I’m happy to hear the “Two Boys” aren’t going to battle/debate it out, wrestlemania style, before an audience of fervid supporters. The amount of sexism that has poured into the primary process with little opposition is surprising to me. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if Hillary at this time in 2008 had floated the idea of a debate with John McCain? I assume there would be been a lot of outrage – and correctly so.
Joined farmworkers and their supporters on Day 13 of their march. It began on Long Island and concludes in Albany – New York state’s capital – later this week. Yesterday we walked (at a pretty good pace) 13 miles to Kingston, NY. It was very hot and humid, but no one complained, in fact, we had good fun along the way and were welcomed by honking horns from passing cars and applause from bystanders. By the end I could claim two sore feet, but whatever discomfort I felt eased as I hoisted a freezer chilled IPA – named Road to Ruin – to my lips and poured promptly down my throat.
On a more serious note, I couldn’t help but recall that I got my start (as did many other young people at the time) in social activism with the grape boycott organized by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union not quite 50 years ago. The struggle continues.
Couple days late, but happy birthday to the songwriter and poet extraordinaire – Bob Dylan
Harold Meyerson in American Prospect: I write this as a strong Sanders supporter (albeit one who never thought he could win the nomination), as a lifelong democratic socialist (indeed, for some years, Bernie and I were probably the two most out-of-the-closet socialists in D.C.) who’s been astounded and thrilled by Sanders’s success so far in pushing the national and Democratic discourse to the left. I write this with the hope that the Sanders legions can come out of this election year with the networks and organizations that can reshape the American economic and political order—bolstering workers’ power, altering corporate governance, diminishing the scope of finance. But to do that effectively, they’ll have to make common cause with progressives who’ve backed Hillary Clinton, most particularly with the unions that have backed her for strategic reasons but also know that their very survival depends on overturning the grotesque economic and political arrangements that have decimated the middle class.
Eugene Robinson in Washington Post: Bernie Sanders is playing a dangerous game. If he and his campaign continue their scorched-earth attacks against the Democratic Party, they will succeed in only one thing: electing Donald Trump as president.
I say this as someone who shares much of Sanders’s political philosophy; I, too, for example, see health care as a basic right. He has run a remarkable and historically significant campaign, pulling the party to the left and pumping it full of new progressive vigor. His crowds are almost as big as Trump’s and perhaps even more enthusiastic. Most important, he has brought legions of young people into the political process.
But he hasn’t won the nomination.
Hillary Clinton has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, earned by her performance in primaries and caucuses. In the aggregate, she leads Sanders by about 3 million votes. The will of the party is clear: More Democrats prefer Clinton over Sanders as their nominee.”
Joan Walsh in Nation: The defections of some supporters, the increased skepticism of even once-friendly cable hosts, and a rebuke by Politifact isn’t fatal to Sanders’s campaign, of course. What will be fatal to Sanders’s future as a mass-movement leader—as opposed to the messiah of an angry, heavily white, and male cult—is his continued insistence that his enemy now is not so much the corporate overlords, or income inequality, or the big banks, but a corrupt Democratic Party, epitomized by Wall Street flunkie Hillary Clinton, that has “rigged” the election to thwart him—as he raged in a tone-deaf speech Tuesday night, as cable news was showing the texted death threats to Roberta Lange in the background (which Sanders did not even mention … And in Thursday’s New York Times, Sanders campaign leaders and their supporters said they plan to escalate their attacks on Clinton and the party. Top strategist Tad Devine insisted he’s “not thinking about” whether the attacks will hurt Clinton in her battle against Trump; they will do what they can to run up his delegate count, especially in California.
Facebook post of John Case: I was asked why I don’t just go ahead and endorse Hillary. If she is nominated, of course, I will. And without reservation. I am, at my age, completely comfortable with accusations of “lesser-evilism” — and utterly numb to the affection in some left circles for “glorious defeats” or “feet firmly planted in mid-air victories”. Those with the luxury to avoid the personal pains and oppressions of the “greater evil” enjoy a privilege most working families do not.
The great Joni Mitchell combining the political/ecological and personal:
“Hey farmer, farmer put away that DDT now, give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and bees.”
