Campaigns

By Brian BeckerThe Democratic Party establishment and the major capitalist-owned media have been waging a low intensity war against Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign for the past year and it’s not working too well. Now these attacks are escalating. If Sanders continues to succeed, the floodgate of scurrilous and demonizing assaults will open, just as happened to Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. For the past 12 months, almost all of the ruling class centers of power have been arguing that Sanders is a socialist and thus “too left;” that his medical reforms “are too expensive” and will break the bank; that he “can’t beat Trump;” or, in the aftermath of his heart attack, that he isn’t “healthy enough,” which goes along well with the mantra that he is “too old.”  Then at the last debate CNN and W...

by JOHN DAVIS Photograph Source: Bloomberg Philanthropies and Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0 Pete Buttigieg’s declaration of victory in Iowa reminded us that neither sex, sexual orientation or skin color is in any way intrinsic to a person’s judgement – the first gay or the first African-American or the first woman to do this or that may still be mired in the mediocrity of their convictions. Distinctions of identity may remain relevant, but it is the authenticity of their narratives that should concern us. So it is that a grizzled old white guy whose performative chops are limited to pointing and shouting appears to have been bested by a smooth-faced, hyper-articulate young gay man when, in fact, what we are seeing is a profound ideological battle between the attempted des...

by PAUL STREET Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair If, as some observers worry, the United States is undergoing an accelerated transition to full authoritarian class rule in the Donald Trump years, then the events of last week may be considered critical by later historians permitted to chronicle what happened. Another Democratic Gift to “the Most Dangerous Criminal in History” On Wednesday, the mock mistrial of the demented fascist oligarch Trump came to its foreordained conclusion. As Noam Chomsky says in a recent interview, the Senate “trial” was an “exhibition of pure farce.” The president was falsely “exonerated” for committing a clear criminal abuse of power. The stay-in-office verdict came courtesy of the totally Trumpified white-nationalist (neofascist) party in the U...

by MATTHEW STEVENSON This is the fourth of periodic reports from the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, and perhaps beyond, should the republic last until South Carolina and Nevada. This was written as the campaign entered its last days before the vote in New Hampshire. I managed to hear all the active candidates on both sides in the race, except Michael Bloomberg, who is running in his own reality. Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick campaigning in Durham, New Hampshire. Photo by Matthew Stevenson. Even presidential primaries have snow days, and I have had two in New Hampshire. About four inches of snow fell on the first day, and on the second the weather turned to sleet and freezing rain. I know that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” should keep ...

by MATTHEW STEVENSON This is the second part of periodic reports from the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, and perhaps beyond, should the republic last until South Carolina and Nevada. This was written before the voting in Iowa. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign bus in Iowa City. Photo by Matthew Stevenson. With the three horse-persons of the impeachment—Senators Sanders, Warren, and Klobuchar—glued to their desks during last week’s trial, I fanned out across Iowa in search of the second team. One of the myths about the Iowa caucuses is that the state is rural and small, with few urban centers, enabling candidates to meet-and-greet their way through Grange halls to a primary victory. In fact, while Iowa is largely an agricultural state, it also has a population of three m...