Norman Solomon

The Toxic Lure of “Guns and Butter”

By Norman Solomon

The current political brawl over next year’s budget is highly significant. With Democrats in a House majority for the first time in eight years, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and most other party leaders continue to support even more largesse for the Pentagon. But many progressive congressmembers are challenging the wisdom of deference to the military-industrial complex -- and, so far, they’ve been able to stall the leadership’s bill that includes a $17 billion hike in military spending for 2020.

An ostensible solution is on the horizon. More funds for domestic programs could be a quid pro quo for the military increases. In other words: more guns and more butter.

“Guns and butter” is a phrase that gained wide currency during escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s. Then, as now, many Democrats made political peace with vast increases in military spending on the theory that social programs at home could also gain strength.

It was a contention that Martin Luther King Jr. emphatically rejected. “When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer,” he pointed out. “We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don't even get good oleo [margarine]. These are facts of life.”

But today many Democrats in Congress evade such facts of life. They want to proceed as though continuing to bestow humongous budgets on the Pentagon is compatible with fortifying the kind of domestic spending that they claim to fervently desire.

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have reflexively promoted militarism that is out of step with the party’s base. In early 2018, after President Trump called for a huge 11 percent increase over two years for the already-bloated military budget, Pelosi declared in an email to House Democrats: “In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” Meanwhile, the office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly announced: “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.”

What set the stage for the latest funding battle in the House was a Budget Committee vote that approved the new measure with the $17 billion military boost. It squeaked through the committee on April 3 with a surprising pivotal “yes” vote from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who is now among the lawmakers pushing to amend the bill on the House floor to add $33 billion in domestic spending for each of the next two years.

As Common Dreams reported last week, progressives in the House “are demanding boosts in domestic social spending in line with the Pentagon's budget increase.” But raising domestic spending in tandem with military spending is no solution, any more than spewing vastly more carcinogenic poisons into the environment would be offset by building more hospitals.

Rep. Ro Khanna and Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Pramila Jayapal, who both voted against the budget bill in committee, have said they won’t vote for it on the House floor. In Khanna’s words, “You can't oppose endless wars and then vote to fund them.” Jayapal said: “We need to prioritize our communities, not our military spending. Progressives aren’t backing down from this fight.”

The New York Times described the intra-party disagreement as “an ideological gap between upstart progressives flexing their muscles and more moderate members clinging to their Republican-leaning seats.” But that description bypassed how the most powerful commitment to escalation of military spending comes from Democratic leaders representing deep blue districts -- in Pelosi’s case, San Francisco. Merely backing a budget that’s not as bad as Trump’s offering is a craven and immoral approach.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff director, Warren Gunnels, responded cogently days ago when he tweeted: “How can we keep giving more money to the Pentagon than it needs when 40 million live in poverty, 34 million have no health insurance, half of older Americans have no retirement savings, and 140 million can't afford basic needs without going into debt? This is insanity.

Yet most top Democrats keep promoting the guns-and-butter fantasy while aiding and abetting what Dr. King called “the madness of militarism.”

     Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

Rep. Barbara Lee’s Startling Vote to Boost Military Spending

By Norman Solomon

What Barbara Lee did on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- speaking prophetic words and casting the only vote against a green light for endless war -- remains the bravest wise action in Congress during this century. The contrast was jolting last week when her vote enabled the House Budget Committee to approve a bill with a $17 billion increase in military spending for next year and another such increase for 2021.

Because of the boost to the military, three progressive Democrats on the committee voted against the budget bill: Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna and Ilhan Omar. “This is a key philosophical moment for our party,” Khanna said. The second-term congressman told the committee: “We cannot be against endless wars and then fund those wars.”

But, in effect, Barbara Lee voted to fund those wars -- plus vast quantities of new weaponry and waste. If she had joined with Jayapal, Khanna and Omar in voting no, the committee would have deadlocked with an 18-18 tie, blocking the bill. (Many deficit-hawk Republicans voted against the bill because it raises the caps on non-military and military spending.)

After the committee vote on April 3, I requested a statement from Congresswoman Lee. “I voted to advance a bill out of committee that sets budget caps for the next two fiscal years,” she said. “To be clear: I do not support the Pentagon spending levels in the bill and voted for an amendment offered by my colleague Rep. Khanna to freeze Pentagon spending at FY2019 levels. Unfortunately, the Khanna amendment failed.”

