The 3 Month Jill Stein Challenge

By Marc Bochner

The long and short of it. Don’t give up on the revolution in the first week of the general election. Since nobody will be asking for your actual vote until November you have 3 months to fight for what you believe in before you have to settle on your final decision… and no matter what you decide can feel good that you did everything you could or needed to do.

We are asking Berners, millennials, Independents, progressives and Blue Collar workers to commit to 3 months of fighting for integrity, to restore democracy and faith in democracy, for a progressive agenda, to fix our government and win it back for the people from the rich and powerful. Committing to fight for the health of our planet and for a better quality of life for the poor. Determined to fight for a power structure that treats everybody equally, whether you are rich or poor, black, white, latin, asian, christian, muslim, jewish, young, old, gay, straight, disabled, etc.

Again nobody is going to ask for your vote til November, so there is no downside, only the potential for a very big upside. If you are so inclined to do so many of your fellow Berners are switching over to Jill Stein to continue the revolution. She has essentially the same agenda as Bernie Sanders and has the consistency of having fought for those same issues for a long time. Heck Nina Turner is even on her short list for running mates.

Remember if you take the challenge your Hillary supporting friends or family (enthusiastic or reluctant) will give you a hard time about throwing away your vote. They will tell you that you’re trying to elect Trump. They will try to shame you and for some of us they will call it white privilege that we would dare risk a Donald Trump Presidency. Let me be clear nobody is defending Trump here, he is a buffoon and a blow hard, he says stupid and hateful things seemingly daily and doesn’t seem to understand how government or even society works. But that’s not a concern for the 3 month challenge where again at the end of 3 months you are free to vote for anybody on the ballot and do so without judgement.

At the end of the 3 month challenge if Jill Stein is still way behind and cant win AND you panic, then go ahead and vote for whoever you think is the lesser evil between Hillary and Trump. But first give us 3 months to see if we can pick up where the revolution left off. Pick up a movement that brought Bernie from 3% in the polls, in the midst of a rigged primary and a compromised media to became the most popular politician in Washington.

He got there with an unusual coalition of young and Independent voters who had been disenfranchised and checked out of the electoral process, progressive voters who have been bullied and ignored in their own party for decades, and blue collar workers many of whom had been so crushed by the Clinton’s career long obsession (along with their neoconservative and neoliberal friends) with the job outsourcing Free Trade agreements, they left the party and many landed in the republican party or even the tea party. Well all those groups are still looking for a home. Neither Hillary nor Trump speaks to any of those groups or any of their/our issues with credibility. Quite the opposite with both Hillary and Trump seemingly being different representations of everything wrong in this country, the lying corrupt corporatist politician and the greedy businessman who has no interest in helping people or the country only lining his and his friends pockets while living out his fantasy of being important. If that coalition is still ready to fight, that coalition is big enough to change the world. Big enough to do what everyone reminds you can’t be done… win from outside the corrupt and failed two party system

The Baby Boomer narrative of wasted votes on 3rd party candidates was only set in stone when the boomers had the numbers to outvote everyone. They don’t any more. Our revolution has the numbers to overwhelm both parties, especially in a year in which they have nominated the two most unpopular and least trusted candidates in perhaps our nation’s history. Independent voters were already bigger than both the democrat and republican parties combined and getting bigger with #DemExit and Trump shame on the right. But the pundits will remind you Independents don’t vote. Bernie woke up that sleeping Giant though. He got people engaged for the first time ever or reengaged for the first time in a long time. He may have tapped out of the fight for the white house, but he taught us before he did that we have the power when we stand together, we should never compromise our integrity and never settle for the lesser of two evils. He taught us everything to move on without him (and then reach back for him and make him the most powerful man in congress).

We have 3 months to decide if we can catch lightning in a bottle again with Jill Stein and perhaps Nina Turner at her side . If not tap out, hold your nose and place your panic vote. But first commit to giving it 3 months. 3 months to get the Green Party on the ballot in every winnable state (They are well on their way to doing just that). 3 months to get Jill Stein over 15% and  in the debates where she can keep our progressive ideas on the table and be a voice of reason while the two monkeys throw poo at each other convincing you to fear their opponent. In a Jill Stein administration Bernie will be one of the most powerful men in government, In a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration they will send him back to the kids table and punish him for challenging the power structure. Give it 3 months to grow the notion of 3rd party candidates who can win moving forward.

You have 3 months to fight for real change. And nobody will shame you no matter what choice you make in the voting booth after 3 months of fighting for change and keeping our agenda alive. You will let it be known we will fight for every one of those issues after the election is over no matter who wins.

