Bernie vs Tulsi: How to Identify Controlled Opposition
Bernie bros vote shamed Tulsi voters, but who should feel shame?
I wrote the backbone of this before Gabbard dropped out, as I did the last 2 parts of the series that were released. I put it aside as I became demoralized with her dropping out of the race prematurely to endorse Biden. However, this article having been written but not published has weighed on me. Watching the progression of this election, I feel the need to finally release it. I have turned the present tense into the past tense and updated to include some recent events.
Smear: Tulsi was stealing Bernie’s votes
Reality: Bernie supporters used this smear to shame Tulsi supporters, many of whom were Bernie supporters in 2016 — including myself.
Tulsi has shown nothing but respect towards Bernie. She was actually his biggest supporter in 2016. But there is a reason she was running against him in 2020 — there were clear distinctions between the Sanders campaign and Tulsi’s, distinctions that Gabbard and supporters such as myself evidently believed to be important. It was not our fault that Bernie couldn’t represent us and give us a solid voice, if one at all, on vital issues we cared about.
I was an avid Bernie supporter myself in 2016, and so this smear particularly irritated me. When Bernie endorsed Hillary at the convention, it made many of his supporters, including myself, feel betrayed. We fought so hard to get him in such a good position, maybe even farther than many anticipated... and then he unnecessarily threw in the towel at the final stretch. But the Clinton endorsement could have been forgiven if he had not proceeded to help campaign for Clinton after she conspired with the DNC to steal his nomination (talk about interference in elections), even going on to help perpetuate the Russiagate madness after she lost. Sanders put much, if not all, of the blame on Russia, and little to none on the DNC and Clinton.
Admittedly, this being updated and published after Gabbard left the race during the coronavirus outbreak, before going on to endorse Biden… Tulsi prematurely stopping her campaign instead of taking it to the convention made me feel similar to when Bernie prematurely threw in the towel and endorsed Clinton in 2016. However, to her defense, she did join all other democrats in the race, including Sanders, in pledging to support the eventual nominee. The key difference between the two concessions however is that Tulsi has not gone on to campaign for Biden and shame her voters into voting for someone who does little to nothing to represent them — as Bernie did in 2016 for Clinton and has been shamelessly doing in 2020 for Biden.
Bernie has been campaigning for Biden, even going on to preposterously claim that Biden would be “the most progressive president since FDR”…meanwhile Gabbard had dropped out, endorsed Biden as the eventual nominee.. but has been silent on the matter since. No vote shaming or patronizing as Bernie has done. During the primaries, Gabbard also had consistently acknowledged the DNC’s bias/interference that was working against her, which Bernie had consistently avoided and deflected from.
Tulsi did not only defend herself better, swinging back with no fear while Bernie was prone to needless apologies, but her policy platform and history had some significant differences compared to Bernie’s— policy differences on issues that matter — alot. After all, the Commander-in-chief, the most powerful person in the world, should be chosen based off of substance and policy. The pressure on supporters of candidates such as Tulsi (Yang too) to coagulate into Bernie’s camp because he had a better chance of winning was manipulative and reprehensible, as ex-Bernie supporters such as myself remember being attacked and shamed in 2016 by Hillary’s camp under the same premise of needing to “unite against Trump”, even if that meant abandoning our core principles and values.
You know what’s especially nefarious about the Dem party leadership is that they bully their own base. If voters don’t obey & submit to their demands, they’re abused, slandered, manipulated & gaslighted by those Dem leaders, & the other broken down/conditioned voters. It’s sick!
