Norman Solomon

Trump’s Mass Negligent Homicide Doesn’t Let Democratic Leaders Off the Hook

By Norman Solomon

In the last few days, New York and Pennsylvania postponed voting in presidential primaries from April until June. A dozen other states have also rescheduled. Those wise decisions are in sharp contrast to a failure of leadership from Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

Just two weeks ago, the party establishment was vehemently pushing back against efforts to delay several mid-March primaries in response to the coronavirus emergency. DNC Chair Tom Perez issued a statement that The Hill newspaper summed up with the headline “DNC Calls on States Not to Postpone Primaries.” Perez put out the statement on the day that three states were holding primary elections.

Ohio was also scheduled to have a presidential primary that day, but at the eleventh hour it was postponed thanks to the state’s Republican governor. Incredibly, Perez quickly criticized the prudent delay of Ohio’s election, saying it “only bred more chaos and confusion.”

In Illinois, with the DNC’s encouragement, Governor J.B. Pritzker -- a billionaire whose billionaire sister Penny Pritzker was Barack Obama’s 2008 national campaign finance chair and later became his Secretary of Commerce -- refused to reschedule the March 17 primary. Just three days later, he announced a “stay-at-home” order for the whole state.

Think about it: On Tuesday, the governor enables an Illinois election that draws about a million voters and thousands of election workers to voting sites that day. On Friday, the same governor orders everyone in the state to stay home.

Perez -- who became DNC chair three years ago as the candidate of the party’s Clintonite so-called “moderate” (corporate) wing -- is clearly aligned with Biden, as Perez’s appointments to key committees for the party’s 2020 national convention have underscored. Postponing primary races in states where Biden was way ahead in opinion polls, as in Illinois, would risk slowing his momentum against Bernie Sanders.

Biden’s interest in going ahead with the March 17 primaries -- public health be damned -- was expressed by his campaign’s spokeswoman Symone Sanders during a March 15 interview on CNN. “I encourage people to get out there and vote on Tuesday,” she said. The spin included upbeat, patriotism-tinged rationales like: “In times of war, in times of strife, our country has always upheld our need to uphold our democracy. We have voted in war time; votes were held many times in this country after times of strife.”

In their zeal to boost the number of Biden delegates as fast as possible, the Biden campaign and the DNC chair ignored or distorted the guidelines that were in effect at the time from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Deeply disappointed that the DNC is willfully choosing not to listen to scientists during one of the most critical moments in recent history,” biologist Dr. Lucky Tran tweeted on March 17, when voters in three states were casting Democratic primary ballots.

By then, as CBS News noted, even the White House had “issued new guidelines designed to slow the rapid spread of coronavirus, asking nearly every American to stay home from work or school for the next 15 days.”

Power in a Time of Coronavirus

By Norman Solomon

Every day now we’re waking up into an extreme real-life nightmare, while responses are still routinely lagging far behind what’s at stake. Urgency is reality. The horrific momentum of the coronavirus is personal, social and political. In those realms, a baseline formula is “passivity = death.” The imperative is to do vastly better.

Consistent individual actions -- such as “social distancing” and extensive handwashing -- are absolutely necessary. People should stay home if at all possible. Other steps include disinfecting potentially contaminated surfaces and following the admonition to not touch your face.

Meanwhile, a huge social burden has fallen onto charities and other nonprofit organizations with resources that are tiny in relation to the scale of this catastrophe. Even in normal times they can’t do much more than slightly ameliorate the shredding of government social safety nets, the shrinking of the public sector and the profit-obsessed cruelties of corporate capitalism.

Under the weight of the coronavirus emergency, the crucial political challenges involve fighting the bastions of dominant political malfeasance, lies and plunder at the top of the U.S. government.

“In order to save lives, protect working families, and boost our economy in sustainable and healthy ways,” Oxfam concludes, “we need to take actions that are swift, bold, and well beyond what Congress has thus far been willing to approve.” After partnering with Data for Progress to do national polling, Oxfam released a report that shows public opinion favors much more drastic legislation in response to the coronavirus rampage.