Give us 3 months to change everything and if we fall short heading into election day and have no chance to win, every single one of you are free to place your panic vote for whichever America scares you least Hillary or Trump. Its worth 3 more months isnt it?




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History confirms you get big change when you aim high, not when you settle for incrementalism

Big ideas vs a small pragmatic approach

TIme and again we hear people say I like Bernie, but I don’t think he can get his ideas through congress. That idea didn’t accidentally end up in people’s thinking, it was put there by the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media. On the surface it sounds like a reasonable position. But is the small pragmatic approach of Clinton really the best way forward with an obstructionist congress?

In its current make up neither candidate is going to get their agenda through this congress. I think we know this from what we have seen with the Obama agenda. But Obama’s approach has been a slow pragmatic one and about the only things getting done after the first two years when he had a democratic majority in both houses of congress have been done almost exclusively with temporary executive orders. A tool that will be available to both Clinton and Sanders if they need to push through obstruction. But who will fight harder when they bring it back to the people and push again later? On record its clear that Sanders has been the one with the tenacity to fight for whats right even when its not popular and be ahead of public opinion.

So back to the incremental pragmatic approach, The question begs that if slow incremental is getting nothing through this congress how will bold ideas get through? This answer is actually that the bold approach will get more done and for two big reasons. 1) The excitement generated by real change will drive the kind of voter turnout that will flip the congress into a more progressive one. 2) A bold popular leader can go back to the American people, better define the reasons for the problems they face and get them to stand up to their elected officials holding them accountable for their votes or promising to vote them out next election cycle. 

Congress presently is corrupted and broken. Big ideas or small ideas will both be blocked by this corporatist congress who represent their donors not their constituents. By the same token either will get their ideas passed by a progressive populist congress.. If that’s the case if either can get their ideas through a more progressive congress, then wouldn’t it be better to aim higher and get things that really make a difference? FDR had huge ideas that nobody thought he could ever get done coming out of the great depression… but first he flipped the congress and then he reshaped our country for the better for generations with his huge ideas of regulating banking, taking care of the American workers, creating social safety nets, access to healthcare and free education, building the nation’s infrastructure, etc… ideas that created a strong vibrant middle class, a much higher quality of life and economic stability.

So that brings us to Bernie vs Hillary.

Bernie has the big bold ideas and Hillary has the small what she calls pragmatic ideas. Now we need to ask, which one of them can flip the congress. As was touched on briefly earlier, the one who can energize and expand the base... bring in more people, more voices. The democrats win when there is a large voter turnout and they lose when there is a small voter turnout.

Who can drive the biggest base of voters?

Bernie has been bringing out new voters, voters that have previously disengaged from voting, independent voters and even some disgruntled republican voters. When you add those to the dependable establishment democratic voters that's when you win. By contrast exit polling confirms everytime that Hillary is only getting the establishment votes and all new voters are lined up behind and deeply enthusiastic about Bernie and his vision. Even the establishment democrats who lined up early benind her because of familiarity or the idea that she is more likely to win have been more and more taking a closer look at Bernie and liking what they see. Its a safe bet the establishment voters will show up to vote against the GOP with either of them, but the young and independent voters who dont have a great record of showing up have been clear they wont show up for her. So if the establishment only is for her, that will result in a small turnout, which puts both the white house and down ballot congressional and state races at risk of going republican. Bernie alone seems to be the one who can drive the excitement of the young and independent voters to show up and combine with the establishment democrats for a larger voter base that gives the Democrats the big turnout they need to win more down ballot races and flip both houses of congress and races on the state level. RIght now polling shows

This assertion bears out as it shows Bernie beating Trump by as much as 20%. Statisticians will tell you that if he wins by that much, his coat tails will be long enough to indeed flip both houses of congress to the progressive one he can work with… if not in the first two years, likely within an election cycle or two if he keeps the revolution alive. We saw this play out with Obama flipping a bunch of down ballot seats when he drove the big turnout, but then losing them when he failed to bring his base back out in mid term elections… he also had shorter coat tails as his wins were 7% over McCain and 4% over Romney, nowhere near the double digit leads Sanders shows over both Trump and Cruz. Hillary by contrast shows much smaller margins against Trump and loses to Cruz and Kasich in some polling. That difference is explained entirely by the expansion of the electorate under Sanders and the shrinking demographics under Clinton.