Lee’s statement added: “I have a long record of fighting to cut bloated Pentagon spending, audit the Pentagon and repeal the 2001 Authorization [for] Use of Military Force. I will continue to fight for these efforts, and to increase domestic discretionary spending as the budget and appropriations process moves forward.”

Certainly, Barbara Lee has been a stalwart opponent of endless war. Her tireless efforts to undo the AUMF have most recently included the introduction in mid-February of a bill titled “Repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force” (H.R. 1274).

Yet there’s no getting around the fact that Lee’s vote in committee last week made it possible for a budget bill that further bloats the Pentagon’s spending to reach the House floor. The vote there is expected on Tuesday or Wednesday. (If you agree with most Americans that military spending should be cut instead of raised, you can quickly email your representative about it here.)

This is not the first time in recent years that Lee has succumbed to party-line militarism. Her notable anti-diplomacy tweet in July 2017 from the official “Rep. Barbara Lee” Twitter account -- denouncing President Trump for meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- remains posted to this day. Yet her pivotal Budget Committee vote a few days ago is Congresswoman Lee’s most tangible and disappointing assist to the military-industrial complex.

Barbara Lee’s sincerity and commitment to peace are beyond question. But it’s all too easy for lawmakers to be unduly influenced by party leadership on Capitol Hill, where conformity is vital for the warfare state. Only pressure from the grassroots has the potential to overcome the business as usual in official Washington.

When progressives in Congress go wrong, we must be willing to say so -- clearly, publicly and emphatically. With her decisive vote to enable an increase in military spending, Barbara Lee was wrong.

     Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

Pelosi and McConnell: Cranking Up Bipartisan Madness for NATO

By Norman Solomon

When Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell teamed up to invite NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to address a joint session of Congress, they had every reason to expect the April 3 speech to be a big hit with U.S. media and political elites. The establishment is eager to affirm the sanctity of support for the transatlantic military alliance.

Huge reverence for NATO is matched by how dangerous NATO has become. NATO’s continual expansion -- all the way to Russia’s borders -- has significantly increased the chances that the world’s two nuclear superpowers will get into direct military conflict.

But in the United States, when anyone challenges the continued expansion of NATO, innuendos or outright smears are likely.

Two years ago, when the Senate debated whether to approve bringing Montenegro into NATO, the mud flew at Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky after he showed up to object. An infuriated Sen. John McCain declared on the Senate floor: “I have no idea why anyone would object to this, except that I will say -- if they object, they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin, and I do not say that lightly.”

Moments later, when Paul said “I object,” McCain proclaimed: “The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”

With those words, McCain conveyed the common madness of reverence for NATO -- and the common intolerance for anything that might approach a rational debate on whether it’s a good idea to keep expanding an American-led military alliance to, in effect, push Russia into a corner. Doing so is understandably viewed from Russia as a dire threat. (Imagine a Russian-led military alliance expanding to Canada and Mexico, complete with some of the latest missile systems on the planet.)

Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and the quickly broken promises by the U.S. government in 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward” -- NATO has been closing in on Russia’s borders while bringing one nation after another into full military membership. During the last three decades, NATO has added 13 countries -- and it’s not done yet.

NATO members “have clearly stated that Georgia will become a member of NATO,” Stoltenberg asserted days ago while visiting the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. He added: “We will continue working together to prepare for Georgia’s NATO membership.” For good measure, Stoltenberg tweeted on March 25 that he was “delighted to observe the joint NATO-Georgia exercise” and “honored to meet veterans & serving soldiers,” adding that “Georgia is a unique partner for #NATO & we are stepping up our cooperation.”

Very few members of Congress can be heard raising any concerns about such reckless expansion. The Senate is key, because adding a country to full NATO membership requires Senate approval.

My colleagues at RootsAction.org have just launched a constituent email campaign on this issue. In every state, people are contacting their senators with individual emails urging them to oppose NATO expansion. Such constituent pressure needs to escalate.

Bernie Is Not a Wind Sock

By Norman Solomon

Bernie Sanders wrapped up a weekend campaign swing through California with a Sunday afternoon speech to 16,000 of us a few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. News coverage seemed unlikely to convey much about the event. The multiracial crowd reflected the latest polling that shows great diversity of support for Bernie, contrary to corporate media spin. High energy for basic social change was in the air.

