Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Bernie and Barbara: What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Ann Garrison, BAR contributor
31 Oct 2018
Bernie and Barbara: What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Bernie and Barbara: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

How can Bernie Sanders or Barbara Lee keep any of their social democratic promises while scapegoating Russia?

“Endorsing Greens, or even independents, is not in the script that might win him the Dems’ 2020 presidential nomination.”

For starters, Barbara Lee did not support Bernie Sanders at the 2016 Democratic Convention. As a superdelegate, she cast her vote for Hillary Clinton. And she did that despite support for Bernie in the district she represents—California Congressional District 13—which includes Berkeley and Oakland.  Bernie yard and window signs were more common than not in many D-13 neighborhoods, most of all in those two cities.

Three thousand people turned out for last Thursday’s Barbara-and-Bernie, get-out-the-vote rally at the Berkeley Community Theatre, nevertheless. Some even arrived with the dusted-off Bernie signs they’d displayed in their yards and windows two years ago. Polls still show that Bernie is the most popular politician in the country, and he still draws standing-room-only crowds as he did in Berkeley. His 45-minute speech was obviously meant to lay ground for a 2020 presidential run, and it’s hard to imagine that Barbara Lee can refuse to support him next time, regardless of pressure from the Clinton wing of the party.

“Polls still show that Bernie is the most popular politician in the country.”

And, giving credit where it’s due, Bernie did us a favor while he was here. He endorsed Jovanka Beckles, an authentic progressive Democrat who takes no corporate donations, for California State Assembly District 15, as did Barbara Lee. That may well carry the day for Jovanka, a former Richmond City Councilor and member of the Richmond Progressive Alliance. Jovanka has been in a tight race with a horrid candidate, former Obama and Clinton campaign strategist Buffy Wicks, who is running on both their endorsements.

And besides, we need a Black Panamanian American dyke who rides a motorcycle in the state legislature. Jovanka appeared on stage with Barbara and Bernie at the rally, and the crowd chanted JO-VAN-KA.

“Jovanka Beckles, an authentic progressive Democrat, takes no corporate donations.”

But would Bernie have endorsed Jovanka if she’d run as a Green or an independent with the same progressive politics? Jovanka and former Richmond mayor and city councilor Gayle McLaughlin both joined the 2016 Bernie surge and then tried to ride it to Sacramento, California’s state capital. Gayle had won running as a Green in the City of Richmond, but she ran for Lieutenant Governor as an independent, saying she hoped to unite both Greens and Bernie voters. However, despite identifying as an independent himself, Bernie did not endorse Gayle, and she was clobbered in the top-two primary by candidates with huge, unprecedented campaign war chests for a largely ribbon-cutting office. Gayle might not have won even if Bernie had endorsed her, but she would have done a lot better.

The Democrats created a new position for Bernie after the 2016 race—Democratic Party Outreach Coordinator—even though he had reasserted his independence. Endorsing Greens or even independents like himself—putatively—is not in the script that might win him the Dems’ 2020 presidential nomination.

Why campaign for a candidate who can’t lose?

And why did Bernie come here to campaign for Barbara Lee, who can’t possibly lose to her Green Party challenger Laura Wells? Knowing that Barbara Lee is unassailable in District 13, Laura and the Alameda County Green Party have simply tried to encourage a debate to distinguish the two parties’ platforms from one another. Wells’s name appears alongside Lee’s on the ballot because she finished second in California’s top-two primary, but the only public exchange between the two has been a half hour forum staged by the League of Women Voters after its much longer Oakland mayoral forum.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Bernie to appear with Democrats in tight races such as that between Democrat Andrew Janz and Republican Devin Nunes in California’s 22nd Congressional District? Janz is a Fresno County Deputy District Attorney, Nunez the current Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Janz accuses Nunes of ignoring Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia and Vladimir Putin, and Nunez insists that Trump didn't collude with Russia or Putin but that he, Nunes, repeatedly warned of Russian interference in US elections during Obama’s second term. Bernie comes down firmly on the Janz side of this ridiculous argument, and Janz was trailing Nunez by 5%, 46% to 51%, in Five Thirty Eight’s October 19-21 polls.

That’s not actually so surprising because Janz agrees with Bernie about little more than the Russian menace. But how can Bernie or Barbara keep any of their social democratic promises so long as they join the rest of the Democratic Party in scapegoating Russia? Bernie spent most of his 45-minute speech attacking Trump over income inequality, the health care crisis, the housing crisis and more of Bernie's signature issues. He also called Trump spineless for refusing to stand up to Russia and Putin. To go along with this Neo-McCarthyism, the Democratic Party’s principal platform plank, is to call for more NATO, more weapons manufacture, more austerity, and more war.

