany.
The point is even in WWII, the liberals preferred fascism to socialism until they were literally being invaded, and if the socialists supported the liberals aims, the fascists would have won.
We could argue the semantics of different philosophies all day. The point is that everyone has to put their differences aside to fight fascism.
And what were the socialists in Germany doing in the lead up to WW2? (Hint: what is Nazi short for?)
The socialists in Germany were getting murdered by fascist paramilitaries the liberals armed in the 20s, and fighting them in the streets in the 30s while the liberals' policies continued to nurture them. If you think that having socialist in the name meant the nazis were socialist, I invite you to eat a urinal cake, then actually study history.
Not really. The National Socialist Party drew in strong socialist support with its talk of uniting the workers and a strong social support system. The fascists used the socialist's votes to gain power and then betrayed them on the Night of Long Knives. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
The socialists voted for the KDP candidate. Hitler didn't gain power with socialist votes, the liberals promoted Hindenburg as a unity candidate, and won, Hindenburg proceeded to staff the government with nazis and made Hitler chancellor, unifying against the socialists. The nazis "socialist" side were no more socialist than Israelis who romanticize kibutzim as communes.
Nope, nope, nope. One is dismantling our government right now, stopping aid to the world, wanting to make GAZA into a resort, deporting 4 y.o. US citizens as well as many others, cutting medicaid, giving the wealthy more tax breaks and are generally racist af. The other is not doing any of those things.
The democrats excel at standing still, while the republicans always move right. They fit together like corporate peanut butter and jelly.
Rachet theory. R moves one direction; D refuses to move in the other.
It's not entirely false, but it's also not the whole story. Voting D is better than staying home. It might not be better than direct action -- but given the size of the voting window, it's probably not completely eclipsed by your activism. (If it is, watch out for the FBI and keep working for a better world, comrade.)
Of course the Democratic Party wants to turn Gaza into a resort. Where have you been?
I love how a bunch of people who couldn't point to Gaza in a map are making that their sole political concern.
The gaza otcomes broadly indicative of how the party functions.
Beyond that, do you even realize that the gaza issue has almost single handedly destroyed the concept of the western world order?
Both parties have had the same policy on Gaza for decades, so I don't see the relevance. It was just easier to ignore a slow genocide than a fast one.
Well if we are going to get a better outcome we'll have to demand it. They dont just need donor money to win, they need votes.
Respectfully, that may be your perception of the Biden administration but its mostly not true. Biden arguably did not cut medicaid or reduce taxes for the wealthy, but thats where your perceptions start running into facts that show differently than you'd think. This is also part of why everyone is mad at the DNC.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-unrwa-funding-already-halted-2024-not-by-trump-2025-order-2025-01-28/
Furthermore, Bidens proposed 2025 budget would have made cuts to aid globally, including cuts to AIDS relief. It also proposed cuts to social security.
https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=how+much+aid+funding+did+biden+cut&oe=UTF-8
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68650815
"Jewish settlers set their sights on Gaza beachfront" from Mar 12 2024, on Bidens watch.
They sold that gaza land off in real estate gatherings in New York, New Jersey and other US cities, which was blatently illegal and all done on Bidens watch, with him not lifting a finger to stop it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2025/1/22/the-take-why-is-land-in-the-west-bank-being-sold-off-to-us-citizens
https://law.ucla.edu/news/no-fair-day-damning-new-report-reveals-biden-administrations-unlawful-treatment-children-immigration-courts
"Children make up a significant number of those facing removal proceedings. In the first five months of Fiscal Year 2022, almost one third of all new cases in immigration court involved children, including tens of thousands of children under the age of five. "
In short, Biden was a bad democrat, and a bad human being. Always has been, but people saw what they wanted and respected the D by his name.
(Actual attribution of this quote is possibly in dispute, but I've seen it many times)
I’d rather have a one party state under a communist party than a two party state under two capitalist parties. In both cases it’s immediately obvious who these parties serve, in China, it’s the people and society, in the U.S., it’s the billionaires and capitalist class.