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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Democratic Presidential Candidate, speaks to thousands of supporters during a rally at the Boston Common on Saturday, February 29, 2020 in Boston, MA. (Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
'In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See': The 2020 Bernie Campaign Represents a Fight That Must Continue
Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign—and the grassroots energy behind it—to melt away. That's not going to happen.
Mar 11, 2020
"In a dark time," poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "the eye begins to see."
No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we're up against:
*A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins.
*A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted facade.
*Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy.
On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a "news" article about Sanders.
Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a "distortion of history."
Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn't surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee.
Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign--and the grassroots energy behind it--to melt away. That's not going to happen.
Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul--as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that's saying something.)
The chances of Bernie winning the nomination have sharply diminished, but it's still possible. And no matter what: movements for basic social change and democracy will vitally persist with long-term struggles to wrest power out of the hands of oligarchs and their functionaries.
Candidates who rushed to endorse Biden after his big victory in South Carolina--Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker--each personify, in their own way, what's so corrosive about standard-issue Democratic Party leaders. Their backgrounds and personalities vary widely, but they share a political space of opportunism and ultra-coziness with corporate power. (Meanwhile, during the crucial aftermath of her withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren shed new light on her political character when she decided not to endorse Sanders.)
The antidote to anti-democratic poisons has nothing to do with cynicism, passivity or defeatism. The solutions will come from realism, activism and ongoing insistence that a better world is possible--if we're willing to keep fighting for it.
FINAL DAY! This is urgent.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just hours left in our Spring Campaign, we're still falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.
"In a dark time," poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "the eye begins to see."
No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we're up against:
*A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins.
*A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted facade.
*Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy.
On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a "news" article about Sanders.
Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a "distortion of history."
Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn't surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee.
Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign--and the grassroots energy behind it--to melt away. That's not going to happen.
Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul--as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that's saying something.)
The chances of Bernie winning the nomination have sharply diminished, but it's still possible. And no matter what: movements for basic social change and democracy will vitally persist with long-term struggles to wrest power out of the hands of oligarchs and their functionaries.
Candidates who rushed to endorse Biden after his big victory in South Carolina--Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker--each personify, in their own way, what's so corrosive about standard-issue Democratic Party leaders. Their backgrounds and personalities vary widely, but they share a political space of opportunism and ultra-coziness with corporate power. (Meanwhile, during the crucial aftermath of her withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren shed new light on her political character when she decided not to endorse Sanders.)
The antidote to anti-democratic poisons has nothing to do with cynicism, passivity or defeatism. The solutions will come from realism, activism and ongoing insistence that a better world is possible--if we're willing to keep fighting for it.
Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.
"In a dark time," poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "the eye begins to see."
No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we're up against:
*A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins.
*A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted facade.
*Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy.
On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a "news" article about Sanders.
Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a "distortion of history."
Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn't surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee.
Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign--and the grassroots energy behind it--to melt away. That's not going to happen.
Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul--as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that's saying something.)
The chances of Bernie winning the nomination have sharply diminished, but it's still possible. And no matter what: movements for basic social change and democracy will vitally persist with long-term struggles to wrest power out of the hands of oligarchs and their functionaries.
Candidates who rushed to endorse Biden after his big victory in South Carolina--Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker--each personify, in their own way, what's so corrosive about standard-issue Democratic Party leaders. Their backgrounds and personalities vary widely, but they share a political space of opportunism and ultra-coziness with corporate power. (Meanwhile, during the crucial aftermath of her withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren shed new light on her political character when she decided not to endorse Sanders.)
The antidote to anti-democratic poisons has nothing to do with cynicism, passivity or defeatism. The solutions will come from realism, activism and ongoing insistence that a better world is possible--if we're willing to keep fighting for it.
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