Contradictions in Barbara Lee’s speech also went unnoticed by the adoring crowd. “We can either,” she exhorted, “return a Republican Congress that’s beholden to Wall Street billionaires, polluters, and special interests, or we can elect a Congress that works for the people!” That’s quite an exaggerated claim for a House Rep who voted for the bank bailout, the biggest upward transfer of wealth in American history, which was championed by a Democratic president more beholden to Wall Street than any president preceding him.

“Mejia would cut military spending and end huge corporate tax breaks and subsidies.”

The saddest moment of Bernie Sanders’s visit to California may have been his endorsement of Jimmy Gomez, an incumbent, party-line Democrat facing Kenneth Mejia in California’s poor, predominantly immigrant District 34. Mejia, like Gomez, advocates Medicare-for-All, but unlike Gomez, he advocates universal rent control, more quality public housing, increasing Social Security, 100% renewable energy, more maternity and paternity leave, free tuition for public college, full legal status for immigrants, and abolishing ICE. When asked the inevitable question—”How’re you going to pay for all that?”—he responds that he’d cut military spending and end huge corporate tax breaks and subsidies.

Kenneth campaigned for Bernie and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2016. So what’s the problem? Disgusted by the DNC’s dishonest determination to give the Dem nomination to Hillary, he chose to run as a Green this year, and he’s campaigned relentlessly, despite a day job as a public accountant. There is no least-worst Democrat in this race between a Democrat and a Green, so why did Bernie feel compelled to endorse Jimmy Gomez, despite staying out of so many tight races between Democrats and Republicans? The Democrat Party path to the 2020 nomination no doubt compels him to dismiss Greens, whom Democrats blame for their losses almost as much as they blame Russia. “The revolution” must be abandoned for the counterrevolution.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected].

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected]

Berniecrats

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Democratic Party Politics 101 with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Corporate Media
Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Democratic Party Politics 101 with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Corporate Media
25 July 2018
“Democrats have firmly implanted themselves on the side of Wall Street and its militarist corporate partners.”
Bernie Sanders: “Don’t Be Rude to White Nationalists, Do What Alexandria Did”
Paul Street
Bernie Sanders: “Don’t Be Rude to White Nationalists, Do What Alexandria Did”
11 July 2018
“People Have a Right to Go Into a Restaurant and Have Dinner”
Freedom Rider: Ocasio-Cortez and the Left
Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Ocasio-Cortez and the Left
04 July 2018
“Ocasio-Cortez deserves credit for beating a corrupt but powerful system.”
still a regime change kinda guy
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Bernie Sanders Can’t Shake His Imperial Piggishness
28 September 2017
“Sanders revealed his own swinish predilections in Westminster.”
How Did Berniecrats Claim the Jackson Mississippi Movement? Do They Want To Be Claimed? Should They?
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
How Did Berniecrats Claim the Jackson Mississippi Movement? Do They Want To Be Claimed? Should They?
13 July 2017
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon When Jackson's mayor-elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba stepped to the podium at the cynically misnamed "Peoples Summit…
blacks for Bernie. maybe
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Sanders Didn’t Lose the Black Vote: He Never Had It, and Never Asked Why
14 July 2016
On the issues, Bernie Sanders should have won the black vote. But presidential politics isn’t just about issues, it’s about entrenched alliances and…
escaping the dejmocrats trunk...
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Bernie to Deliver Captive Constituencies to the Democratic Convention
05 May 2016
Bernie will take his campaign all the way to the convention. We called him a sheepdog back in May 2015, and he's filling exactly that role, enticing…
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Bernie Sanders Has His Plan B. What's Yours?
14 April 2016
With a crushing Clinton lead in super-delegates it will take a string of miracles for Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination.  Little…
Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Bernie Sanders and the End of the Democratic Party
09 March 2016
If Bernie Sanders supporters are serious about making fundamental change, they should start a new party, one that does more than run in billion…
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
There’s Nothing "Transformative" About Bernie Sanders (He’s Just Not Hillary)
18 February 2016
Bernie Sanders’ domestic policies more clearly match Black America’s left-leaning politics – but they will still reject him in favor of Hillary…

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
    07 May 2025
    Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
  • Jon Jeter
    The Only Language the White Settler Speaks: Ohio Police Say Grieving Black Father Avenges Son’s Slaying By Killing One of Theirs
    07 May 2025
    The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence. This struggle continues today, forcing a painful question: When justice is denied, does…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment
    07 May 2025
    "DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
    07 May 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Brittany Friedman. Friedman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us