Where's the Revolution?
Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller
Tad Devine on the Democratic race:
"It is not a matter of delegate arithmetic"
Only4RM @Only4RM
#Recap It's NOT:
1) States
2) Pledged delegates
3) Superdelegates
4) Popular vote
#WTF is it then, @BernieSanders?
"WTF is it then?" indeed. More precisely, where's the revolution?
Of course, there never really was a real people's revolution, and, maybe labeling the Sanders campaign as one is a bit of opportunistic politics on either side. The entire notion of a decades-long D.C political figure waging a broad brush revolution against the political establishment he's still part and parcel of is an absurdity in the still-ebbing wake of a successful, two-term Democratic presidency.
In fact, the campaign of this newly declared Democrat - who kept the party at arms length throughout his legislative career until he decided he needed our coalition for 'media coverage' for his presidential run - has focused his revolution almost exclusively in this primary against any Democratic figure or institution who dares associate themselves with his rival. The entire campaign has devolved into an anti-Hillary endeavor which appears to be more about electing him at this stage than anything substantive.
What are we to make of the mere handful of Sen. Sanders' peers who have stepped forward to endorse his candidacy? The dearth in support from Congress is amplified by the spectacle of all but a couple of members of the 'Progressive Caucus' he founded when he was a congressman backing his opponent.
What are the American people to make of a campaign which promised a revolution of support, yet, halfway through the primary have seen a sizable majority of the voters who are a legacy of the Obama coalition rally to his rival? How does a campaign which is so far behind in votes and delegates earned get to claim that it's a 'movement?'
With a lot of damn hubris, is how. Here in this forum, the Sanders campaign is presented as some heroic deed; the final chance to save our party from itself. Yet, Sanders campaign and supporters have far overestimated the appetite of Democrats to eat their own in an aftermath of their divide and conquer campaign which has left an astounding number of Democratic and progressive icons by the wayside.
As the campaign, and eventually the candidate himself, put aside Sanders' expressed objections to personal attacks against his Democratic rival, they are left with very little comity available for a rival who's seen republican smears co-opted by Sanders defenders to suit their increasingly cynical campaign.
What a rising majority of our party's voters are actually saying by choosing Hillary Clinton, is they don't see a need to tear down the structure of our Democratic coalition, but have expressed their desire to continue and build upon the gains made in the past 7 years under Barack Obama.
The candidate who emerges victorious at the end of our primary is the person with the legitimate claim to any 'movement' of voters. No amount of the projection that's occurring here and elsewhere from Sanders supporters toward Hillary can diminish the hopes and desires of those who've rallied to her campaign.
The values and principles they hold are not defined by whatever the opposition is projecting on their rival. They are no less 'heroic' than anyone else investing their resources and dreams into this campaign which presents an especially historic prospect in the election of the first-ever woman nominee for president, as well as the potential advancement of the maverick candidate from Vermont. Supporters of Hillary should be proud of their candidate, and themselves, as well, for committing to the election of this historic choice.
Black and Latino voters should also take pride in their efforts in providing wide majorities of votes in several states which have buoyed Hillary's delegate and popular vote to over THREE times Barack Obama's biggest lead at this point in 2008. That's a 2.5 million + vote lead, so far, over Sanders.
Instead of just talking about a revolution, these voters are creating a movement of their own. It's no coincidence that these folks are under direct attack from the republican opposition. They also deserve more recognition than intended by the Sanders' camp's 'low information voter' slurs and the crushed meme of some regional difference in knowledge or support between voters in the North and South.
At some point, the party will need to respond to these voters' interests and concerns, rather than just process angry rhetoric from someone tilting against them who can't rally enough actual voters to his cause to even defeat his Democratic rival.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's Sanders with his anti-Union and anti-pension crew which I suppose you could try and rationalize using "nuance" although Sanders likes to give the "short" answer in debates:
?1457481859
By Walter SmolarekMar 16, 2016
~Snip~
In 2012, SolarCity made a deal with the University of Oregon to build two large solar energy installations. As part of the deal, the company received a nearly 12 million dollar subsidy in the form of tax credits from the Oregon Department of Energy.
After taking the public money, SolarCity had the job subcontracted to prison labor. Prisoners were paid less than a dollar an hour – effectively slavery. Normal pay for workers who are not imprisoned range from $27-$70 an hour.
Lyndon Rive is a monster, and Hillary Clinton is glad to accept his and his friends’ money.
Clinton claims to be a friend of the labor movement, but she clearly has no problem with the super exploitation of an extremely vulnerable section of the working class...
Read more:
https://www.liberationnews.org/clinton-to-attend-fundraiser-hosted-by-exploiter-of-prison-labor/
Who really supports the American workers?
Instead of a sinecure in the Cabinet?
An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama's Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker, the Sub-Prime Queen
The Privilege of the Pritzkers
by DENNIS BERNSTEIN
CounterPunch, May 3-5, 2013
EXCERPT...
TA: $38 billion. One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.
SNIP...
TA: She had TransUnion while she had Superior Bank, so she controlled the credit scores of everybody who was getting a subprime loan. You pay a higher interest on your subprime loan based on your credit score. Whether or not it was ever brokered between the credit bureau and the bank, we don’t know, but we know the same people control both entities.
SNIP...
TA: Superior Bank was acquired back in 1989 as part of the original savings and loan giveaway by M, D and E Wall. As I wrote a in a paper for an economic conference in Denver, Superior Bank was sold to the Pritzkers for 42.5 million dollars. They changed the name from Lion Savings and Loan to Superior Bank after they acquired it. Lion Savings and Loan was sold to the Pritzkers just to put up money for the capital. But as government reports show, they only put up a million dollars cash and pledged their assets as the difference, the capital. That’s not supposed to be done, but they are privileged people so they get privileged deals. After they acquired this for $1 million they also got $640 million in tax credits.
SNIP...
TA: The tax credits were designed so they could use it in any entity they wanted. They didn’t have to use it on what they bought. It could be sold on the open market for value, the credits could be used to file back taxes or warehouse them for future taxes. So for a million dollars, they got 640 million dollars for agreeing to take over Superior Bank, which they then looted for years then gave it back to the government with an enormous loss to the uninsured depositors and the whole subprime industry.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-privilege-of-the-pritzkers/
PS: I don't have anything against rich people, per se. I'd just like to see the offices and powers of the government go toward helping somebody other than the rich. Especially when Democrats are in office.
That laughable meme totally died in Nevada when Bernies masses of young voters failed to show up and actually vote for him.
If your joke revolution depends on the votes of young people, you are doomed before you start! Its an historical fact that people under 30 always vote the least of any age group. And that's what happened this year as well, what a surprise! 
Its laughable that a group of people think they can impose a "revolution" from the top down with Bernie or any other life long pol! The very embodiment of the establishment they rail against!!
A REAL revolution will start in the street, create its own....young....leaders and build its strength from there.
The Bernie revolution OTOH is nothing more than political theater in a presidential election year. In the off-year elections there will be no trace of the BS revolution, anywhere!
Maybe after Hillary is elected President this year, we can finally put to bed the notion that big rallies, facebook/reddit popularity, online clickbait polls, bumper stickers and yard signs determine who is going to be elected president! 
...and suddenly it is about right now??? He gets it???
Sanders has been using the same message all along and never got any traction with it. What propelled him forward was the deals he quietly made; kissing up to the military industrial complex for huge contracts, as a mayor who sat his wife on the Commission that oversaw the dumping of low-level radioactive waste right next to a poor community in Texas, and also the pay-for-play he gave the NRA--as examples. He never advanced his political career because of "his message."
Well played, sir!
