Tony Brasunas

Sanders delegates, volunteers, and supporters have felt marginalized.

The Democratic National Committee professes publicly that it longs for peace and unity between supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The DNC’s actions as organizers of the convention, however, have repeatedly had the opposite effect.

To begin, no one who wanted Bernie Sanders as the nominee was ever allowed near the microphone on stage. It is an open convention, regardless of the way it’s been covered in the corporate media; Hillary Clinton did not get the required 2,383 delegates required to win outright from pledged delegates. The superdelegates are casting the deciding votes this week. Bernie Sanders, although issuing an endorsement of Clinton earlier this month, hasn’t conceded the race nor released his delegates and so he could become the nominee.

Nevertheless, the entire first day of the convention — ostensibly the “Bernie Day” — featured no speakers who favored a Sanders nomination. Several one-time Sanders supporters who now favor Clinton were allowed to speak. (more…)

Some might call it a long shot. Some might call it blasphemy. Some might call it the most brilliant and patriotic political maneuver in a generation.

Whatever one calls it, nominating Sen. Bernie Sanders remains a possibility at the Democratic Convention that starts today here in Philadelphia. Sanders provided an endorsement of Hillary Clinton a week ago in a show of party solidarity, but he has not conceded the race nor relinquished his delegates.

Thus this convention revolves around one critical question for superdelegates and members of the DNC: Which political path do they want their party to take today and in the coming decade?

Do they want their party to sweep to a landslide victory in November and add millions of diverse, enthusiastic new members who will carry the party to Democratic wins for a generation? Or do they want their party to run against the populism sweeping (more…)

The “lesser-of-evils” argument might not work for independent voters this year.

For those who hope for swift unity in the Democratic Party, there are reasons to believe it won’t happen if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

While there are serious policy differences between Clinton and Bernie Sanders, a deeper fault line must be acknowledged between their supporters.

Certainly the two candidates remain far apart on issues that matter to progressives and independents — fracking, the TPP, tuition-free public colleges, universal single-payer healthcare, racist policing, militarism in the Middle East — to name just a few. Indeed, based on policy and political strategy, many independents and Democrats see Clinton as more like a traditional Republican. Many even see it as indicative of privilege if one supports Clinton over Sanders, given the current state of the economy and the environment. Many intelligent progressives see the two candidates as representing different social classes.

Nevertheless, a debate about policy differences only partially explains the disconnect between Clinton (more…)

Evidence of election fraud always starts with exit polls.

Exit polls are the most important polls the media commissions. Throughout this fifty-state 2016 Democratic primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the exit polls have shown again and again that the way people have voted, on the one hand, and the way the computerized counting machines have recorded votes, on the other hand, have differed significantly.

If you’re unfamiliar with exit polls, they are rigorous scientific instruments used throughout the world as a primary deterrent and safeguard against election fraud. While a few media pundits have written that exit polls only provide informal data for election-day media stories, that is far from their only purpose.

In Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, for instance, exit polls have been used to overturn elections. In Ukraine, when the recorded vote differed from the exit polls by more than 2%, people immediately knew something was amiss, there were protests in the streets, and the entire election was thrown out. The US State Department itself dubbed that Ukraine election fraudulent based largely on the variance from the exit polls. The State Department considers 2% to be the standard margin of error allowed for an election to be considered fair and authentic.

But for elections here in this country — even one involving a former head of the State Department itself — exit polls have been ignored by elections officials and the corporate media if they differ from the reported results. In state after state, (more…)

It has never been more important to ‘think global, act local.’

The movement in Britain to leave the EU and the movement to elect Bernie Sanders in the US share an underlying cause. Across the world today there is massive dissatisfaction and anger with how global capitalist rule is converging into smaller and smaller units with more and more power via elite agreements — NAFTA, WTO, TPP perhaps, and yes, the EU. These elite agreements are driving down wages for nearly everyone, destroying the environment, and starting or abetting wars.

There are several responses to this dissatisfaction and anger.

One shortsighted and simplistic response is xenophobia and isolationism. This response is manifest in the appeal of the Brexit vote and in the appeal of Donald Trump. If you can tell yourself that it’s your neighbor — rather than unregulated global corporate rule — that is making people you know lose their healthcare, their jobs, or their homes, then you can close a symbolic door to the world.

The more challenging response is manifest in the rise of Bernie Sanders — and also in the push to radically democratize the EU. People across the world (more…)