#ProgressiveParty (@GottaBernNow) February 18, 2020
Tulsi's husband would tweet on the matter -
Saying Tulsi needs to drop out to not hurt Bernie’s chances sounds like when ppl said Bernie needed to drop out to not ruin Hillary’s chances. Tulsi put more on the line to support him than most, and still pays the price. Why she’s running? Listen to what she’s saying #Tulsi2020
Abraham Williams 🌺 (@abewilliamsdp) December 13, 2019
As Tulsi said in the context of defending Bernie against Hillary Clinton’s most recent attacks on Sanders-
"This isn't high school." In interview with @WMUR9 @TulsiGabbard reacts to @HillaryClinton's "nobody likes him" dig vs. @BernieSanders #FITN #nhpolitics via @AdamSextonWMUR pic.twitter.com/aKm0XaQiAd
WMUR TV (@WMUR9) January 21, 2020
“Look, it’s time to grow up. This isn’t high school. We are talking about real challenges that our country that our country needs to address, and the need for real leadership to focus on them. Not in what’s going on in Washington and ‘the schoolyard clicks’ or whatever else it may be — there are real issues that people are struggling with and they’re wondering why are our leaders not working for us. This is why I am running for president — to change that, because Washington is so disconnected from the reality of what people deal with everyday.”
Not only did Gabbard step down as vice chairwoman from the DNC months prior to the 2016 convention to endorse Bernie, but she fought harder for him than he did himself at the 2016 convention, where she officially nominated Sanders after he had already handed the nomination to Clinton on a silver platter by endorsing her instead of making a historic speech. At the convention, Sanders was nominated ahead of roll-call by Gabbard who called his campaign a “movement of love and compassion”. The Hill would report,
“Though Sanders has repeatedly pushed his supporters to back Hillary Clinton for president, Gabbard didn’t echo his unity message in her speech.
Gabbard was one of only a handful of lawmakers who formally endorsed Sanders and was one of the campaign’s superdelegates. She stepped down from her post at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to support Sanders.
Paul Feeney, Sanders’s Massachusetts and Connecticut state director, spoke after Gabbard, urging the party to unite around Clinton ahead of the fall fight against Donald Trump.”
Sanders supporters would be noted to have repeatedly interrupted the new DNC chairwoman, Marcia Fudge, by chanting “Bernie”. Marcia Fudge replaced Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chairwoman following a massive Wikileaks dump that “showed DNC officials giving preference to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the prolonged primary contest against Sanders”.
So,the DNC was caught actively rigging the election in favor of Clinton becoming the nominee, and instead of challenging it, Bernie simply capitulated to it, endorsing Clinton instead of bringing attention to election interference and resisting— allowing the DNC to smooth it under the rug — and then proceeded to help campaign for the woman who rigged the nomination against him — all with no shame. Chris Hedges eloquently conveyed the frustration of disenfranchised Sanders supporters, including myself, by stating,
“Sanders squandered his most important historical moment. He had a chance, once chance, to take the energy, anger and momentum, walk out the doors of the Wells Fargo Center and into the streets to help build a third-party movement. His call to delegates to face “reality” and support Clinton was an insulting repudiation of the reality his supporters, mostly young men and young women, had over overcome by lifting him from an obscure candidate polling at 12 percent into a serious contender for the nomination. Sanders not only sold out his base, he mocked it. This was a spiritual wound, not a political one. For this he must ask forgiveness”.
I sincerely wish I could be as enthusiastic about Bernie as I was in 2015 and 2016. He's my second pick but everything feels bad now. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I think I may be somewhat traumatized by 2016.
Leann 🕊🌺🦇 (@Lee_Devious) February 2, 2020
Not only did it feel like betrayal to those of us that put so much energy into getting him to such a prominent position by the time the convention rolled around, but Bernie’s constant parroting of the Russiagate narrative to blame Trump’s election on Russia, rather than chastising the DNC for interfering in our democracy and conspiring with the Clinton campaign, was further disappointment… And it has continued up until this point, shamelessly.
The #DNCFraudLawsuit was a debacle, with the DNC arguing in court that they are allowed to favor a candidate, and have no obligation to provide a level playing field..an admission of guilt, arguing that the election rigging they were guilty of is not a punishable crime. You can’t make this stuff up
There have been ample opportunities to challenge Russiagate and condemn the DNC’s interference, many of them direct attacks on Sanders.. and he fails to seize them. For instance, take this interview between Hillary Clinton and Howard Stern which Town Hall reports on, in which Hillary claims that the Russians were doing everything in their power to help elect Sanders, before going on to add that he could have endorsed her quicker.