“Registered voters in the U.S. strongly support immediate, aggressive action in response to both the public-health and economic crises,” the March 20 report says. “Among the measures they endorse: paid sick leave for all workers, emergency funding for food supplies for those affected by the crisis, free testing for the virus, and moratoriums on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shutoffs.”

An immediate necessity is to galvanize political power from the grassroots to step up the pressure for an all-out government mobilization against this pandemic. That means continually pushing to generate maximum resources toward people who need them most -- now and for a long time to come.

Rather than being a respite from political power struggles, the coronavirus emergency is greatly intensifying them. More aid for those immersed in greed will mean less for those in desperate need. The quest by corporate profiteers to mercilessly exploit dire situations has never flagged.

Showing the vital importance of his national voice as a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders has outlined some of the gluttonous corporate maneuvers now underway.

“Just in the last few days,” he pointed out on Sunday, “we've seen numerous examples of lobbyists and their agents fighting for special favors: the airline industry is asking for $50 billion, the private space industry is asking for $5 billion, the hotel industry wants $150 billion, the National Association of Manufacturers wants $1.4 trillion, the International Council of Shopping Centers wants a guarantee of up to $1 trillion, Adidas wants to sneak in a long-sought provision allowing people to use pretax money to pay for gym memberships and fitness equipment -- even when many gyms and retail stores are closed nationwide, and corporate pork producers are using the coronavirus to push Congress to expedite guest worker visas, even at a time when international travel and immigration is largely shut down.”

In this time of “unprecedented crisis,” Sanders said, “we need an unprecedented legislative response that focuses on the emergency health care needs of the American people and that puts working families and the poor ahead of CEOs and huge corporations.”

With this pandemic, fueled by the intentional neglect and greedy stupidity of Trump and Company, we have profuse reasons to heed words from legendary labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones: “Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

To fight like hell for the living -- to protect people from the ravages of the coronavirus and a harsh economic system -- will require unrelenting work from progressive movements willing and able to organize effectively in every political arena.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

What the Coronavirus Emergency Has to Do with Biden vs. Sanders

By Norman Solomon

On the surface, the coronavirus emergency has nothing in particular to do with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. What’s obvious is that Donald Trump’s unhinged bluster and inaction let the pandemic get a lethal jump on the United States, people are dying while huge numbers of lives are in jeopardy, and quick drastic steps are imperative. Yet at the same time, the differences between what Biden and Sanders are advocating have enormous implications for what could be done to curb the deadly virus in this country.

The absence of a public health system is consistent with a timeworn pattern of massive holes in the public sector. Biden merely wants to patch up some of the holes, while Sanders wants to build strong structures on truly democratic foundations.

“It is time to ask how we got to where we are, not only our lack of preparation for the virus, but how we end up with an economy where so many people are hurting at a time of massive income and wealth inequality,” Sanders said at the close of his recent debate with Biden. “It is time to ask the question of where the power is in America. Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage?”

While so-called “moderate” Democrats like Biden don’t want to answer -- or even hear -- such questions, Sanders insists on continuing to ask them. Such perseverance has never been more needed than at this pivotal moment, with so many lives in the balance. “Where the power is in America” has everything to do with why the U.S. government’s response to the unfolding coronavirus catastrophe has continued to be so anemic, foreshadowing so many more deaths and so much more grief.

It’s urgent to implement all-out measures to contain the coronavirus spread (seriously aiming for containment rather than merely “flattening the curve”). Meanwhile, policies are needed to make sure that insurance-industry profiteers and other sectors of corporate America don’t get away with rapaciously benefiting from catastrophe in ways that would cause untold misery for vast numbers of people.

A pair of campaign documents released this week -- the Biden “Plan to Combat Coronavirus (Covid-19) and Prepare for Future Global Health Threats” and the Sanders “Emergency Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic” -- convey big differences in approach to the current unprecedented crisis.