Keeping the electorate engaged

It’s the populist candidates who not only expand but also engage the electorate. Again we saw this with Obama. In 08, he kinda ran a combination populist/ mainstream corporatist strategy. He got people engaged and took huge money from corporate interests and overwhelmed everyone with money and charisma. But how this played out when he got in is he was accountable to both. He had promised to bring change on a number of issues, but he was accountable to both the people and the corporate masters and needed to find a balance between the two. What this meant is that he would push for change, but not big bold change, only small incremental change that would give the people something of what they wanted, but not so much that it upset the corporate masters who had spent the previous 30 years buying our government and rigging the system. On issue after issue it seemed the people got something, but not enough to make a big difference in their lives. And this was with a democratic majority in both houses of congress.

Even on his biggest boldest accomplishment (Obamacare), we got a recycled republican plan with a few tweeks. We didn’t get universal healthcare wanted by most progressives, we didn’t even get the compromise of the public option.The health insurance industry was kept in charge of our healthcare and with their hands in the till. Even the drug companies got a sweetheart deal of disallowing negotiation on drug prices. All of the real bold change we voted for wasn’t blocked by the republicans yet, it was taken off the table and watered down by the corporatists democrats who were protecting their big money donors. Obama, Pelosi and Reid took the bold ideas off the table before negotiations even began. Then after two years of getting little done on big issues and Obamacare the closest thing they got to bold change not implemented yet the Obama coalition unplugged and the republicans took the House and state houses all over the country.

So pragmatism in effect got less done and the young voters, independent voters and progressive voters who had been won with big vision unplugged and handed control off from the corporately owned democrats to the corporately owned republicans. The biggest difference between them was social issues, but in the areas of a rigged economy, deregulation of both the economy and environmental protection and taxation inequality they were on the same page. They called it pragmatism or incremental change, but what we really had was two parties owned by the same interests on those issues who didn’t try for more, because they both wanted the same things.

So with young, independent and progressive voters who had so much hope of change now disengaged we saw the destructive forces of the other side rear its ugly head on social issues. Woman’s issues, gay issues, criminal and social justice issues were under attack. Voting rights were threatened and unions/ worker rights came under attack. And this didn’t happen because Obama over reached, it happened because he aimed low and lost his coalition, his revolution if you will.

FDR got it right

FDR came in right after the great depression. Congress was corrupt and obstructionist. Corporations had become too powerful and had crushed both entrepreneurialism and workers rights/ income. The country reeled as the rich got richer and nobody else had any money to spend. Sound familiar?

FDR didn’t come in pushing for incremental change. He pushed for bold action.He led the United states during a time of worldwide economic depression and war. His program for relief, recovery and reform known as the New Deal, involved great expansion of the role of the federal government in economy. He pushed for and got Massive regulation on banking and wall street (Glass Steagall, Securities Act of 1933 and FDIC). He pushed for social safety nets that would uplift and support the poor, unemployed, sick and elderly. He emboldened the socialist labor union movement and together and got a minimum wage as well as 40 hour work week. During a time of massive unemployment and underemployment he created jobs building the nation’s infrastructure that held for generations as the envy of the world. He created programs to aid family farmers and migrant workers. He provided free education up to high school to sustain the economy with an educated workforce. Together not only did his policies lift us out of the great depression, but also created policies that kept our economy safe for generations and built a big vibrant middle class and a protected working class.

Bernie Sanders plan borrows directly from the FDR playbook

Let me repeat that, Bernie Sanders big bold change borrows directly from the FDR playbook… It create jobs with infrastructure repair. Expands education from free public schooling through high school to through public college to keep up with the newer high tech economies. He is supporting labor unions and pushing for a living wage with a $15 minimum wage which would naturally drive wage increases many rungs up the ladder. He wants to bring back Glass Steagall and other wall street and banking regulations to unrig the economy. Ask the wealthy and corporations who have stopped paying their fair share of taxes to start paying them again by closing down tax loopholes, tax havens and subsidies the wealthy have used to hide income from taxation. He has plans to not only protect social security and other social safety nets, but to expand them in times of need. He wants to guarantee health care to all Americans the way most of the industrialized world has already done for their citizens and in so doing bring down the cost of healthcare and its drag not only on the family budgets but on the economy as a whole.

History supports big bold change

His plans are bold but also realistic. Everyone told FDR he was over reaching and would never get his plans implemented. But as he did, the people rallied behind him and his revolution saw him re elected 4 times while sweeping in a progressive congress and judiciary behind him. It changed our country for the better for generations. Throughout history we see virtually all real change coming from people with a big vision who aim high.

So on the question of small pragmatic incremental change vs big bold vision I think history has been clear with FDR, Martin Luther King, the Labor Union movement, JFK and LBJ that when you push for big change that’s when you get it. When you aim low, you open the door for the other side to take it all away.

