School Scope: War in the Democratic Party as Bernie Popularity Soars
By Norm Scott
Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America, by a wide margin of 61% according to a FOX news poll (http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-politician-in-the-us-bernie-sanders-fox-news-poll-2017-3) . Yes FOX. Now Bernie is not actually a Democrat but calls himself a Democratic Socialist and at this point there is no such viable party in this nation as there is throughout the world. People tend to conflate social democracy with communism and nothing could be further from the truth. Stalin wiped out social democrats, as have every communist nation because SDs believe in private property, a fundamentally free market economy and regulated capitalism. Scandinavian nations are prime examples. Universal single payer health care is an essential, as is free education. Both of these were basic to Bernie’s program and both ideas seem to be fundamentally off the table to both parties. Don’t expect me to explain Bernie’s enormous popularity as his basic ideas are ignored and in fact often mocked, not only by the right, but by the center and even many liberals.
There is a tendency to place all Democrats into one big lump and declare them all liberal/lefties when in fact there is a wide range of division. The right-center flank of the Democratic Party is pretty much where the mainstream Republican Party was pre-Reagan. The so-called center is now being branded as the Clinton/Obama wing of the party, which includes the party leadership (Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) while the left of the party is the Bernie wing. Make no mistake about it, war is raging in the party if not openly at this point but behind the scenes and certainly in print.
The flash point came recently in the election for the relatively obscure Democratic National Committee chair. Early on, Bernie’s people backed a left-leaning Ohio Congressman, Keith Ellison, who is black and a Muslim. This was soon after the Hillary election disaster and the Clinton/Obama wing was busy licking its wounds. In the vacuum, many people signed on. But it didn’t take long for the C/O wing to fight back. Apparently Obama – and those of you who think he is a lefty, you are reading the right stuff – convinced his labor secretary, Tom Lopez, who did nothing for labor, to run against Ellison. Perez won, but by the narrowest margin in history – basically it is the super delegate types who voted. He tried to make peace by naming Ellison a co-chair, but the entire affair hasn’t played very well with the real left of the party – the Bernie wing – which wants the party to break ranks with its corporate money wing which supported Hillary.
There also happens to be a left to the left of the party of varying degrees of leftism and there is talk about the need to leave the Ed Notes Online: School Scope: War in the Democratic Party as Bernie Popularity Soars: