Norman Solomon

Four Years Ago, We Warned That Trump Could Win. Now, We’re Warning Again.

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

Five days before the election that put Donald Trump in the White House, an article we wrote appeared under the headline “Dangerous Myths About Trump That Some Progressives Cling To.” The piece warned progressive activists about “three key myths”:

Myth #1: “Trump can’t win.”

Myth #2: “If Trump becomes president, he’ll be blocked from implementing the policies he’s been advocating.”

Myth #3: “Trump couldn’t do much damage as president.”

We wrote that each of those myths was based on major misunderstandings of political realities: In fact, Trump actually could win. If he did, we shouldn’t “have an inflated view of our own power to block the policies of a President Trump.” And, “Trump plans to appoint to the most powerful policy positions of the U.S. government individuals who are as whacked out as he is: Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Ben Carson, war fanatic John Bolton, to name just a few.”

We added: “A Trump presidency -- made possible by his demagogic appeals to racism, misogyny, immigrant-bashing and Islamophobia -- would empower the worst elements of U.S. society.”

Our point now is not to say we told you so. Our point now is to tell you that Trump really could win again -- and progressives must do everything in our power to stop that from happening. That means, individually and collectively, going all-out to Vote Trump Out. Crucially, in swing states, that means voting Joe Biden in. 

We have no illusions about Biden, who has faithfully served neoliberal corporatism throughout his political career. At the same time, we have no illusions about the neofascist elements of the Trump presidency or the virulent extremism of much of his political base. 

That’s why, in recent weeks, the two of us have helped launch a campaign to “#VoteTrumpOut (in Swing States) / Then Challenge Biden from Day One.”

An encouraging reality is that the progressive movement is much stronger today -- online, in the streets and on election ballots -- than four years ago. We’re better organized, better funded, better networked and more astute about the need to challenge corporate Democrats.

Large numbers of progressives are ready, willing and able to battle a Biden-Harris administration on behalf of transformational reforms like a Green New Deal, major criminal justice reform to counter racism and establish true public safety, Medicare for All, affordable housing, free college, increased taxes on corporations and the rich, and big cuts in Pentagon spending.

Before that battle for progress can begin, the racist Trump regime must be defeated in battleground states (listed here) -- and by significant margins, so the election can’t be stolen.

While a Biden-Harris administration could be pressured toward reforms benefiting poor and working-class people, Trump is immune to progressive pressure and protest. And a second Trump term would stoke more white-supremacist vigilantism and an even more far-reaching assault on democratic rights and marginalized communities.

The #VoteTrumpOut campaign is aimed at a sizeable bloc of voters in swing states that mainstream media pundits generally ignore: “swing voters on the left.” Some of these change-oriented voters are thinking about sitting out the presidential election or casting a third-party protest vote, even though they live in battleground states.

We will be dialoguing with thousands of these voters in swing states every week, and regularly sending them thought-provoking videos from the likes of Medicare for All campaigner Ady Barkan and lifelong activist/scholar Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky has offered this comment: “I live in the swing state of Arizona, and I’d vote for a lamp post to get Trump out.”

It’s probably silly to debate how much better Biden is than a lamp post. We’d prefer to discuss a 30-foot flag post at South Carolina’s state capitol that was famously scaled five years ago by African-American activist Bree Newsome Bass to remove the Confederate battle flag. Her act of civil disobedience in the wake of the Charleston church massacre gained international acclaim, and the state soon permanently removed the flag.

Last week, she sent out urgent tweets: “Trump and Republicans have to be driven out of office. . . . If he’s not defeated electorally, it will solidify a fascist dictatorship & the far right will ramp up exponentially. . . . I cannot overstate how terrifying the prospect of a solidified Trump dictatorship should be to everyone.”

Trump really could win again. The more progressives wrap their minds around that reality now, the less likely they’ll have to live with it for another four years.

     Jeff Cohen is cofounder of the online activism group RootsAction.org. He founded the media watch group FAIR, and was an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from New York for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He was a 2020 Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the national convention.

Time to Defeat Trump -- Without Make-Believe About Biden

By Norman Solomon

One result of the Republican convention will be a drop in the number of progressives who are in denial about the Trump regime’s momentum toward fascism. This week’s relentlessly unhinged GOP gathering has probably done more to win votes for Joe Biden from the left than last week’s Democratic convention did. And that points up a problem.

The people running the Biden show have been trying hard to woo Republicans, while the affection remains largely unrequited. Mainstream media keep featuring VIP anti-Trump Republicans, but few registered voters have defected from Trump. Recent polling data continue to show the electoral folly of messaging to cultivate “Biden Republicans” while damaging the turnout prospects from the Democratic Party’s progressive base.

Neither the Democratic nominee nor his media echo chambers have much use for Bernie Sanders supporters or genuine progressives overall, who now rarely get words in edgewise -- even though they represent a major chunk of the electorate (many times that of the phantom “moderate Republican voter”).

During the spring, the Biden campaign extended a few olive branches in a progressive direction, but some of them morphed into sticks in the eyes of Bernie convention delegates and their constituencies -- whether in the form of the eleventh-hour deletion of a platform provision to end fossil-fuel subsidies and tax breaks, or the suppression of the delegates’ vote tally that had more than 1,000 voting against the platform mostly because it lacks Medicare for All. In a non-virtual convention or a country with less corporately biased media, such dissent from a party platform would have been big news.

The imperative of preventing a second Trump term is roaring at us every moment. Some progressives mistakenly believe that means we should melt into the ranks of Biden boosters and otherwise keep quiet until after the election. On the contrary. For instance, continuing to insist that the Democratic Party must take a clear stand for Medicare for All is not only the morally right thing to do; it’s also good politics in 2020, as polling clearly shows.

Nor should we pretend that Biden doesn’t have a five-decade record that is very far from progressive. Reasons to distrust him are profuse. But this presidential election isn’t really about Biden, who’s a garden-variety corporate Democrat. It’s about a clear and present threat to democratic capacities in the United States.

The irreversible fork in the historic road of this election was aptly summed up by an activist and scholar with a long history on the left, H. Bruce Franklin, who concluded a new article this way: “Even in these dark days, light is visible. In my 86 years as an American, I have never witnessed a progressive movement as broad and deep as the one sweeping across the nation today. If Biden and the Democrats win in November, this movement will have room to thrive. If not, it will be crushed.”

Progressives should be a leading force in a united front against Trump for the next 10 weeks. We must go all out, so that we -- and progressive movements -- are not crushed.

There’s no point in arguing about whether progressives should vote for Biden in “safe states” like New York or California; such discussions are at best a waste of time. Whether Trump can remain president for another four years will hinge on the votes in a dozen swing states.

Professor Franklin takes aim at the disconnected-from-facts argument sometimes heard (disproportionately in reader comments on some progressive websites) that the two parties are, in essence, indistinguishable: “Really? If you can’t see glaring differences between the Supreme Court justices chosen by the two parties and their votes crucial to our lives, your name might be Magoo.”

And Franklin added: “Compare the Democrats: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer (Clinton appointees); Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan (Obama appointees) to the Republicans: Clarence Thomas (appointed by George H. W. Bush to take the place of the great Thurgood Marshall, appointed by LBJ); Samuel Alito and John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush); and Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh (appointed by Trump). I agree with Mitch McConnell that there is no more important outcome of presidential elections than the composition of the Supreme Court, an outcome that will probably be crucial for decades after the four- or eight-year term of Donald Trump. For starters, who will get to appoint the successor to the heroic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? The same president who will get to appoint the successor to the 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer. If it’s Trump, those two will be replaced by two more Kavanaughs, or worse if possible. Whatever Trump wants to be the law of the land will be validated by that truly supreme court.”

Franklin makes a broader point: “On health care, public education, voting rights, civil rights, the environment, abortion rights, immigration, minimum wages, union rights, and taxation of the wealthy, every vote in the House and Senate splits right along party lines. And these party lines are drawn along the lines of the voting bases of the two parties. The Republican Party today is the party of white supremacy.”

Denial of such realities is dangerous. As my colleagues at the #VoteTrumpOut campaign point out, “For every undocumented family seeking asylum, for every woman seeking access to reproductive healthcare, for every young person fighting to avert climate catastrophe, for every parent afraid of gun violence at their children’s school, for every working class family hoping for some relief from the medical and economic fallout of the coronavirus, life will be very different under a Biden presidency than under four more years of Trump.

“And crucially, Biden is moveable. We’ve already shown that with mass pressure, we can push him to support more progressive policies. Trump, on the other hand, is immune to public persuasion or protest. With a Biden presidency, a disciplined and mobilized left could extract significant victories. With another Trump presidency, the left would have few options and could face new levels of government repression. Our democracy, our planet, and our human rights would continue to sustain enormous -- and potentially irreparable -- damage.”