Speaking from the podium, Bernie 2020 co-chair Nina Turner asked and answered a question about the campaign: “What’s love got to do with it? Everything.”

Those words made me think of a little-known statement by Martin Luther King Jr., as vitally true in 2019 as in 1967. “Now, we got to get this thing right,” he said. “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

And so, Dr. King was saying, love and power need each other. Just one or the other just won’t do. Combining the two is essential. That’s a way to understand what Turner said at the rally in San Francisco: “This is a moment of transcendence.”

The Sanders campaign is a nationwide struggle for the kind of power that Dr. King extolled as “love implementing the demands of justice.” In his words, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.”

The Sanders campaign is a political opportunity unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. With profound purpose, it raises the stakes to fit the magnitude of what is at stake; it challenges in national electoral terms the kind of destructive domination that has ruled with dispiriting and deadly results. “We’re going to have to fight Wall Street, neoliberals, those who don’t want the change to come,” Turner said.

Alone among the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders has always been part of progressive movements. The only way that the campaign can overcome corporate media, Wall Street and other power centers of the establishment will be with massive bottom-up mobilization in communities across the country. As Bernie said on Sunday, “We are going to put together an unprecedented grassroots campaign.”

A current media meme -- ignoring the importance of Bernie’s longstanding record -- assumes that he is likely to lose many votes to other candidates who’ve recently endorsed his 2016 campaign proposals.

But it matters greatly that Bernie has unique credibility as someone who has been part of progressive social movements during the last several decades -- and who hasn’t waited for opinions to become fashionable before expressing them.

“It’s hard not to be a bit wary of people who know how the wind is blowing and now are blowing with it,” I told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who quoted me in an article that appeared hours before the rally. “Bernie is part of movements that create the wind. Bernie is not a wind sock.”

For decades, Bernie has been tirelessly advocating for Medicare for All single-payer healthcare. In the last few years or months, some of his opponents have come around to voice often-equivocal support. The credibility of commitment is vastly different. When Sanders declared for the umpteenth time at the San Francisco rally that “healthcare is a human right,” no one could doubt that he really meant it.

Similarly, Bernie has long been calling for drastic new policies to push back against climate change. He voiced concerns about a warming planet as early as the 1980s.

Overall, a vast number of issues fall under a clear approach that Bernie has long stated, as he did on Sunday: “We say no to oligarchy, yes to democracy.”

Bernie’s speech in San Francisco included clarity on some issues that has become sharper than ever, as in his denunciations of the prison-industrial complex, the cruel injustice of cash bail and systemic racism. And at last, as a presidential candidate, he is calling out by name “the military-industrial complex.”

Declaring that he aims for a presidency to challenge the bloated military budget, Bernie said: “We are not going to invest in never-ending wars.” It was a statement that caused some of the loudest cheering of the afternoon, along with chants of “No more wars!” As those chants subsided, he said: “I know it’s not easy, but our job is to lead the world away from war and invest in human needs.”

Bernie called for breaking up the big banks. And he addressed the power of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries: “When we talk about lowering prescription drug costs and moving to Medicare for All, we have got to recognize, we have a battle in front of us. These guys will spend endless amounts of money. Will you stand with me and take on the drug companies and the insurance companies?”

And he went on: “If we’re going to protect family-based agriculture from Vermont to California, we have got to stand up to agribusiness. We have got to stand up to the prison-industrial complex. We’ve got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, it’s easy enough for somebody to give you a speech about all the things he or she wants to do. But those changes do not take place unless people stand up and fight back. And that is what this campaign is about.”

When Bernie finished his speech, a woman stepped to the microphone with a guitar and began to play some familiar chords. Bernie returned to the mic to quickly say: “This is Sarah Guthrie, granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.”

And she began to sing:

     As I was walking that ribbon of highway
     I saw above me that endless skyway
     I saw below me the golden valley
    This land was made for you and me 

Moments later, Sarah Guthrie sang a version of a verse that has been rarely heard:

     There was a great high wall

     That tried to stop me

     And on the wall said “No Trespassing”

     But on the other side

     It didn’t say nothing

    That side was made for you and me

And:

     Oh nobody living could ever stop us

     As we go walking on freedom highway

     Nobody living can make us turn back

    This land was made for you and me

___________________

     Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

 

Reinventing Beto: How a GOP Accessory Became a Top Democratic Contender for President

By Norman Solomon

To understand Beto O’Rourke as a candidate, it’s vital to go beneath the surface of his political backstory. News watchers are already well aware of the former Texas congressman’s good looks, charisma, youthful energy and fundraising prowess. But most remain unaware of an inconvenient truth that could undermine the O’Rourke campaign among the people who matter most -- the ones who’ll be voting to choose the Democratic presidential nominee next year.