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An Open Letter Response to Senator Barbara Boxer

Senator Boxer, In response to your open letter asking Senator Sanders to apologize to Hillary I have to take you to task. You are requesting the apology of the wrong person. 

I have been a HUGE supporter and advocate for you over the years. As I watched the Democratic party get dragged by third way/ corporatist democrats farther and farther from the policies of the left, I always knew we had Barbara Boxer still fighting for the left. Here in California I joked well at least we have one Senator who understands what it means to be a democrat and begged anyone to primary Diane Feinstein who seemed to be a republican on far too many issues.

But alas just as we are set to lose your leadership to retirement, have old school democrats also lost you to the tragedy of what the democratic party has become? A party that represents free trade, private prisons, big oil, big pharma, GMOs, punishment society and forever the risk of having our party team with the 1% in the rigging of our economy, the courts and deregulation? That's right only one of these two candidates has spent her career with the "D" next to her name. But its the one with the "I" next to his who has always remembered what the Democratic party represents.

Senator Sanders owes nobody an apology. But the same can not be said of his opponent who has spent months pandering and pretending to represent issues she has fought against for decades, positions nobody on the left feels she will still be representing after the primaries. And she has spent months lying about and smearing Senator Sanders on his record. On issues he has fought for and she has spent a career fighting against or being complicit in the republicans fight against.

It is Secretary Clinton who owes Senator Sanders and us all an apology. She can’t have it both ways... she can’t yell about the party as she destroys it from within. She can’t complain about tone, when all the negative tone and hypocrisy is coming from her. Senator Sanders finally responded not only to her smears and lies, but also to her commitment to keep smearing and to throw the kitchen sink at him just to win. I remember the PUMAs (Party Unity My Ass) of 08, where her supporters felt it more important to fight for her and not for issues. They did so not on their own, but following her lead.

I am profoundly disappointed in your support of the "D" over the party ideals. And profoundly disappointed that you would side with one of the architects for the theft of the people's party over the man who has woken up the electorate to the fact that they have lost both parties to the same corporate masters.

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You can save your Hillary math, Bernie is really the one in the drivers seat and they know it

Another Progressives Rant

The mainstream media and our Hillary supporting friends like to constantly remind us that that no matter what Bernie does from here, he can’t catch Hillary in delegates. The pundits love going to their computer maps on TV and showing us that even if Bernie wins the rest of the states 55 to 45 he still won’t catch her in earned delegates. Lets just be honest, they are trying to convince you to give up so you won't vote or will give your vote to the establishment.

But what they aren’t telling you is that neither candidate is on a path to win the minimum number of earned delegates needed to win the nomination. That both will need super delegate support to secure the magic number on earned delegates alone. And that super delegates wont actually be voting until the convention when all primary and caucus voting is done. At that point they as super delegates are tasked with selecting the candidate who will be the best candidate for the party to win not only the white house but also down ballot races in the general election.

The following breakdown will show why this is still anybody's race to win and why Bernie not Hillary actually has the inside track at the nomination.

Bernie is winning blue and purple states, Hillary won red states

So let’s look at the map. Hillary so far has done very very well in the deep red southern states (solidly republican). These states all ran early in the primaries and she ran up a big delegate lead largely because of these conservative states. She did this at a time when few people knew who Senator Sanders even was, let alone his record or what he was advocating for. In the south they don’t generally look for change, so they stuck with who they were comfortable with and that was Hillary. Its not an accident that the red states run early, having conservative states vote before the challengers are known gives a huge advantage to the establishment candidate who is generally the best known candidate going in.

By contrast Bernie is doing very well in well in blue (solidly democratic) and purple (swing) states which will be critical to a win in the general election. The vast majority of the remaining states are democratic leaning or swing states and Bernie is surging hard in all of them. He is even taking a national lead in the polls.

Bernie expands the base.

Who supports who? Well few will argue that Hillary has broad appeal with the Democratic base and that Bernie has overwhelming popularity with the young and Independent voters. How this plays out going into a general election is that both can count on the establishment vote who are just as concerned with with who they are voting against as they are about who they are voting for… they vote for the D in part because they fear the GOP.

But only Bernie Sanders can expand the base beyond the establishment democrats. History shows that the Democrats win when they have a large voter turnout and lose when it’s a small voter turnout. Obama turned out the young and independent voters in Presidential years and the democrats won up and down the ballot. But in midterm elections the expanded base stayed home and the democrats lost. Bernie has been clear throughout the campaign that for his revolution to be successful he needs a big voter turnout and he needs that support not just for him, but down ballot to give him a congress and state houses he can work with to pursue his bold agenda. Those young and independent voters who will make the difference between wins and losses up and down the ballot have been clear that not just any blue will do, they want their votes to be earned. They have also been clear that they will not vote for Hillary. So super delegates if paying attention have been put on notice that the broad base they need to win back the congress and at the state levels likely won't show up unless Bernie is the nominee.