This is our political crossroads.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Why the Left Must Reject and Elect Biden at the Same Time

By Norman Solomon

In the next three months, a dozen states will determine whether Donald Trump wins another four years as president. Those swing states should be central to the work of progressives who are determined to prevent that outcome.

With so much at stake, we can’t afford the luxury of devoting time and energy to endless arguments about whether progressives should vote for Joe Biden if they live in California or New York, or Alabama or Alaska, or other states where the electoral votes are sure to all go to Biden or Trump.

What will matter are the swing states, generally understood this time around to include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. (Also in play are “swing districts” in two states where the statewide winning candidate doesn’t automatically get all of the state’s electoral votes: Maine’s second congressional district and Nebraska’s second congressional district.)

There’s no point -- or honesty -- in pretending that Biden is a decent guy whose public service has overflowed with compassion. Whether provided by the New York Times days ago or The Nation last year, the grim evidence of Biden’s callous political career is profuse.

During the primary campaign, the organization where I’m national director, RootsAction.org, supported Bernie Sanders and widely distributed documentation of Biden’s decades-long record of serving corporate greed, racial injustice and the military-industrial complex. I’ve denounced Biden’s political record in one article after  another after another after another after another after another after another.

But the choice ahead, Trump or Biden, is painfully real. Magical thinking has its literary value, but in politics it’s delusional and dangerous to evade the realities of binary choices when they arise. All too often, discussion of voting can fall into a kind of self-absorption that focuses on a voter’s emotions about voting rather than on the impacts of election results on other people.

“It doesn't matter whether you like Biden or not, that's your personal feelings, irrelevant, nobody cares about that,” Noam Chomsky said in a just-released video. “What they care about is what happens to the world. We have to get rid of Trump, keep pressure on Biden, just as Sanders and associates have been doing.”

Chomsky added: “Politics is activism, not taking five minutes to push a button. Look what's happening in the streets of the country. One of the greatest social movements that has ever developed, led by Black Lives Matter. Take Sunrise Movement, managed to put the Green New Deal on the legislative agenda. This generation is going to decide whether organized human society can survive. And the crucial part of this decision is to get rid of the major barrier to survival, which happens to be in the White House. Get rid of Trump, then we have opportunities.”

My colleague Jeff Cohen, who co-founded RootsAction, told Common Dreams that the “Vote Trump Out” initiative that RootsAction launched with the Chomsky video is “a two-step campaign: First, vote Trump out. Then challenge Biden from day one. . . It's easier to persuade ‘swing voters on the left’ who live in swing states to vote for Biden despite their hesitancy if they know we're serious about step two.”

Like it or not, the imperative of defeating Trump is directly in front of us. To make a progressive future possible, beating Trump is absolutely necessary while very far from sufficient. To organize against a government headed by Trump is to push against a thick stone wall. To organize against a government headed by Biden holds out the real potential of progressive breakthroughs.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

An Ultimate Meaning of the Bernie 2020 Campaign: “Not Him. Us.”

By Norman Solomon

“Eugene V. Debs is Bernie Sanders’ political hero,” the Washington Post reported with evident distaste while the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination was raging in early 2016. “A picture of the socialist union organizer hung in city hall when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. A plaque honoring Debs is now by the window in Sanders’ Senate office.”

Now, as Bernie’s last presidential campaign fades into history, it’s appropriate to consider this statement from Eugene Debs, whose dedication to the working class was matched by his eloquence and courage: “I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out.”

Millions of Americans, inspired and energized by the Bernie 2020 campaign, certainly do not want to stay right where they are, in the midst of the capitalist wilderness surrounding us -- menacing and deadly with the climate emergency, the unchecked pandemic, vast income inequality, structural racism and so many other terrible ills. There’s no Moses in sight, nor should there be.

To say that Bernie’s role in progressive movements will diminish in the months and years ahead is to take nothing away from his profound importance in the past and present. During a PBS NewsHour interview a couple of nights ago, he was as cogent and strategic as ever, emphasizing that to defeat Trump “there has to be energy and excitement among younger people, among working-class people, among people who very often do not vote.” Overall, Bernie Sanders continues to be the preeminent and most effective progressive voice in the country.

And yet the pathbreaking brilliance of his 2020 campaign has been followed by confusing and somewhat dispiriting choices that he has made since announcing the “suspension” of his campaign on April 8. The last hundred days have been marred by a backtrack on his pledge that day to “continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions.” Actually, Bernie and his campaign did almost nothing to gain further delegates in subsequent primaries.

Those of us who regret some of Bernie’s tactical decisions during the last three months would do well to recall Eugene Debs’ words about why he was not seeking to “lead you into the promised land.” And now, Bernie Sanders’ campaign slogan is more to the point than ever: “Not me. Us.”

Both of the Sanders presidential campaigns were historic breakthroughs for challenging the moral rot of oligarchy in the United States and for pushing real class analysis into mainstream discourse. The campaigns grew out of -- and, crucially, helped grow -- grassroots movements fighting to transform institutions that are structurally racist, sexist, militaristic and environmentally destructive while serving corporate power and wealthy elites.

The future is up to us.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee Could Defy “the Madness of Militarism” as Co-Chairs of the Democratic Convention’s Biggest Delegation

By Norman Solomon

One of the few encouraging surprises in the lead-up to the 2020 Democratic National Convention is that co-chairs of California’s huge delegation will include Representatives Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee. Progressive activism made it possible -- winning caucus races to elect strong Bernie Sanders delegates in early June and then organizing a grassroots campaign for Khanna to become chair of the state’s entire delegation.

Now, for Khanna and Lee -- two of the most eloquent and effective members of Congress on matters of war and peace -- the upcoming convention offers an opportunity to directly challenge the Democratic Party’s default embrace of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

Mainline media outlets have recognized the symbolism, if not the potential, of what just occurred. Reporting has explained that progressive clout prevented Gov. Gavin Newsom from becoming the chair of the delegation, with the result that co-chair positions went to Khanna, Lee and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

“For the past two weeks,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Sanders supporters have argued that his March 3 primary win in California meant a progressive like Khanna -- an early endorser of the Vermont senator and a national co-chair of his presidential campaign -- should be the face of the state’s delegation.”

The newspaper added: “The agreement is a definite win for California progressives, who got Khanna and Lee. While Lee backed California Sen. Kamala Harris in the primary, she’s an icon on the left for her history as an antiwar activist and her support for most of Sanders’ platform. . . . Progressives managed to block Newsom, who endorsed Biden in May, from a leading role. While Democratic governors typically lead their state’s delegation to their party’s convention, Newsom is persona non grata for California progressives.”

On Monday, Politico summed up: “Bernie Sanders may not be the Democratic nominee, but his followers are flexing their muscle in California.”

Politico pointed out that “the grassroots decision to sidestep Newsom was a clear departure from tradition -- and a signal that progressives who backed Sanders don’t intend to be sidelined.” Along the way, “the vote underscored Khanna’s rise as a progressive wing leader to watch -- and cements his role as the captain of the Bernie movement in California. . . . He has galvanized progressive support with his active legislative record to curb the president’s war powers and end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, among other issues.”

Now, Khanna and Lee have a tremendous -- indeed, historic -- opportunity. Their full-throated voices for peace and justice should be widely heard in the context of the upcoming national convention.

This is a heavy burden of expectation to place on two members of Congress who are not in top “leadership” positions. Meanwhile, the burden should also be swiftly taken up by activists throughout the country.

Much is possible in a short time. As one of more than a hundred Sanders delegates elected in California a few weeks ago, I was inspired to see what we could achieve by working together to replace traditional power brokerage with genuine progressive leadership.

Warped budget priorities that have bloated the Pentagon’s spending are thefts from desperately needed funds for health care and a huge array of social programs -- just as militarized police forces and bloated law-enforcement costs are continuing to drain the funds of local governments. In the midst of the pandemic, the need is vast and urgent for a massive redirection of funding, away from militarism and toward long-term measures to save lives.

Humanistic values insist that corporate Democrats must accommodate to progressive agendas, not the other way around. This certainly means disentangling the party from the military-industrial complex and multibillion-dollar health care profiteers.

While Dr. King condemned militarism’s madness, he also denounced the cruelty of inequities in funding that undermine health. “Of all the forms of inequality,” he said, “injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”

Moral positions on these profound issues are in sync with public opinion. Over the last decade, one poll after another after another after another has reflected substantial support for reductions in military spending. Exit polls during this year’s primary elections consistently showed overwhelming support for Medicare for All.

