Surviving Capitalism (Not) : How the Dems Will Betray 2020 & the Movement for a People's Party

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, June 14, 2019

How the Dems Will Betray 2020 & the Movement for a People's Party

Click here to access a 52:52m video interview conducted by Eleanor Goldfield with Nick Brana, former campaigner for Bernie Sanders posted on Occupy.

Nick Brana, founder of the Movement for a People's Party joins us to lay out the Democratic party's playbook, based on what he's seen on the inside and built in response on the outside.

This interview, in which Goldfield contributes with comments of her own, illustrates the profound naivete by quite well informed activists in the USA today. In this interview Brana tells us what he has learned with the Sanders' campaign in 2016, but in spite of his sociology degree (or maybe because of it) he still exhibits his weaknesses in understanding what in takes to challenge the power of the ruling capitalist class. (What it takes is a revolutionary movement.) It's obvious that his only objective is to reform the capitalist political system of rule, which is based on their ownership and control of the economy, and try to wrest some token advantages for working people.

I am posting this mostly for you to hear what he as learned about the anti-democratic practices of the two parties from his experience in the Sanders' campaign of 2016.

He goes on at length to describe what he as learned about the US election process by the Democratic Party (which he describes as applicable to both significant parties) which generally follows this summary (posted roughly at 18:53m).

Flood races with corporate cash

Knock progressives off the ballot

Feed opposition research to the media

Force candidates to spend three-quarters of the budget on consultants and ads

Recruit rich candidates and changing the rules to get party support

Deny access to crucial voter data

Endorse establishment Democrats

Give hundreds of thousands to Republican candidates

Block independents from voting in primaries

Set party affiliation deadlines months before the primary

What I think is significant is his lack of followup on one remark by an attorney for the Democratic Party in which the latter stated that the "party as a private corporation has the right to pick whomever it wants" (as the Party's candidate). (8:40m) This fact, which is well hidden from the American people, is not even mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on the Democratic Party because it is obviously authored by a capitalist agent--instead it is full of capitalist ideological propaganda.

What we have is the advanced version of capitalist (fake) democracy, but Brana never mentions capitalism because it is a fixed reality for him. Instead he merely mentions that both parties are "rooted in Wall Street" (21:10m) And seconds later he says "you can't even distinguish the Democratic Party and the Republican Party from Wall Street it's an extension of Wall Street" (21:30m).