Last point about the young and independent voters. They are not only critical to winning this election, but they are in fact critical to the very future of the party.

Bernie has the momentum

Again back to the math the pundits keep pushing. They gleefully point out that if Bernie wins the rest of the states by less than 57% (some use even larger numbers) that he wont catch Hillary. But in this argument they often concede that Bernie is likely to win a lot of the remaining states (which as was pointed out earlier are mostly blue and purple states). So following this scenario, if Hillary keeps losing even if she keeps them to single digit losses, she will be asking the party to support the candidate who has lost almost all the states for the three months leading into the general election and did so with all the media and party support. Sports fans back me up on this… how many sports teams that build a big lead early in the season and back into the playoffs clinging to that lead with a bunch of late losses go on to win championships? Not many. A politician on a losing streak with lots of negative stories of their late collapse and on the issues they are losing on is badly damaged going into the general election and even the party and its super delegates know it.

Super Delegates are there to protect the party, not prop up a loser

Since neither is on track to win the nomination without super delegate help and most believe the earned delegate count will be close. That puts the power of who gets the nomination on the super delegates. Before we even knew who was running a majority of the super delegates endorsed Hillary. But as was mentioned earlier, they don’t actually cast that vote til the convention. In fact hundreds of them still haven’t committed to either candidate despite the narrative being pushed by the mainstream media. So they all (those who have endorsed and those who have yet to endorse) have the entire primary process to evolve. They in theory are there to do what’s best for the party and the party was clear who it liked a year ago. But the race and the landscape is changing rapidly. The guy who wasn’t even in the race yet or was polling at 3% when most made their endorsements now has turned this into a completely different race than most were expecting. He is not an after thought, he is winning the people and poised to win most of the states critical to the democrats.

Before Debbie Wasserman Schultz redefined the role of super delegates as to stop grassroots movements, they were promoted as a way to protect the best interests of the party. We were further told that they would not ignore the will of the voters. What the party insiders believed to be in the best interest of the party a year ago, is looking less and less likely to still be what’s in the best interest of the party. Bernie doesn’t need all the super delegates, he just needs enough to reach the magic number. And let’s face it, the hundreds of super delegates who have yet to choose sides have already made a statement by holding off on endorsing Hillary even when the pressure was intense to do so.

Even the polling has changed

Hillary was leading in the national polls by 70 points when she got most of her endorsements. And as she swept through the southern states she still held high double digit national polling leads. But the little known Senator from Vermont is now better known and people like what they see and hear. He has won 8 of the last 9 contests all by varying degrees of a landslide. He is surging in every remaining state and has taken a 2% lead on Hillary nationally. What makes these numbers more dire for Clinton is that he has a small lead and the states that she used to build her big lead are still in that number. Every race, even the ones he has lost showed virtually all young and independent voters were with him (generally both groups by a staggering number hovering around 80%).

Early in the campaign we only got polling about Hillary or even Biden in head to head match ups against the republicans and Hillary never really looked that good in those. In time she started looking better taking a lead on most of them although often within the margin of error and in some instances we see her losing. But then pollsters started including Bernie in those match up polls and Bernie was beating everyone even with landslide numbers against Trump and dominant wins against Cruz. Experts have projected that if he beats Trump by the margins in those polls the Democrats will not only win back the Senate, but may also win back the house. So want to know how you get big bold change with a congress that is hellbent on obstruction? Simple you flip the congress and shame those who don’t get purged into listening to the voters or get purged in the next election cycle.

Forget the math, who wants to win?

The dynamics are changing If Bernie continues to run the table in the 2nd half as many expect he will. He is surging big time in every remaining state so that scenario is looking likely. more and more likely. And this is before he got a tacit endorsement on his moral economy from the Pope. The race has shown us that he moves votes from her to him and energizes the base in every state once he gets there to campaign. People respond to him in a way nobody was expecting. The more they see and hear him, the more they like. So moving forward nearly everything about his race has changed since many of the super delegates endorsed Hillary and those trend lines are still going in his direction. By the convention if he keeps winning, Bernie will have most of the blue and purple states, he will have the larger base of voters and donors, he will have the momentum, enthusiasm and the longest coat tails down ballot.