Understood broadly and deeply, the madness of militarism is not only the normalized frenzy of preparing for war and waging it. The madness extends to ongoing financial, social and psychological investments in routine institutionalized violence -- from militarizing police to glorifying suppression of civil unrest to devoting humongous resources to further military endeavors at the expense of vital social programs -- methodically taking lives instead of saving them.

Such destructive patterns can’t be effectively challenged while deferring to hidebound party leaders. As co-chairs of the Democratic National Convention’s largest delegation, Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee will only have a chance to change history for the better if they’re willing to clearly and forcefully speak essential truths that powerful Democrats don’t want the public to hear.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

By Norman Solomon                                                                                                

After defying the odds and defeating corporate opponents on Tuesday, the strong progressives Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones are headed to Congress from New York -- and there’s no way it would be happening if they hadn’t been willing and able to put up a fight in Democratic primaries. The same was true in 2018 with the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley as they beat the party establishment.

After three decades of contributing mightily to the blight of congressional militarism, Rep. Eliot Engel couldn’t be rescued by the high-profile endorsements of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nor could Engel be saved by the eleventh-hour support of Hillary Clinton.

Other Democratic incumbents are being challenged by progressives in difficult and inspiring campaigns: intent on doing what, according to conventional political wisdom, can’t be done.

While the Republican Party has given “faith” a bad name, Barack Obama did the same for “audacity” and “hope.” Being an ally of the military-industrial complex and corporate power isn’t audacious or particularly hopeful. But progressives need plenty of audacious hope and insistence that political organizing must include insurgent election campaigns.

The obstacles are enormous. That’s usually true of social change worth fighting for.

In the electoral arena, the goal is not only about winning elections. It’s also about replacing the top-down weight of entrenched politicians with the bottom-up power of grassroots activism. A current example is the effort by progressive activists in California to make Congressman Ro Khanna the chair of the state’s delegation for the Democratic National Convention, instead of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

That would be appropriate. Khanna was a national co-chair for the 2020 campaign of Bernie Sanders, who won the state’s presidential primary by a margin of 8 percent over Joe Biden.

If raw political power is the metric, Newsom has a clear advantage in the lead-up to a decisive statewide “virtual meeting” of national-convention delegates set for Sunday. But in recent days, 130 Sanders delegates (including me) from congressional districts across the state -- 90 percent of all such Sanders delegates -- have signed a statement calling for Khanna to be the delegation chair.

The statement pointed out that “Ro Khanna has been a national champion on issues supported by California Democrats -- health care for all, national budget priorities based on human needs and opposing Trump on huge increases in military spending and endless wars, criminal justice reform, and a path to citizenship for immigrants.”

If Newsom allows a democratic process, Khanna could win. From all indications, Newsom doesn’t want to take the chance.

California Democratic Party rules are vague, saying only that “the Delegation Chair will be selected by the National Convention Delegates” on June 28. There’s plenty of room for top party officials to short-circuit actual democracy by refusing to allow a proper election process. The anticipated plan is to offer the delegates one big omnibus package that includes designating Newsom as chair.

Suspicion of the Democratic Party’s power structure has run deep among Bernie supporters. If the Democratic governor of the largest state is perceived as blocking a democratic process in order to strong-arm his way into becoming delegation chair, the ripple effects could extend throughout the country -- including the dozen swing states, where a robust turnout from progressive voters will be vital this fall.

At the moment, national polls are rosy for Biden. We’ve been here before, with media depicting Trump on the ropes. Few political pundits saw the demagogue’s prospects as anything but dim against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Four years later, razor-thin margins in swing states could tip the balance, notwithstanding the nationwide popular vote.

Politicians are not known for humility, and few are inclined to bypass a beckoning limelight. California’s delegation chair is apt to draw appreciable media attention in mid-August when Democrats convene a virtual convention. Newsom could do his party and his country a greater service by yielding that particular spotlight rather than basking in it.