“While elaborating on her conspiracy theory of how Russia stole the election from her, the two-time presidential loser told Howard Stern that the Russians also wanted to do everything they could to help elect Bernie Sanders.
‘You know, basically, [the Russians] were like, hey, let’s do everything we can to elect Donald Trump,’ Hillary explained to Stern. ‘Those are words. And they also said Bernie Sanders, but, you know, that’s for another day.’
‘Do we hate Bernie Sanders?’ Stern felt compelled to ask.
‘No. I don’t hate anybody,’ Clinton responded.
‘Bernie could have endorsed you quicker,’ Stern prodded.
‘He could have. He hurt me. There’s no doubt about it,’ Clinton admitted.
‘Have you ever spoken to Bernie about that?’ Stern continued. ‘No,’ Hillary answered.
‘Do you ever talk to him?’ Stern asked.
‘I don’t talk to him,’ Hillary said. “I mean we did when he finally endorsed me and all that.”
‘But you’re upset with him,’ Stern followed up.
‘No. I’m disappointed,’ Hillary explained. ‘Disappointed. Ok. And I hope he doesn’t do it again to whoever gets the nomination. Once is enough. We have to join forces.’ ”
Hillary said she “hopes he doesn’t do it again to whoever gets the nomination”… But there is a problem with that statement….Sanders had endorsed Clinton before the nomination, before the convention...as previously acknowledged by the excerpt above discussing Gabbard’s formal nomination of Sanders at the DNC convention (after Bernie had already endorsed Clinton). Bernie did not respond to the McCarthyism and seemed to take the “unity” lecture to heart, tweeting about a month later:
Weak. This is Bernie bending over backwards for the people who actively interfered in the “democratic” process to steal his nomination. Bernie not only used Trump’s allegation of the “DNC rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time”to deflect to Russiagate, but he provided an implied denial of the DNC bias against his campaign, rather than acknowledging the truth of the matter. Tulsi in that position would certainty not have rolled over to the DNC by deflecting and peddling Russiagate while ignoring and denying internal DNC interference against herself. 3 days after Bernie’s response to Trump above, Clinton would attack Bernie again, claiming that “nobody likes him”. If that doesn’t show she is out-of-touch, I don’t know what does. Bernie didn’t respond.
Many sympathetic to Bernie’s platform feel that instead of him apologizing to corrupt centrist Neolibs like Biden (who was the frontrunner at time of writing and is the president according to half the country at the time of publishing) for their corruption, he should be continuing to call it out. In a primary between Sanders and the other Democrats, a competition to decide who will be the democratic nominee, if you were to observe Bernie’s twitter feed over any given period of time during his campaign trail, the majority of its substance is differentiating between himself and Trump rather than differentiating himself from other potential democratic nominees, along with calling for unity.
Hillary Clinton must be proud. In situations where he can and should stand his ground, maybe even go on the offensive and take some, he instead gives ground to those who have already smeared him and attacked his movement. Instead of attacking the Russiagate narrative that was partially used to belittle and deflect from the grievances of his movement and supporters, he instead was complicit in propagating it.
Many voters sympathetic to or supportive of a variety of Bernie’s policies would wish to see him respond to attacks in a more assertive and aggressive manner. Whether it be Clinton, Biden, Warren, or the DNC.
When most of the dem candidates talk about unity, they mean within their own ideological wing or the democratic party itself. #OnlyTulsi actually speaks to all Americans, about the good of our country as a whole, for a #MorePerfectUnion. America wins when we #WinWithTulsi.
Naomi 🎎 #Biden2020 #Tulsi2024 (@girlyGRRRL) February 4, 2020
When Bernie apologized to Biden for a surrogate writing an op-ed that claimed Biden has a “big corruption problem”, many progressives started to feel disgruntled and misrepresented.