Bernie is the safer choice for this election and for the future of the party. Super delegates are there to protect the party. Only the most stubborn figure to decide to stick with Hillary and blow up their party just to prove they can fend off a grassroots movement for the soul of the party. If Bernie keeps winning regardless of the percentages, he is in the drivers seat not her and their delegate math arguments are going to keep getting harder and harder to make.

Dirty campaigning - Step by step how the rig is in and how they get away with it.

A Progressives Rant Part 2...

The tricks they use are predictable, reusable and somehow seem to work virtually every time. Step one, the party insiders pick their chosen candidate, the party donors give that candidate a bunch of money and then they start the buzz in the media about them being the front runner, most qualified, most electable or some other version of vote for him or her. The media is then complicit and frames the conversation about that one and the others as the front runner and the challengers.  But the media doesn’t stop there, they give virtually all the air time to that candidate and whenever they talk about the others, they frame it through the lens of how the challengers are affecting the leader. For example when they say Bernie is moving Hillary to the left on the issues, or saying he is making her a stronger general election candidate. Again with the assumption is that their chosen one will be the winner and the only role of the others is to affect him or her.

Now those are the old school tricks, but from there the games have changed a bit to keep up with technology and changes in election law. With Citizens United they now have super PACs which take huge sums of money from corporations and the super wealthy, trying to scare the challengers out of the race. Not only the number, but the knowledge that corporately funded Super PACs almost exclusively use their money for smear campaigns. The Democrats throw in a bonus challenge for the rest of the field, as they award almost 20% of the delegates to party insiders, elected officials and corporate lobbyists known as super delegates who don’t have anybody telling them who to vote for except the pressures of towing the party line. In the words of the DNC chair, these are in place to prevent a grassroots challenger from winning the nomination. (seriously she admitted that the rig is in). From here the parties start pressuring all elected officials in their party to endorse their chosen candidate to create the illusion that everyone is in agreement that they like the front runner and don’t like the challengers. Finally they position the primaries in a way where the more status quo states run early and the more progressive or unpredictable states run later so that the establishment status quo candidate will get all the momentum up front and they can start the conversation about how the math doesn’t work for anyone else. Naturally this last part is to put out any spark the supporters of the challengers might have and get them to just give up, disengage and accept the front runner.

From here the dirty campaigning shifts over to the candidates. With all the party, money and media attention on them, the front runners start by ignoring their challengers and wait to see if any starts to break from the pack. Whichever does becomes the target of their lies, smears, false narratives and evolutions (they start taking over the challengers most popular issues and pretend that they were the champion of those issues all along) and sending their surrogate attack dogs out to spread lies.

Since the media mostly controls people who are less tech savvy or in less tech savvy parts of the country like the deep red south, traditional media still frames all the issues and accepted realities for them and the rig is in place. If you are the chosen one, again the media tells everyone you are, they talk about why the others can’t win and then in the debates the front runner is served up mostly softballs or given an opportunity to explain their sensitive issues, while the challengers are given more gotcha questions, cut off in the middle of responses and reminded constantly that they are chasing and won’t win. No matter who wins the debate, the media will tell you it was the front runner so long as they didn’t do anything to sabotage their own campaign.

But with younger, more tech savvy voters they have learned to turn to the internet and social media for more of their information. Keeping with technology, campaigns have learned to manipulate this as well… they purchase likes on Facebook and Twitter to create the illusion that people love them and can’t wait to hear everything they are doing. They hire trolls who go online to pick fights with their challengers supporters or pretending to be a supporter of their challenger and engage in bad behavior to embarrass the candidate. Finally they buy fake news pages run by their supporters, super PAC or surrogates who create fake news stories either attacking their opponent, supporting the candidate or simply to spread lies, smears and false narratives. These are then read by their supporters and shared on social media to reinforce these lies and create the illusion that somehow they are valid regardless of how absurd they may sound to those in the know… they understand that most voters don’t really know the issues and don’t really know the record of the candidates, so they are like putty to be molded however the candidate chooses to mold them, rewriting both their record and that of their opponents.

So let’s see how that all plays in this race. I am a progressive democrat, so going to focus on how it manifested in the democratic race.

Hillary is the chosen one. She enters the race with huge sums of money in both her campaign and her Super PACs. The party gets virtually every elected official to endorse her before all the candidates had even gotten into the race. The media starts out talking about how much money and name recognition she has and how it’s her turn.