Especially after events of 2016, when facts emerged showing that the Democratic National Committee put anti-Sanders thumbs on the scales, many progressives have become acutely sensitive to shortages of fairness in party proceedings. The last thing we need are fresh examples of powerful politicians opting for self-serving actions over democratic principles.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

California “Berning” for Ro Khanna to Chair the State’s Delegation to Democratic National Convention

By Norman Solomon

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads in California, where Bernie Sanders defeated Joe Biden in the presidential primary three months ago, winning more than half of the state’s delegates to the national convention. In recent days, over 110 Sanders delegates -- just elected in “virtual caucuses” across the state -- have signed a statement calling for Congressman Ro Khanna to be the chair of California’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention in mid-August.

Fairness, logic and even party unity all argue for Khanna to chair the delegation.

Noting that “Sanders received appreciably more votes in the California primary than any other candidate,” the statement points out that “Khanna has been a national champion on issues supported by California Democrats -- health care for all, national budget priorities based on human needs and opposing Trump on huge increases in military spending and endless wars, criminal justice reform, and a path to citizenship for immigrants.”

Released by Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction.org (where I’m national director), the statement has been endorsed by the California Nurses Association as well as by Amar Shergill, the chair of the state Democratic Party’s large Progressive Caucus. Four-fifths of the state’s Bernie delegates elected in congressional districts have already signed it.

“Having our state delegation chaired by one of the Bernie 2020 campaign's national co-chairs would send an important message of inclusion to disaffected voters across the country,” the statement says. “As state delegation chair, Congressman Khanna would be well-positioned to serve as a voice for authentic unity behind a ticket headed by Biden for the imperative of defeating Trump.”

But whether the powers that be in the Democratic Party are truly interested in such “authentic unity” will be put to a test at a June 28 statewide delegates meeting, where California’s delegation chair is scheduled to be chosen. (I’ll be part of the meeting as a Bernie delegate.) Rules for that meeting -- or even information on who will run it -- have not yet been disclosed.

A common steamroller technique at such meetings is for an omnibus package with myriad provisions -- including decisions made in advance by those in power -- to be presented for a single up-or-down vote. Instead, what’s needed is a truly democratic election, with nominations for delegation chair and a ballot enabling each delegate to cast a vote for one of the candidates. (What a concept.)

Sanders defeated Biden by a margin of 8 percent in the California primary. But hidebound tradition as well as raw political power are arrayed against the Bernie delegates pushing for Khanna to chair the delegation.

Traditionally, the Democratic governor would be the chair of the state’s delegation to the national convention, as was the case four years ago with Gov. Jerry Brown. And the current Democrat in the governor’s office, Gavin Newsom, is unlikely to favor giving up this chance to enhance his national stature and aid his evident presidential ambitions.

For progressives, however, much more is at stake than political prestige.

Every indication is that only a state delegation chair will be allowed to introduce proposals or amendments to the entire convention. Simply having the option of doing so, on issues like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, could give the state party chair leverage for programs championed by the Bernie 2020 campaign. That’s exactly the kind of leverage that party power brokers want to prevent from falling into the hands of genuine progressives.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race -- and Dodging Class

By Norman Solomon

Grassroots outrage and nationwide protests after Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd have pushed much of U.S. corporate media into focusing on deadly police mistreatment of black people. The coverage is far from comprehensive on the subject of racism in the “criminal justice” system -- we’re still hearing very little about the routine violations of basic rights in courtrooms and behind bars -- yet there’s no doubt that a breakthrough has occurred. The last two weeks have opened up a lot more media space for illuminating racial cruelty.

But what about economic cruelty?

Media outlets routinely detour around reasons why African Americans and other people of color are so disproportionately poor -- and, as a result of poverty, are dying much younger than white people. The media ruts bypass confronting how the wealthy gain more wealth and large corporations reap more profits at the expense of poor and middle-income people.

The statistics are grim. For every black person killed by police, vastly more are dying because of such conditions as a threadbare safety net, a lack of adequate employment, and scant access to health care or social services.

Readily available numbers are indictments of systemic racism. At the same time, numbers tell us virtually nothing about the human essence of widespread, tragic and fully preventable suffering that, in the words of Marvin Gaye’s brilliant song “Inner City Blues,” make me wanna holler.

News media habitually tiptoe around deadly realities of economic oppression that are hidden in plain sight -- so normalized that they’re apt to seem perversely natural. Meanwhile, government is routinely portrayed as inherently hamstrung, lacking in funds and unable to cope. But from city halls and state legislatures to corridors of power in Washington, the priorities that hold sway are largely imposed by leverage from big corporations and the wealthy who want their financial interests protected.