O’Rourke is hardly eager for those upcoming voters to realize that the growth of his political career is rooted in an alliance with powerful Republicans that began 15 years ago. Or that he supported raising the minimum age for Social Security in 2012. Or that -- during six years in Congress, through the end of 2018 -- he often aligned himself with Republican positions.

If facts matter, such weighty facts could sink the “Beto for America” presidential campaign. Since his announcement, information gaining traction nationwide runs directly counter to the Beto brand.

“Before becoming a rising star in the Democratic Party,” the Wall Street Journal reported a week ago, “Beto O’Rourke relied on a core group of business-minded Republicans in his Texas hometown to launch and sustain his political career. To win their backing, Mr. O’Rourke opposed Obamacare, voted against Nancy Pelosi as the House Democratic leader and called for a raise in the Social Security eligibility age.”

Meanwhile, a Washington Post news article -- under the headline “Beto O’Rourke’s Political Career Drew on Donations From the Pro-Republican Business Establishment” -- also foreshadowed a bumpy ride on the campaign trail. In the eyes of most people who don’t like the GOP, key points in the Post’s reporting are apt to be concerning. For instance:

**  “Several of El Paso’s richest business moguls donated to and raised money for O’Rourke’s city council campaigns, drawn to his support for a plan to redevelop El Paso’s poorer neighborhoods. Some later backed a super PAC that would play a key role in helping him defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman.”

**  “O’Rourke worked on issues that had the potential to make money for some of his benefactors. His support as a council member for the redevelopment plan, which sparked controversy at the time because it involved relocating low-income residents, many of them Hispanic, coincided with property investments by some of his benefactors.”

**  “As a congressman, he supported a $2 billion military funding increase that benefited a company controlled by another major donor. That donor, real estate developer Woody Hunt, was friends with O’Rourke’s late father. Hunt also co-founded and funds an El Paso nonprofit organization that has employed O’Rourke’s wife since 2016.”

Central features of Trumpism are budgets that add billions to already-bloated Pentagon spending while cutting essential programs. In Beto’s last year in Congress, when nearly one-third of House Democrats opposed the record-breaking 2019 National Defense Authorization Act of $717 billion, Beto voted with Trump. (Four senators who are running against O’Rourke voted no: Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.)

Overall, the Post reports, “in contrast to the aspirational image he has fostered in recent years,” O’Rourke’s political career has gone along a path of “winning support from a typically pro-GOP business establishment interested in swaying public policy. Born into one politically potent family and married into another, he benefited repeatedly from his relationships with El Paso’s most powerful residents, including several nationally known Republican moneymen.”

To put his more conservative actions in context, O’Rourke cannot plausibly claim that he was striving to be in sync with the voters who elected him. El Paso and the House district that O’Rourke represented are heavily Democratic. The Wall Street Journal summed up this way: “In a one-party town -- the Democrats have held El Paso’s congressional seat for all but one term since 1902 -- local Republicans viewed Mr. O’Rourke as one of their own.”

Naturally, O’Rourke would much rather talk in upbeat generalities than answer pointed questions about why anti-Republican voters should cast ballots for him -- when he has a long record of going along with many GOP positions they find abhorrent. It may be better for him if unflattering coverage fixates instead on matters like youthful stints as a punk rocker and early computer hacker.

It was just seven years ago when -- during his first run for Congress -- O’Rourke did a campaign video to tell people in the blue West Texas district that “we’ll have to look at future generations . . . retiring at a later age, paying a greater percentage of their income into Social Security and making other necessary adjustments.” And, the Wall Street Journal reports, “in a candidate questionnaire published two days before the May 2012 primary, Mr. O’Rourke called for raising the Social Security eligibility age and means-testing federal entitlements.” According to exit polling, O’Rourke won that election with major help from Republicans who opted to vote in the Democratic primary and cast their ballots for him by a ratio of more than 7 to 1.

After becoming a congressman, O’Rourke backtracked and, as Politico reports, “co-sponsored legislation that would increase Social Security benefits -- without raising the retirement age.” Yet his wobbly stance on Social Security in this decade is a warning flag.