The debates begin and Bernie starts getting very popular and gaining in the polls on outsider populist issues. So Hillary starts to evolve. She has a record of free trade bragging about NAFTA, permanent free trade relations with China and calls TPP the gold standard of trade agreements, but suddenly evolves saying she has always been against them. She is for fracking, offshore drilling and supported keystone XL pipeline, but says she is the environmental candidate and always has been. She applauded the success of the ‘94 crime bill and how it took super predators and other street thugs off the streets, has private prison lobbyists fundraising for her campaign, but now claims to be against mass incarceration and the private prisons, pretending to care about poor communities and communities of color who have been devastated by the crime bill. Bill deregulates wall street, takes down Glass Steagall regulations which kept our economy safe since the great depression. Banks, insurance companies and traders merge creating too big to fail companies, then engage in super risky speculative and dishonest activities all of which were illegal under Glass Steagall and crashed the economy. Bill and Hillary make millions from these companies in speaker fees, donations to their much maligned foundation and donations to her campaign… then she tries to convince us that she is the one who is tough on wall street and the champion for for the poor and middle class, even ripping off Bernie’s stump speech word for word on a rigged economy and top 1% (even though they are her primary funders of her family and campaign)

She does all the aforementioned internet and social media dirty tricks, the trolling, buying likes and trending, has her surrogates buy fake news sites (Daily Newsbin and Blue Nation Review) to smear her opponents and to create false narratives about her inevitability and electability. The media gives all TV coverage to her, dismisses and ignores her opponents while it belittles her opponents supporters telling them from day one to give up and keep telling them to give up until they finally do. TV pundits talk about her as if she has already won and the challengers as if they were little more than obstacles she has to get past so get out of the way so she can focus on the general election. Formerly respected papers like NY Times and Washington Post act like the corporatist democrats version of FOX news and spread propaganda to push the chosen one and discourage the supporters of her opponents.

So up to here I have mostly covered how the system comes pre rigged for the party chosen one. But remember we are talking about the Clintons, the dirtiest campaigners in my lifetime… the ones who created or perfected much of the rigging process. But beyond stealing every popular issue and pretending to have evolved (Bill did the exact same thing to Jerry Brown), she is also the queen of the smear. She has lied not just about her own record, but blatantly lies about her opponents as well. She cherry picked big bills which had dozens if not hundreds of provisions to attack Bernie on the poison pills within the bill… She used this completely disingenuous methodology to somehow frame big labors biggest champion as flip flopping on labor issues and opposing the auto bailout. She used similar lies and cherry picking to frame him as a gun nut who hates poor people… she basically tried to pin all of her conservative, greedy and selfish tendencies, votes and speeches in her record on Bernie. Even if she doesn’t sell the it’s not me it’s him, she at least wants to sell the idea that it’s not just me.

So with all of this being so predictable and obvious and so easy to prove or disprove it couldn’t possibly work could it? Yes it can and yes it does. It does because people only pay attention for a few months every 4 years. They start off wanting the populist with the great record and the great issues, but eventually let the system convince them that they were wrong… ooops. Oh yeah and give up on hope and settle for what they are told is pragmatism and the illusion of electability.

So when us populists and progressives become so outraged by the lies being spread by the media and on social media, it might have something to do with the fact that we understand what the truth is because we were paying attention between the election cycles, we watched the congressional fights and remember how things actually went down, not how they were rewritten. We know who the champions have been on the issues, who the allies were, who stood silent and who stood in opposition. When Hillary supposedly misspoke about the Reagan’s being champions for the gay community on the issue of AIDS, we weren’t so quick to write it off as a misspeak. We understand she didn’t know because she wasn’t a champion, wasn’t even an ally, we know she was on the wrong side of the issue and that’s why she didn’t know. We know she has been on the wrong side of free trade, of the environment, private prisons, wall street deregulation, racial and criminal justice. We know her record and we know Bernie’s record and yes when we see well intentioned and even intelligent people spreading these lies and false narratives, forwarding factually inacurate smear pieces, we do become outraged and sometimes we snap. We can't understand how anyone can believe these often times not even well crafted lies, that logic let alone facts should discredit. 

And worse yet, we know that we are getting the government that the ill informed and ignorant deserve, not the one we deserve. That's what this revolution is about... not falling for it anymore, taking back our government. Never give up and never settle again. Continue to engage, phone bank, donate, canvass and keep your friends and family engaged. The establishment is counting on us giving up and letting them win... Every win we get takes us one step closer to exposing the lie and breaking the two party system that has stolen our democracy. Fight On! This is the closest we have been to winning back our democracy in generations.

