Now is not the time for cowards and slackers

The launch of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign has exhilarated the regional Our Revolution activist cadre. This is the chance of a lifetime.

This project makes sense in a world in which a clearly mentally deteriorating morally-deficient, Donald J. Trump, is seeking a second term as POTUS. We have crossed the event horizon. This is a unique fractal moment in the political collapse of late-stage capitalist institutions.

All traditional bets are off and the conventional rules of conventional DC political punditry are suspended.  

We are already through the looking glass in this chaotic democratic emergency. Bernie Sanders is in a unique position to capitalize on this moment of instability as we move out of the late 20th century liberal consensus into the next stage of political systems’ collapse. There is no “normal” to go back to.

As a simple practical matter, all polling shows that Bernie would crush Trump in a landslide, hands down. I have bets out on the day when the New York Times finally concedes that Sanders is the obvious front-runner.

Bernie’s lifetime of service as a progressive leader has etched into his character an implacable moral decency and deep reserve of sanity that is natural kryptonite to the degraded Trump MAGA types. Bernie will have a harder time winning the Democratic Primary than he would winning the general election.

The senior Senator is immune to all the usual RNC dirty tricks squad as well. The Republican operatives got nothing but trash. None of it sticks.

The standard-issue electoral noise does not affect Sanders and his base. We are a tough lot. Our affections are based in long movement histories and a shared progressive agenda over decades. It’s not a personality contest for us. We don’t care that he is a crusty old Jewish man from immigrant parents that fled the Nazis in WWII. We see his lion’s heart, not his gray hair.

We are united with Bernie in our sincere desire to see America become a more humane and decent country. Bernie Sanders is our venerable progressive champion who has the will to be a genuinely transformative president during the coming difficult transition from the Trump era. His age is irrelevant. All we need is about two more years out of him to pass the progressive agenda legislation: Green New Deal; Medicare for All; Tuition-Free Public College; National Day Care Network; and Federal Job Guarantee for All.

Democratic socialists have the lowest resting heart rate in the Democratic Party: we are the Alpha dogs in that pack.

We are stoked for the important work ahead on the strategic direction of the Democratic Party via the Sanders 2020 campaign.  There are some weary brothers and sisters who say they dread the inevitable trigger-warnings and tension that accompany these intra-party arguments.  

Buck up, kids! This is not the time for cowards and slackers. It’s time to have a serious Democratic Party family discussion to clear the air, relax, and let the process unfold as designed and move on to accomplish the one task on which we are all united: denying Trump a second term.

We welcome this unique historic opportunity to potentially shift the course of Anglo-American capitalism with Labour Leader Jeremy Corbin as UK Prime minister and Bernie Sanders as U.S. President. That alliance could be the foundation for a cosmopolitan socialism to take root in the historic heart of modern capitalism and the center of international high finance. I will work for that outcome with all I’ve got.

This is my chance to redeem my generation! I cannot die before I see the forces of neo-fascism beaten back into the margins of American society for good.

The cultural task of the progressive movement is to generate a better style of doing politics as well. We need to create a welcoming and validating learning environment. We can work within our own organizations to create a redemptive rather than a punitive culture.

My sincere prayer is that the Democratic primary is dignified and substantive. We should not reward negative campaigning. We here in the Sonoma Valley showed good civic character by uniting against an attempted negative troll campaign against a sitting councilmember, Rachel Hundley. She prevailed because we turned on the troll and not on her, as they intended. It failed, because we’re better than that here in Sonoma.