O’Rourke affinity with Republican sensibilities related to corporate power has continued. So has largesse from interests that are the antithesis of progressive values. Notably, for his final term, Beto retired from the House as the member of Congress who was the second-highest recipient of campaign cash from the oil and gas industry.

In June 2015, O’Rourke was one of only 28 Democrats -- out of 188 members of the party in the House -- who voted to give President Obama the power to negotiate the corporate-oriented Trans-Pacific Partnership. The measure squeaked through the House, propelled by support from 190 Republicans.

A year later, the TPP was a highly visible and contentious issue at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, where hundreds of Bernie Sanders delegates held anti-TPP signs. (I was one of those delegates and still support Sanders.) These days, O’Rourke is typically aiming to have it both ways, as Vanity Fair reported in a campaign kickoff cover story last week: “O’Rourke now says he would have voted ‘no’ on the ultimate agreement. But in 2015, he traveled with Obama on a trip to Asia to help build support for the deal.”

“Speaking Truth to Power” Is No Substitute for Taking Power

[This article was originally published by Truthout.]

By Norman Solomon

Progressives often applaud the idea of “speaking truth to power.” But this concept is hazardous. If taken literally and deployed as a single-minded strategy, it can divert attention from the crucial need to take power away from those who abuse it. Political movements don’t get very far if they depend on appealing to the moral scruples of the powerful.

While noting that “power without love is reckless and abusive,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out that “love without power is sentimental and anemic.” All too often, progressive activists don’t realize their own potential power when they rely on ethical arguments to persuade authorities. Appealing to the hearts of people who run a heartless system is rarely effective.

Humane principles are low priorities in the profit-driven scheme of things, as the devastating impacts of economic inequality and militarism attest. By and large, rapacious power already knows what it’s doing — from Wall Street and the boardrooms of mega-corporations to the Pentagon and the top echelons of the “national security” state.

Speaking truth to power is fine, but it’s far more important — and potentially transformational — to focus on public education efforts, agitation and organizing that speaks truth about power while challenging it. Only by mobilizing to take power can we realistically hope to overcome and dismantle the dominant power structures.

In 1967, when Dr. King was describing “love without power” as “sentimental and anemic,” the most meaningful efforts to express love for Vietnamese people involved striving to stop the U.S. government from killing them. Speaking truth to powerful elites could be helpful, but for Americans the moral imperative was to speak truth to each other in a process of trying to end the war.

In 2019, the U.S. war system is bombing many countries while predatory economic policies are ravaging uncounted lives across the United States and much of the globe. Urging humanistic change without developing credible threats to take power is too much like supplication.

Joe Biden on the Relaunch Pad: He’s Worse Than You Thought

By Norman Solomon

When the New York Times front-paged its latest anti-left polemic masquerading as a news article, the March 9 piece declared: “Should former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. enter the race, as his top advisers vow he soon will, he would have the best immediate shot at the moderate mantle.”

On the verge of relaunching, Joe Biden is poised to come to the rescue of the corporate political establishment -- at a time when, in the words of the Times, “the sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats.” After 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, Biden is by far the most seasoned servant of corporate power with a prayer of becoming the next president.

When Biden read this paragraph in a recent Politico article, his ears must have been burning: “Early support from deep-pocketed financial executives could give Democrats seeking to break out of the pack an important fundraising boost. But any association with bankers also opens presidential hopefuls to sharp attacks from an ascendant left.”

The direct prey of Biden’s five-decade “association with bankers” include millions of current and former college students now struggling under avalanches of debt; they can thank Biden for his prodigious services to the lending industry. Andrew Cockburn identifies an array of victims in his devastating profile of Biden in the March issue of Harper’s magazine. For instance:

**  “Biden was long a willing foot soldier in the campaign to emasculate laws allowing debtors relief from loans they cannot repay. As far back as 1978, he helped negotiate a deal rolling back bankruptcy protections for graduates with federal student loans, and in 1984 worked to do the same for borrowers with loans for vocational schools.”

**  “Even when the ostensible objective lay elsewhere, such as drug-related crime, Biden did not forget his banker friends. Thus the 1990 Crime Control Act, with Biden as chief sponsor, further limited debtors’ ability to take advantage of bankruptcy protections.”