This is so weak. Stop apologizing for saying the truth about corrupt right-wing neoliberals
Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 21, 2020
The lesson of the crucifixion of Corbyn is never give these hyenas an inch, or they'll take a thousand miles
No compromising with or apologizing to class enemieshttps://t.co/hKEVoAYqDc
If Bernie doesn't start defending himself, yet alone pushing back, he's toast.
Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 21, 2020
Enough of these polite pleasantries. As they crucified Corbyn, he kept apologizing until the end.
No more compromises with class enemies. https://t.co/B00vxWiI2R
Regardless of what you think about Tulsi, this is exactly how to respond to attacks from right-wing neoliberal war criminals like Hillary Clinton
Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 21, 2020
Hillary wants to destroy Bernie, and is trying to do it as we speak. So he needs to defend himselfhttps://t.co/uK2r5OIty2
Even people who didn’t support Tulsi as their candidate of choice appreciated this head-on approach of responding to smears and attacks. The opposite of this is Bernie’s approach, avoiding eye-contact and giving the bully what they want.
I’m sorry but I don’t trust Bernie after he got cheated and then folded promoting the criminals who screwed him over.
Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) February 4, 2020
If he folded to Hillary he will fold to the Military and prison industrial complex that he promises to fight. pic.twitter.com/HXYG5ceMYC
In regard to Bernie’s defense of Biden and stifling of his surrogate’s criticism of his opponent’s very real corruption problem, Michael Tracy would tweet,
The impeachment trial involving Biden means Dems are forced to withhold criticisms of Biden lest they be perceived as undermining the case against Trump. Just in case you need more evidence that this impeachment junk is a total fiasco.
Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 21, 2020
To which Currie Dobson would reply,
Bernie isn't being forced to do anything. He is choosing to bend to the will of the establishment just like he did in 2016. He could stand up for himself and by extension for us but instead he would rather protect the ruling class and throw the rest of us under the bus.
Currie Dobson (@Ventuckyspaz) January 21, 2020
Jimmy Dore would comment on Bernie's apology for his surrogate's op-ed:
Obama to Hillary in 2008: "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shipped overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Walmart"
Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 16, 2020
But somehow Bernie is completely hamstrung from responding to his attackers? Please explain
Tracey provoked multiple responses that offered explanations to his prompt…
The end of the Consent Factory's article sarcastically reads,
“Oh, yeah, and in case you’re worried about Bernie backing the empire’s ongoing regime change op in Venezuela, don’t be. He’s just playing 4D chess, li_ke Obama did throughout his presidency, by pretending to do the empire’s bidding while he actually went about the business of resurrecting hope and eradicating racism._ Bernie’s just being sly like that! It might seem like he’s aligning himself with mass murdering thugs like Elliot Abrams and sadistic ass freaks like Marco Rubio, but he isn’t. Not really. It’s just an act. I mean, he has to get elected, doesn’t he?”
Another response to Tracy's tweet read -
@NoMoreWars2, prompting a comparison between Tulsi and Bernie’s responses to Clinton, was referring to Tulsi’s famous “Queen of Warmongerers” tweet, a strong show of strength stand-alone, let alone compared to Bernie’s meek silence and deflection. Days after the tweet above, Tulsi Gabbard would sue Hillary Clinton for 50 million dollars. Needless to say, Bernie and Tulsi go about defending themselves and “challenging the establishment” in a very different manner. Why? Why is Bernie incapable of confrontation with corporate-owned ideological opponents in the DNC that are a bigger threat to preventing progressive change than the GOP who bears the weight of all his criticism?
The quote that @NoMoreWars2 displayed was from an article titled, “Bernie Sanders Phantom Movement” by Chris Hedges. In the article, Hedges alludes to how Bernie is essentially what many would call controlled opposition — or in his words — How Bernie is “part of the Democratic establishment’s campaign to neutralize the left”.
