[rad-green] With Establishment Knives Out for Bernie, Iowa Fiasco Just a Taste of What's Coming

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/07/establishment-knives-out-bernie-iowa-fiasco-just-taste-whats-coming
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/07/establishment-knives-out-bernie-iowa-fiasco-just-taste-whats-coming>Common
Dreams          February 7, 2020With Establishment Knives Out for Bernie,
Iowa Fiasco Just a Taste of What's ComingThe glaring subtext of what's now
occurring is the frantic effort to find some candidate who can prevent
Sanders from becoming the party's nominee at the national convention in
July. Progressives must fight back—not succumb to fatalism.by Norman
Solomon*

[image: Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) prepare to caucus for him in the gymnasium at Roosevelt High School
February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa is the first contest in the
2020 presidential nominating process with the candidates then moving on to
New Hampshire. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)]

*Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
prepare to caucus for him in the gymnasium at Roosevelt High School
February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa is the first contest in the
2020 presidential nominating process with the candidates then moving on to
New Hampshire. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)*

As a center of elite power, the Democratic National Committee is now
floundering. Every reform it has implemented since 2016 was the result of
progressive grassroots pressure. But there are limits to what DNC Chair Tom
Perez is willing to accept without a knock-down, drag-out fight. And in
recent weeks, he has begun to do heavy lifting for corporate
Democrats—throwing roadblocks in the way of the Bernie 2020 campaign as it
continues to gain momentum.

The fiasco in Iowa, despite its importance, is a sideshow compared to what
is foreshadowed by recent moves from Perez. For one thing, he appointed
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/26/whos-who-people-against-progressive-agenda-dncs-perez-under-fire-convention>
avowedly
anti-Bernie corporate operatives to key positions on powerful DNC
committees. The flagrant conflicts of interest
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/06/law-school-they-called-conflict-interest-tlaib-objects-paid-bloomberg-staffers-dnc>
have
included entrenching paid staffers for Michael Bloomberg’s presidential
campaign on rules committees for the DNC and the upcoming Democratic
National Convention.

"Some progressives have such an inflated view of the DNC's power that they
propagate the idea that all is lost and Bernie is sure to be crushed. It’s
the kind of defeatism that's surely appreciated by right-wingers and
corporate Democrats alike."

Perez soon followed up by abruptly changing the official rules to allow
Bloomberg to participate in the debate scheduled for three days before the
Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses. The egregious decision
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/31/definition-rigged-system-says-sanders-campaign-after-dnc-changes-debate-rules>
to
waive the requirement for large numbers of individual donors rolled out the
blue carpet for Bloomberg to the debate stage.

“Now suddenly a guy comes in who does not campaign one bit in Iowa, New
Hampshire, he’s not on the ballot I guess in Nevada or South Carolina, but
he’s worth $55 billion,” Sanders said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/democratic-iowa-caucuses.html>
Thursday when asked about the rules change. “I guess if you’re worth $55
billion you can get the rules changed for a debate. So, to answer your
question: I think that is an absolute outrage and really unfair.”

Inconvenient facts—such as the reality that Bloomberg fervently endorsed
President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004 (in a speech to the
Republican National Convention <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnLMg8Dfafs>,
no less) or that as mayor of New York he championed racist stop-and-frisk
police policies
<https://www.newsweek.com/bloomberg-defended-stop-frisk-years-now-hes-sorry-give-me-break-opinion-1474523>—are
less important to party chieftains than the humongous dollar signs that
self-financing Bloomberg is bringing to the table.

The mayors of San Francisco, Washington, Anchorage and Albany, among
others, have already succumbed to Bloomberg’s wealthy blandishments and
endorsed him, as has former Black Panther and longtime disappointment
Congressman Bobby Rush. To corporate elites, the moral of the sordid
Bloomberg story is that most people can be bought, and Bloomberg might be
the deus ex machina to lift them out of an impending tragedy of Sanders as
nominee.

The glaring subtext of all this is the now-frantic effort to find some
candidate who can prevent Sanders from becoming the party’s nominee at the
national convention in July. Early corporate favorites like Beto O’Rourke,
Cory Booker and Kamala Harris fizzled and flamed out. Joe Biden appears to
be sinking. Amy Klobuchar staked her hopes on Iowa without success. That
appears to leave Pete Buttigieg and Bloomberg as the strongest corporate
contenders to prevent the corporate Democrats’ worst nightmare—the
nomination of an authentic progressive populist.

A traditional claim by corporate Democrats—the assumption that grassroots
progressive campaigns are doomed—is oddly matched by the assumptions of
right-wing media and some on the left that the DNC can successfully rig
just about anything it wants to. *Fox News* has been feasting on the Iowa
meltdown, pleased to occasionally invite leftists on the air to denounce
the DNC, immediately followed by routine denunciations of Democrats in
general and Sanders in particular as diabolical socialists eager to destroy
any and all American freedoms with a collectivist goal of tyranny.

"People on the left who say the DNC's elite power can't be overcome with
grassroots organizing are mirroring the traditional scorn from corporate
Democrats—who insist that the left can never dislodge them from dominance
of the party, let alone end corporate dominance of the nation."

Meanwhile, some progressives have such an inflated view of the DNC’s power
that they propagate the idea that all is lost and Bernie is sure to be
crushed. It’s the kind of defeatism that’s surely appreciated by
right-wingers and corporate Democrats alike.

Perhaps needless to say, if Bernie Sanders had such a fatalistic view of
electoral politics, he never would have run for president in the first
place. People on the left who say the DNC’s elite power can’t be overcome
with grassroots organizing are mirroring the traditional scorn from
corporate Democrats—who insist that the left can never dislodge them from
dominance of the party, let alone end corporate dominance of the nation.

Like millions of other progressives who support Bernie 2020, I realize that
the forces arrayed against us are tremendously powerful. That’s the nature
of the corporate beast. The only way to overcome it is to organize and
fight back. That’s what the movements behind the Sanders campaign are doing
right now.

In the words <https://archive.commondreams.org/views01/0129-05.htm> of a
Latin American graffiti writer, “Let’s save pessimism for better times.”

Norman Solomon <https://www.commondreams.org/author/norman-solomon> is
co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org
<http://rootsaction.org/>. His books include *"War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047179001X?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20>"*
 and *"Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977825345?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20>."*
 He is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy.

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