**  Biden worked diligently to strengthen the hand of credit-card firms against consumers. At the same time, “the credit card giant MBNA was Biden’s largest contributor for much of his Senate career, while also employing his son Hunter as an executive and, later, as a well-remunerated consultant.”

Media mythology about “Lunch Bucket Joe” cannot stand up to scrutiny. His bona fides as a pal of working people are about as solid and believable as those of the last Democratic nominee for president.

But Biden’s fealty to corporate power has been only one aspect of his many-faceted record that progressives will widely find repugnant to the extent they learn about it.

Since the #MeToo movement began, some retrospective media coverage has assessed Biden’s highly problematic role in chairing the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And in recent days, Washington Post reporting has brought into focus his backstory of pandering to white racism against African-Americans during much of his Senate career.

As a 32-year-old senator, in 1975, Biden commented: “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’ I don’t buy that.”

More attention is also needed to Biden’s role as Judiciary Committee chair pushing through the now-notorious landmark 1994 crime bill. In the process of championing the bill, Biden warned of “predators on our streets” during a 1993 speech on the Senate floor.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth,” Biden proclaimed. “It doesn’t matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.”

Now, a new Iowa poll shows Biden and Bernie Sanders neck and neck in the first-in-the-nation contest for the nomination, with the rest of the candidates far behind in the state. For quite a while, Biden has been sharpening his hatchet to swing at progressive populism in general -- and Bernie in particular.

The Big Obstacle for Bernie Isn’t DNC “Rigging” -- It’s Media Trashing

By Norman Solomon

Some people are attached to the idea that the Democratic National Committee will “rig” the presidential nomination against Bernie Sanders. The meme encourages the belief that the Bernie 2020 campaign is futile because of powerful corporate Democrats. But such fatalism should be discarded.

As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Of course top Democratic Party officials don’t intend to give up control. It has to be taken from them. And the conditions for doing that are now more favorable than ever.

The effects of mobilized demands for change in the Democratic presidential nominating process have been major -- not out of the goodness of any power broker’s heart, but because progressives have organized effectively during the last two years.

“I think I will not shock anybody to suggest that the DNC was not quite evenhanded” during the 2016 race, Bernie said last week on CNN. “I think we have come a long way since then, and I fully expect to be treated quite as well as anybody else.”

One big factor: This time, no candidate can gain frontrunner leverage with superdelegates the way Hillary Clinton did early in the race. Last August, under grassroots pressure, the DNC voted to abolish superdelegates’ votes at the Democratic National Convention for the first ballot in the nominating process. There hasn’t been a second ballot since 1952.

When timeworn polemics insist that what’s now underway can’t really happen, it is time to revise the polemics. For many years, we heard that genuinely progressive Democrats couldn’t make meaningful inroads in Congress. Now, with impacts that far exceed their growing numbers, recently arrived House members are doing a lot to help reshape the political discourse -- notably Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

While ill-founded, the line that “the DNC will rig 2020” is apt to have perverse impacts. No doubt sincerely believed by some, the outdated notion serves to demoralize and de-energize.

Is the Bernie 2020 campaign facing a steep uphill climb? Of course it is. Are powerful forces arrayed to crush it? Absolutely.

But let’s be clear. The huge obstacle ahead is not the DNC -- it’s the mass media. The corporate-owned and corporate-advertiser-funded media of this country are the biggest barriers between Bernie Sanders and the Oval Office.

Often functioning as propaganda outlets, the major news media serve as an amplification system for corporate power that has long shielded the Democratic Party from the combined “threats” of social movements and progressive populist candidates. The synergies of momentum from the left -- outside and inside of electoral arenas -- are continuing to accelerate.

It’s crucial that progressives develop more effective challenges to the media serving the predatory big-money system. More than any other force, reflexive spin from corporate media stands between us and a Bernie Sanders presidency.

In sharp contrast to campaigns with enormous budgets for Astroturf, the first Sanders presidential campaign was able to effectively defy the conventional wisdom and overall power structure by inspiring and mobilizing at the grassroots. His campaign was -- and is -- antithetical to the politics of corporate media.

Two examples of news coverage, exactly three years apart, indicate what the Bernie 2020 campaign will be up against. In early March 2016, at a pivotal moment during the primary campaign, FAIR analyst Adam Johnson documented that the Washington Post “ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours . . . a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin.”