"When we say #DefundPolice,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted days ago, “what we mean is people are dying and we need to invest in people's livelihoods instead. Example: Detroit spent $294 million on police last year, and $9 million on health. This is systemic oppression in numbers."

The official city bar chart that accompanied Tlaib’s tweet amounts to a smoking gun of a ceaseless class war raging across the United States and far beyond. Huge numbers of people whose names we’ll never know are casualties of that profit-driven war.

From slavery onwards, vicious economic exploitation has been central to the oppression of African Americans. In spite of that reality -- and because of it -- the prevailing power structure and its dominant media arms are eager to separate racial justice from economic justice.

Yet the separation is absurd and disingenuous. “A close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities,” the Brookings Institution reported this year. The latest figures show that “the net worth of a typical white family is nearly 10 times greater than that of a black family.” Those wealth gaps “reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception.”

It’s symbolic that while we’ve often heard that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the historic march on Washington in 1963, the fact that it was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” isn’t often mentioned. Five years later, King was murdered while in Memphis to support a union struggle by exploited sanitation workers as he was immersed in planning the next stages of the Poor People’s Campaign.

Today, the humongous gaps between wealth and poverty -- and the lethal consequences of those gaps -- are rarely in mass-media focus. Empathy for low-income people might be fine in medialand, but they’re commonly portrayed as victims of bad luck or personal failings rather than the prey of victimizers who profit from immiseration.

As a practical matter, the economic ladder that keeps some people trapped on the lowest rungs is central to the health vulnerabilities of so many African Americans. Economic injustice is vital to the entire U.S. power structure. While many people of all races suffer as a result, people of color are at much greater risk.

In effect, corporate capitalism has proven itself to be fully capable of methodical sadism in the pursuit of maximizing profits. That ongoing reality, 24/7/365, is so routine -- and so powerfully entrenched -- that even U.S. news outlets doing decent coverage of police violence can rarely supply clarity about the “free enterprise” economic violence that is taking countless lives.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Solidarity Includes Wearing a Mask at Protests

By Norman Solomon

The nationwide outpouring of protests during the last 10 days has provided a historic moral response to the murder of George Floyd. In one city after another, people braved tear gas, pepper spray, clubs and other weaponry -- as well as mass arrests -- to nonviolently challenge racist police violence. Those same people were also risking infection with the coronavirus.

Photos from around the country show that a large majority of protesters have been wearing masks, often under very difficult conditions. By doing so, they aren’t only protecting themselves to some extent -- they’re also protecting people nearby. As the New York Times just noted, “most experts now agree that if everyone wears a mask, individuals protect one another.”

In other words, wearing a mask is about solidarity.

Unfortunately, some protesters have not worn masks, perhaps unaware that they were putting others at risk. Meanwhile, some police officers have disregarded orders to wear masks.

With latest research indicating that about 35 percent of infected people have no symptoms at all, unwillingness to wear a mask jeopardizes the health of others. That jeopardy is far from evenly distributed. Older people and those with underlying health problems are at higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. African Americans and other people of color are also dying at much higher rates, due to structural racism.

“UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford described the protests as a kind of uncontrolled experiment, one that will test what happens when people are wearing masks in an outdoor setting, but yelling and not maintaining their distance,” the Los Angeles Times reported this week. Said Rutherford: “If you have breakdowns in social distancing and don’t have masks on, then you’re deeply in trouble.”

Addressing the chances of exposure to the virus while protesting, California’s Department of Health is urging caution: “Even with adherence to physical distancing, bringing members of different households together to engage in in-person protest carries a higher risk of widespread transmission of COVID-19. . . . In particular, activities like chanting, shouting, singing, and group recitation negate the risk-reduction achieved through six feet of physical distancing. For this reason, people engaging in these activities should wear face coverings at all times.”

Also, if you’re headed to a protest, you might want to consider giving away some masks.

“The virus seems to spread the most when people yell (such as to chant a slogan), sneeze (to expel pepper spray), or cough (after inhaling tear gas),” The Atlantic reported as this week began. “It is transmitted most efficiently in crowds and large gatherings, and research has found that just a few contagious people can infect hundreds of susceptible people around them. The virus can spread especially easily in small, cramped places, such as police vans and jails.”

In Minnesota, the Star Tribune reported, “state health officials will be encouraging people protesting the death of George Floyd to seek COVID-19 testing -- regardless of whether they feel sick -- due to the increased risk of the disease spreading at mass gatherings.” The newspaper added that “a key recommendation will be when asymptomatic protesters should seek testing, because the incubation period of the virus following infection is around five days -- with a range of two to 14 days.” Testing too early could miss the virus.

Protesting is crucial at a moment like this. But protesting must be done without ignoring the pandemic.

While some hazards probably can’t be avoided at demonstrations, wearing a mask remains vital. The reality that it’s difficult if not impossible to maintain six-foot social distancing at a protest makes wearing a mask all the more important. The life you save may not be your own.

At campaign rallies last fall and winter, Bernie Sanders struck a chord when he asked: “Are you willing to fight for that person who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?” It was a powerful statement that resonated deeply and became a viral rallying cry. The ethical core remains. And by speaking out and protesting in the wake of George Floyd’s death, large numbers of people have been answering that question with a resounding Yes.

At the same time, those who wear a mask at protests are making clear that they’re willing to undergo some discomfort to protect people they don’t even know.

There are many things we have no control over as we keep pushing to change the political direction of the United States. Whether we wear a mask isn’t one of them.

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director 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.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Amy Klobuchar, Minneapolis Police and Her VP Quest

By Norman Solomon

Eighteen years before Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named George Floyd on Monday, Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named Christopher Burns. Today, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar decries the killing of Floyd. Back then, Minneapolis chief prosecutor Amy Klobuchar refused to prosecute city police for killing Burns.

A year ago, the Washington Post published a thorough news article under a clear headline: “As a Prosecutor in Heavily White Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar Declined to Go After Police Involved in Fatal Encounters with Black Men.” Her refusal to seek justice after Burns died was part of a pattern.

With Klobuchar now on Joe Biden’s short list for vice president, the gruesome killing of Floyd has refocused attention on Klobuchar’s history of racial injustice. In sharp contrast to her prosecutorial approach two decades ago, she has issued a statement calling for “a complete and thorough outside investigation” into Floyd’s death and declaring that “those involved in this incident must be held accountable.”

During the first years of this century, with a bright political future ahead of her, Klobuchar refused to hold police officers accountable. And her failure to prosecute police who killed black men was matched by racially slanted eagerness to prosecute black men on the basis of highly dubious evidence.

While Klobuchar has occasionally been subjected to media scrutiny of her record as a prosecutor in Minnesota, she has routinely enjoyed favorable coverage often sliding into outright puffery. In short, much of the media establishment adores Klobuchar and her corporate centrist politics.

When Amy Klobuchar was running for president, corporate media served as her biggest political base. News coverage and punditry often supplied praise, while rarely bothering to delve into her 12-year record in the Senate. Klobuchar’s image as a “moderate” was endearing enough to many powerful media outlets.

When the time came for endorsements from newspapers early this year, Klobuchar scored with big publications like the San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Houston Chronicle. Notably, the New York Times co-endorsed her (along with Elizabeth Warren). In fact, no candidate did better than Klobuchar with daily paper endorsements during the presidential primary season.

Unfortunately for Klobuchar, media elites don’t cast many votes in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Her drumbeat about being a fellow Midwesterner fell flat in Iowa, where she finished fifth in the caucuses with 12 percent. Days later, corporate media went gaga over one-liners she delivered in a debate just before the primary in New Hampshire, where she came in third with almost 20 percent of the vote. But Klobuchar went on to receive only 4 percent in the Nevada caucuses and then 3 percent in the South Carolina primary. Two days later, she withdrew from the race.

Since then, Klobuchar has risen to the top tier of Biden’s possible VP picks. Her selection would likely be disastrous.

As I told The Hill newspaper recently, “Someone like Klobuchar is anathema to broadening the ticket. If Biden is serious about unity then he’s got to pitch a tent big enough to include progressives.”

Klobuchar’s political record, when it comes to light, simply can’t stand up to scrutiny. While mainstream media rarely seem interested in her Senate record, it has been no less contemptuous of equal protection under the law than her career as a prosecutor.

When the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice issued a “Report Card” about the confirmation votes of Senate Democrats on President Trump’s right-wing federal judge appointees, it explained that the report graded “willingness to fight Trump’s judges.” Elizabeth Warren received an “A,” Bernie Sanders an “A-” and Kamala Harris a “B+.”

Amy Klobuchar got an “F.”

     Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director 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.”