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They are counting on you to give up on Bernie, its the main play by Clinton as we head into mostly Bernie friendly states and more than half the delegates still in play

Giving up is what they want you to do. It’s what they have been trying to get you to do since before the voting even started… They said if Bernie didn’t win both New Hampshire and Iowa that it was over… well with them flipping delegates from Hillary to Bernie in Iowa (As most of us suspected when they tried to convince us she won), it turns out it appears Bernie did win both Iowa and New Hampshire. (update, one district resolved in moving delegates from Hillary to Bernie, another district is still unresolved but looking at flipping another one from Hillary to Bernie -http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/03/13/1500388/-Sanders-just-gained-about-7-statewide-delegates-in-Polk-County-Iowa-Clinton-lost-7-too-Won-Iowa) 

Next when She won Nevada they said it’s over. But that also turned out not to be true… She went on to run the table on southern red states and they told us the math didn’t work, yet most of the country hadn’t voted yet. Super Tuesday she won the South Bernie won nearly everywhere else… but again they repeated it’s over.

Time and again we watch all the pundits include the super delegates into the count to create the illusion that she is way more popular than she is and that her lead is insurmountable. But Bernie kept reminding us is what they and every media outlet ignored was that the polling showed all her strong states come early, Bernie leads in polling in nearly every remaining state. Many of those leads by yuge margins.

So here we are about to enter the 2nd half. They know they need to discourage us and convince us that the math doesn’t work or Bernie will start rattling off win after win. They are playing prevent D and trying can get us to give up and not show up if she is to maintain her lead.

But wait, the two biggest states haven’t even voted yet with New York and California. In fact 9 contests left to run before New York and Bernie leads in polling in all of them. So if we stay engaged, keep volunteering, keep donating and keep talking about Bernie/ getting our friends to vote we can build momentum and run the table going into New York. with over 2000 delegates yet to be awarded the math does still work. Bernie doesn't even need the margins she has won by so far.

Nobody said the revolution would be easy. Nobody said they wouldn’t ignore us, dismiss us, lie to us, smear Bernie and create false narratives. We knew that they would play it dirty, this is the DNC led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was the co chair of Hillary’s losing 08 campaign. The same woman who limited debate and threatened to punish anyone who didn’t play by her hide the challengers from the voters strategy. When asked about the undemocratic nature of Super Delegates the DNC chair said they were in place to prevent a grassroots movement from rising up to win the nomination. Imagine that the chair of the people’s party telling us they put a system in place specifically to deny a populist candidate of the people from defeating the establishments choice.

But her rigging didn’t end there, Elizabeth Warren let the cat out of the bag when they asked why she hadn’t endorsed Hillary by saying something to the effect of If I was going to endorse her, I would have when the party was forcing every member of congress to do so. Keith Ellison said he was told there would be consequences to endorsing Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard was told that it would be career suicide to endorse Bernie.

Then there is the order the states run. It was like the Hillary campaign played the whole first half with home field advantage, downhill and with the wind at her back. The media and the party both proclaiming the race over time and again, while belittling Sanders supporters… why won’t we give up? Don’t we know that a people’s movement can’t win? There is a corrupt media in place to keep reminding us of that and turning the focus right back to their pet candidate.

But we haven’t given up. They knew they needed to make a statement on the two super Tuesdays, because the math worked against them from that point on. They needed to demoralize us. They needed to put us away by then. But they haven’t. In one blue after purple state after the next we surged and outperformed polling which showed 20-30 point leads for Clinton, only to win them big or make many of others close. Sanders did not let her run up the score enough in the first half to lock us out in the 2nd, not even close.

So here we are starting the 2nd half. Bernie is now playing on home turf, downhill with the wind at his back. Not only does he lead in nearly every remaining state poll, but he leads many of them by yuge margins. They are counting on us believing their lie that it’s over or hoping to scare us into supporting her to stop the even worse scenario of a President Trump. Sure a President Trump is a scary prospect. But to stop worst case scenario do we really have to settle for lesser of two evils? Why can’t we fight for a transformative candidate of honesty, compassion, experience and a truly bold progressive vision? Especially when every matrix shows that candidate, Bernie Sanders as the strongest general election candidate. Bernie out polls her in every head to head match up with Trump, Cruz and Kasich. He also has a much larger base of voters which goes beyond establishment democrats and includes yuge numbers of young and Independent voters who have sworn they will only vote for him.

The revolution is real, it’s still here and the path is still viable. Super delegates won’t risk stealing the nomination and blowing up the whole party. They will vote for whoever wins the earned delegates and popular vote, they always do. They will back whoever can help the party not only hold the white house but also win back the Senate and make big gains in the House and state houses.

Besides won’t the victory be sweeter with a buzzer beater, a walk off hit, a shootout win or field goal as the clock runs out? Stay engaged, we can do this. The biggest play they have left is convincing you to give up.