“Sanders is, in all but title, a Democrat. He is a member of the Democratic caucus. He votes 98 percent of the time with the Democrats. He routinely backs appropriations for imperial wars, the corporate scam of Obamacare, wholesale surveillance and bloated defense budgets. He campaigned for Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential race and again in 1996 — after Clinton had rammed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), vastly expanded the system of mass incarceration and destroyed welfare — and for John Kerry in 2004. He called on Ralph Nader in 2004 to abandon his presidential campaign. The Democrats recognize his value. They have long rewarded Sanders for his role as a sheepherder.”
In 2015, the year before Hedges wrote the article from which the above excerpt comes, Paul Street wrote a piece for CounterPunch titled, “Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats” which detailed how Sanders made a deal with the DNC that was essentially an agreement for Sanders to stifle the then-growing threat of a 3rd party movement in Vermont in exchange for the DNC not supporting a candidate to run against him.
Sanders did not “fight the Democratic establishment in Vermont his entire career.” As the left University of Vermont philosopher Will Miller noted in a 1999 essay recounting left peace activists’ occupation of then U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders’ Burlington, Vermont office to protest Sanders’ support of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the ongoing U.S. War on Iraq, Sanders sold out to the corporate and war Democrats as early as 1990.
Between 1981 and 1988, it is true, Sanders “presented himself to the left outside of Vermont as the leader of the third party movement, vanquishing the two major parties in every Mayoral election.” But in 1988, Sanders got a lesson on the perils of third party politics when he ran for federal office. In the election for Vermont’s seat in the House of Representatives, the independent Sanders and Democrat Paul Poirer divided the majority vote and the contest went to a Republican. Sanders responded by drifting right and cutting a deal with the Vermont Democrats: the party would permit no serious candidate to run against him while he blocked serious third party formation in Vermont and adopted positions in line with the national corporate war Democrats.
Infamous Democratic National Committee Chairman and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, once described Sanders as an “ally who votes with the Democrats ninety eight percent of the time.”
The “independent” Sanders has enjoyed a special agreement with the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate. He votes with the Democrats on all procedural matters in exchange for the committee seats and seniority that would be available to him as a Democrat.
Paul Street would also write that,
Consistent with this party loyalty, Sanders refuses to seriously or substantively criticize his “good friend” and Democratic presidential primary “rival” Mrs. Clinton — a militantly corporatist and militarist right-wing Democrat. Sanders has backed Obama’s numerous murderous military actions and provocations around the world, from Libya, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq to China, Ukraine, and Russia.”
On a related note, Steer would write the following:
In his presidential campaign speeches, Sanders has been unwilling to mention the corporatized Democratic Party as part of the nation’s oligarchy problem. Presidential candidate John Edwards fulminated consistently against “corporate Democrats as well as corporate Republicans” when he ran in the Iowa Caucus eight years ago. Sanders, by contrast, focuses almost completely on corporate Republicans.
Keep in mind, that was written in 2015 for the last election cycle. The same dynamic of Bernie focusing on the corporate Republicans(mainly Trump) and completely turning a blind eye to corporate democrats had persisted into and through his 2020 campaign.
When one of Bernie’s “surrogates”, Representative Tlaib, booed Hillary Clinton, she would subsequently apologize after many attacked Bernie for Tlaib’s actions, to the dismay of much of Bernie’s base..
Tlaib’s apology raised eyebrows. Hillary had constantly attacked Bernie, so it should be acceptable to display discontent with the woman that stole his nomination and gave us Trump. The people demanding an apology from Tlaib did not say anything through Clinton’s smears of Bernie — Clinton was allowed to drag Bernie’s name through the mud without protest, but God-forbid Bernie or his political surrogates reciprocate. But despite the justification, Tlaib mysteriously gave in to the neoliberal outrage and apologized.
Throughout Bernie’s campaign there had existed a consistent and observable pattern of conceding to the establishment, and not speaking the truth — even retroactively apologizing for it. Allowing the DNC establishment to influence the campaign’s narratives — what should be spoken and what couldn’t - is a red-flag of controlled opposition. When Bernie’s surrogate accused Biden of having “a corruption problem”, he wasn’t wrong. So why apologize?