Biden proposes to tweak the health care system and aid only some who suffer economic distress. In sharp contrast, Sanders is proposing far-reaching measures that include free health care for all (“Medicare will ensure that everyone in America, regardless of existing coverage, can receive the health care they need during this crisis”) and major financial assistance to all (“emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person in America every month for the duration of the crisis”).

Calling for programs that would spend at least $2 trillion in response to the coronavirus emergency, Sanders laid out commensurate programs -- to “mobilize on a scale not seen since the New Deal and World War II to prevent deaths, job losses, and economic ruin.”

Joe Biden vs. Bernie Sanders is not only an electoral contest between presidential candidates. It’s also a contrast of patchwork fixes vs. profound structural changes. Refusal to upset the apple carts of corporate power vs. willingness to fight that power. Tepid adjustments vs. truly transformational agendas.

Sanders was correct when he said last week that “poll after poll, including exit polls, show that a strong majority of the American people support our progressive agenda.” Days ago, the Bernie 2020 campaign sent out a mass email declaring that “our campaign has won the battle of ideas.”

Whether the ideas that Sanders is championing can appreciably shape the government’s response to the coronavirus will have a lot to do with how successful the United States can be in limiting its terrible effects.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

‘In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See’: The Bernie 2020 Campaign Represents a Fight That Must Continue

By Norman Solomon

“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we’re up against:

**  A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins.

**  A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted façade.

**  Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy.

On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders.

Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a “distortion of history.”

Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn’t surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee.

Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign -- and the grassroots energy behind it -- to melt away. That’s not going to happen.

Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul -- as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that’s saying something.)

The chances of Bernie winning the nomination have sharply diminished, but it’s still possible. And no matter what: movements for basic social change and democracy will vitally persist with long-term struggles to wrest power out of the hands of oligarchs and their functionaries.

Candidates who rushed to endorse Biden after his big victory in South Carolina -- Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker -- each personify, in their own way, what’s so corrosive about standard-issue Democratic Party leaders. Their backgrounds and personalities vary widely, but they share a political space of opportunism and ultra-coziness with corporate power. (Meanwhile, during the crucial aftermath of her withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren shed new light on her political character when she decided not to endorse Sanders.)

The antidote to anti-democratic poisons has nothing to do with cynicism, passivity or defeatism. The solutions will come from realism, activism and ongoing insistence that a better world is possible -- if we’re willing to keep fighting for it.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Elizabeth Warren: Which Side Are You On?

By Norman Solomon

The night before Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren spoke to several thousand people in a quadrangle at East Los Angeles College. Much of her talk recounted the heroic actions of oppressed Latina workers who led the Justice for Janitors organization. Standing in the crowd, I was impressed with Warren’s eloquence as she praised solidarity and labor unions as essential for improving the lives of working people.

Now, days later, with corporate Democrat Joe Biden enjoying sudden momentum and mega-billionaire Mike Bloomberg joining forces with him, an urgent question hovers over Warren. It’s a time-honored union inquiry: “Which side are you on?”

How Warren answers that question might determine the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In the process, she will profoundly etch into history the reality of her political character.

Facing the fact that her campaign reached a dead end, Warren basically has two choices: While Bernie Sanders and Biden go toe to toe, she can maintain neutrality and avoid the ire of the Democratic Party’s corporate establishment. Or she can form a united front with Sanders, taking a principled stand on behalf of progressive ideals.

For much of the past year, in many hundreds of speeches and interviews, Warren has denounced the huge leverage of big money in politics. And she has challenged some key aspects of corporate power. But now we’re going to find out more about how deep such commitments go for her.

“After Warren's bleak performance in the Super Tuesday primaries, her associates, as well as those of Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden, say she is now looking for the best way to step aside,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday -- and “there is no certainty she will endorse Sanders or anyone else.”

A laudable path now awaits Warren. After winning just a few dozen delegates, she should join forces with Sanders -- who has won more than 500 delegates and is the only candidate in a position to defeat Biden for the nomination.

The urgency of Warren’s decision can hardly be overstated. Sanders and Biden are fiercely competing for votes in a half-dozen states with March 10 primaries including Michigan (with 125 delegates), Washington (89 delegates) and Missouri (68 delegates). A week later, primaries in four states -- Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio -- will determine the allocation of 577 delegates.