Days ago, when Bernie Sanders launched his campaign with a big rally in Brooklyn, the MSNBC coverage was so slanted that an assessment from Glenn Greenwald appeared under the headline “MSNBC Yet Again Broadcasts Blatant Lies, This Time About Bernie Sanders’ Opening Speech, and Refuses to Correct Them.”

Greenwald’s critique of MSNBC focused on flagrantly inaccurate anti-Sanders commentary from a former Hillary Clinton aide that immediately followed the senator’s Brooklyn speech. No Sanders supporter was included in the discussion. The coverage prompted an email from FAIR founder (and my colleague) Jeff Cohen to an MSNBC vice president: “You have no trouble finding hardcore Clintonite Bernie-bashers; please offer some balance in your analysts. In today’s Democratic Party, there’s clearly more sympathy for Bernie than the Clintons -- but not on MSNBC.”

It’s worth noting that the Post is owned by the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, while MSNBC is owned by Comcast, “the world’s largest entertainment company.”

To counteract the media propaganda arsenal now in place, we should fully recognize that arsenal as the main weaponry that corporate power will deploy against the Bernie 2020 campaign. We must confront those corporate media forces while vastly strengthening independent progressive media work of all kinds.

     Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

 

Norman joined other panelists to discuss:

 

 

What the Bernie Sanders 2020 Campaign Means for Progressives

By Norman Solomon

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris began this week in the nation’s first primary state by proclaiming what she isn’t. “The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire,” she said, “but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist.”

Harris continued: “I believe that what voters do want is they want to know that whoever is going to lead, understands that in America today, not everyone has an equal opportunity and access to a path to success, and that has been building up over decades and we've got to correct course.”

Last summer, another senator now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren, went out of her way to proclaim what she is. Speaking to the New England Council on July 16, she commented: “I am a capitalist to my bones.”

A week later, Warren elaborated in a CNBC interview: “I am a capitalist. Come on. I believe in markets. What I don't believe in is theft, what I don't believe in is cheating. That's where the difference is. I love what markets can do, I love what functioning economies can do. They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity. But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it's about the powerful get all of it. And that's what's gone wrong in America.”

In the obvious contrasts with Harris and in the less obvious yet significant contrasts with Warren on matters of economic justice as well as on foreign policy, Bernie Sanders represents a different approach to the root causes of -- and possible solutions to -- extreme economic inequality, systemic injustice and a dire shortage of democracy.

It’s not mere happenstance that Bernie is willing to use the word “oligarchy” to describe the current social order in the United States. What’s more, he pointedly ties his candid analysis of reality to more far-reaching -- and potentially effective -- solutions.

Now that Bernie has announced he’s running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, progressives will need to decide on how to approach the contest. Anyone with feet on the ground understands that the Democratic nominee will be the necessary means to achieve the imperative of preventing a Republican from winning another four years in the White House. So, who is our first choice -- whose campaign deserves strong support -- to be the nominee of a Democratic Party that has remained chronically dominated by corporate power?

The “tweak options,” represented by Sen. Harris, recycle the kind of mild populist rhetoric that served the presidential aspirations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama so well. Corporate interests backed them from the outset, and corporate interests benefited. Overall, Wall Street soared while Main Street got clobbered.

The “regulatory options,” represented by Sen. Warren, would be a positive departure for the top of the Democratic Party. Yet the constrained analysis (markets “are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity”) puts forward constrained remedies, more palliative than cure.

The tweak options are fully compatible with further consolidation of the reign of corporate power that has enthroned oligarchy in the United States.

Strong regulatory options, if implemented, could roll back some excesses of corporate power, and that would certainly be progress. But we live in a world where mere plodding progress won’t be enough to halt catastrophic trends.

The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to more and more disastrous momentum, from vast income inequality to out-of-control climate change to rampant militarism. For those who want the next president to fight for solutions that match the scale of such problems, the choice should be clear.

One of the most exciting aspects of the upcoming Bernie campaign is the enormous potential for synergies with social movements. There are bound to be tensions -- that's inherent in the somewhat divergent terrains of seriously running for office and building movements -- but the opportunities for historic breakthroughs are right in front of us.

Meanwhile, corporate media outlets are poised to be even more negative toward the Bernie campaign than they were last time. This time, independent progressive media outlets -- especially online -- will be vital and could prove to be decisive.

The only real hope for the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign is that a grassroots uprising will become powerful enough to overcome the massive obstacles. It’s a huge cooperative task, but success is possible.

     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 and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."