While Bernie was apologizing for his surrogates, Tulsi was personally slamming Clinton on twitter, asking her to apologize, and suing her for 50 million dollars because of the damage not just done to her reputation, but to the country and its democracy.
You have my personal commitment that as president I will not be bullied by the foreign policy establishment that has been perpetuating regime change wars, a new cold war & arms race. Instead of investing trillions on such wars, we must invest in the needs of the American people. pic.twitter.com/rcsAF0VkOQ
Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 5, 2020
Tulsi didn't back down, instead, she doubled down.
I love our country. I’ve served as a soldier for nearly 17 years, deployed twice to the Middle East, and served in Congress for over 7 years. If Hillary & allies can destroy my reputation by implying I am a traitor to the country I love, they can do it to anyone. #StandWithTulsi pic.twitter.com/4t9jAyAgGk
Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 23, 2020
Tulsi didn’t allow herself to be bullied by the democratic establishment or the powers behind it. As Tulsi supporters have pointed out in frustration …while Bernie defended corrupt neolibs like Biden and Warren after they attack him, Sanders ironically failed to defend Gabbard despite her defending him every turn of the road, her being a close ally on policy, and it being the right thing to do. When CNN’s New Hampshire townhall excluded Tulsi but included candidates who were polling much lower than her, including Deval who was polling at 0%, it upset many who had still clung to the hope that we live in a somewhat fair democracy that isn’t *completely* controlled by a corporate oligarchy. Many were pressuring Sanders, who CNN did allow on stage, to speak up for Tulsi’s right to speak in the debate/townhall.
I wish ppl weren't trying to pressure BS into defending Tulsi over this. If we have to twist his arm... 🗑️
Naomi 🎎 #Biden2020 #Tulsi2024 (@girlyGRRRL) January 25, 2020
What was very telling, beyond the not-to-surprising erasure of Gabbard by CNN and the DNC, was Bernie’s own form of erasure of her candidacy.
The problem with that statement? It was a blatant lie. It wasn’t down to two… It was Three. It was one thing for the Corporate News Network(CNN) to pretend Gabbard wasn’t in the race, it was another for “progressive” Bernie Sanders to actively partake in erasure and pretend she was already out.
But Sanders failing to defend Tulsi is to be expected, as he does a poor job of defending himself, let alone other people. Warren’s attack on Sanders was arguably worse than Hillary Clinton’s attack, not just because of the method of attack, but because it was in the back - Warren, after posing and posturing as an ally for months during the campaign, would turn around and claim that Sanders said in a private meeting that a woman cannot be president.
Not sure why that twitter user dug up that clip to contradict Warren's claim and not Bernie or his campaign, but I digress - Sanders and Warren were close… the Sanders campaign was even considering appointing Warren as both Vice President and Secretary of Treasury, researching constitutional law to confirm that those positions were not mutually exclusive, as it has never been done before, potentially allowing her to hold both positions at the same time. Warren would double down on her claim during the 7th debate, with CNN moderators apparently having had taken sides.
Thinking back I'm not sure even Hillary pulled an anti-Bernie stunt as egregious as whatever Warren's up to at the moment
Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 14, 2020
Tulsi put her career on the line for Bernie in 2016 and defends him now as he's under attack. Liz stayed "neutral" when it mattered in 2016 and is now attempting to destroy Bernie. But super savvy "progressives" told me Tulsi was an evil imposter and Warren was his True Ally™
Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 15, 2020
You know who didn’t wake up this weekend & decided “Let me attack Bernie after he’s defended me over and over again, since he’s beating me in the polls”
Kamala Kept An Innocent Man In Jail 🌺🌹✊🏾 (@nikoCSFB) January 13, 2020
Tulsi Gabbard.
Voters in alignment with many of Sanders policies (which includes a large amount of Tulsi supporters as the grievances of Bernie supporters and Tulsi supporters strongly overlap on many issues) wanted him to stop dismissing the DNC’s corruption, because it did not all just magically go away.
continued in next part