In the midst of these pivotal election battles, Warren should provide a vehement endorsement of Sanders and swiftly begin to campaign for him. Choosing, instead, to stand on the sidelines would be a tragic betrayal of progressive principles.

“Here’s the thing,” Warren said in a speech to a convention of the California Democratic Party nine months ago. “When a candidate tells you about all the things that aren’t possible, about how political calculations come first . . . they’re telling you something very important -- they are telling you that they will not fight for you.”

We’ll soon find out whether Elizabeth Warren will fight for us.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

At the Epicenter of Super Tuesday, the Sanders Coalition Is Set to Shake the Political World

By Norman Solomon

For many years, corporate media outlets said it couldn’t be done. Now, they say it must not be. To the nation’s punditocracy -- tacitly or overtly aligned with the nation’s oligarchy -- nominating Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential candidate would be catastrophic.

But the 17,000 people who jammed into the Los Angeles Convention Center to hear Sanders speak on Sunday night are part of a progressive populist upsurge that shows no sign of abating. What I saw at the rally was a multiracial, multigenerational coalition with dimensions that no other candidate can come near matching.

With scant support from people of color, the media-pumped campaign of Pete Buttigieg has ended and Amy Klobuchar’s candidacy is about to collapse. Tom Steyer’s self-financed escapade has folded. Despite his win in South Carolina, Joe Biden’s campaign is hollow with “back to the future” rhetoric. Mike Bloomberg -- the quintessential “Not Us. Me.” candidate -- might soon discover that he can’t buy elections no matter how much money he plows into advertisements, endorsements and consultants.

As for Elizabeth Warren: after impressive seasons of articulating a challenge to corporate power last year, she has recently diluted her appeal with murky messages of “unity” while gratuitously sniping at Sanders. Looking ahead, it’s unclear whether Warren will renew her focus on denouncing the political leverage of wealth. Top Democratic Party power brokers don’t want her to. Before the end of spring, we’ll know whether “nevertheless, she persisted.”

Meanwhile, media coverage remains saturated by the Sanders-can’t-beat-Trump mantra, but that claim is eroding. The New York Times -- which, like other major outlets, has racked up a long record of thinly veiled hostility toward Sanders and has been amplifying the panicked alarms from top Democrats -- recently published two cogent opinion pieces, “The Case for Bernie Sanders” and “Bernie Sanders Can Beat Trump. Here’s the Math.”

Even the Times news department, a bastion of hidebound corporate centrism, acknowledged days ago that Sanders “appeared to be making headway in persuading Democratic voters that he can win the general election. A Fox News poll released on Thursday showed about two-thirds of Democrats believe that Mr. Sanders could beat President Trump, the highest share of any candidate in the field.”

But make no mistake about it: The bulk of powerful corporate media and entrenched corporate Democrats will do all they can to prevent the nominee from being Sanders. (I actively support him, while not affiliated with the official campaign.) More than ever, the current historic moment calls for a commensurate response: All left hands on deck.

A chant that filled the big hall in Los Angeles where Sanders spoke on Sunday night -- “Sí, se puede” -- came from a crowd that was perhaps half Latino. A coalition has emerged on the ground to topple longstanding political barriers of race, ethnicity, language and culture, with shared enthusiasm for the Bernie 2020 campaign that is stunning, deep and transcendent.

“Look around,” said Marisa Franco, co-founder of the Latinx and Chicanx activist hub Mijente, during her powerful speech that introduced Sanders at the LA rally. “We are perched at the edge of history. There is so much at stake in the 2020 election. The world around us is bursting with problems and bursting with possibilities. And that’s making some people very very nervous. You know why? Because we’re winning.”

Franco added: “Bernie Sanders presents the clearest alternative to Trump. He is willing to name the problems, what’s causing them, and proposes the bold solutions that we need to solve them. . . . We want -- and we demand -- elected officials who are going to fight like hell for us.”

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."