Bernie Sanders: Establishment Tool

The 'Oppositional Faction' in the Democrat Party is All Establishment

Oct 09, 2023

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There was a time in the lead-up to the 2016 election when there was a lot of excitement on both sides of the political aisle that seemingly anti-establishment figures had not only emerged, but were even polling well against their uniparty opposition.

On the right, you had Donald Trump very publicly making a fool out of the Jeb Bushes and Chris Christies of the world all throughout the Republican primaries. Similarly, on the left, you had Bernie Sanders going up against Hillary Clinton, who at the time might have been the most hated figure in American politics.

So it at least appeared that in 2015 leading into 2016, both sides of the political aisle had anti-establishment figures as rising stars in their respective parties, creating rifts within the voter base and showcasing the people’s desire to move away from a deeply embedded uniparty.

Where do these anti-establishment figures stand today?

Donald Trump, like him or hate him, has created a cultural revolution on the right that is still growing to this day and is rapidly rendering establishment types on that side of the aisle obsolete. They have tried to ruin him from just about every angle conceivable, starting with the coordinated Russiagate smear and culminating in a recent string of indictments, yet he continues to rise in the polls despite it all.

On the other hand, Bernie Sander’s original message wasn’t that there are simply minor differences between factions within the Democrat Party, but that there was a deeply entrenched establishment that is fundamentally and radically corrupted—that cheats and serves the large uniparty donor class, the very same class that funds establishment Republicans and is willing, if not eager, to destroy the middle class and continue making trade deals that deindustrialize the United States. Bernie campaigned on the idea that this establishment had to be dismantled.

Well, Sanders had his first brush with the gatekeepers of the Democrat establishment in 2016 when a DNC that was firmly behind Hillary Clinton rigged the primaries against him. (#,#,#,) Sanders retreated, tail between his legs, to the dismay of many of his supporters.

Are you or someone you know one of those poor souls who refuses to believe that Hillary Clinton rigged the primary against Sanders? Well, don’t take my word for it: just ask Donna Brazile. She’s just about as Establishment Democrat as you can get, and as Vanity Fair pointed out, she detailed the rigging in one of her books.

In that very same Vanity Fair article, there’s a quote from Bernie Sanders when asked by Chuck Todd if he thought his fellow Democrats “had been fair to him”, to which he replied:

“No,” ... “Look, we’re taking on the establishment. That’s pretty clear.”

Well, it looks like the establishment won.

Additionally, WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails that had been sent or received by a handful of top committee officials and even provided an online tool to search through them. While WikiLeaks did not reveal the source of the leak, it is widely believed that the source was disillusioned DNC staffer Seth Rich, who met an untimely end in the immediate wake of the leak.

Wikileaks founder Julianne Assange appeared to suggest that Rich was murdered for his participation in the leak. A very thorough and successful shame campaign has since been launched by all the usual gatekeepers against anyone suspected of foul play.

So, just to reiterate, the very same party that drones on endlessly about ‘threats to our democracy’ rigged the system and cheated to make sure that their preferred candidate won against the people’s candidate.

Instead of digging his heels in and taking the fight to Clinton and the establishment, Bernie Sanders scuttled back to his Vermont mansion, defeated.

He ran again in 2020 and threw in the towel once more after several lengthy phone calls from Barack Obama, where the former president and current de facto leader of the Democrat Party convinced Bernie Sanders that his mission was already accomplished in pushing Joe Biden further left.

But the point of Bernie’s movement, at least from the perspective of his supporters, wasn’t to convince establishment puppets to appear more left, it was to take back control of the Democrat Party from the deeply embedded establishment and return it to the people. This is what Sanders’ supporters put their faith in him for, and twice, he bent over for the ruling class in DC.

Where does Sanders stand today?

Well, the Senator recently committed the highly rebellious, revolutionary act of supporting the ultimate uniparty stooge, Joe Biden, despite there being three contenders, including a fellow anti-establishment liberal, RFK Jr., a candidate far to the left of Biden in Marianne Williamson, and his friend Dr. Cornel West, who is running as an independent. He’s refused to acknowledge the other Democrat candidates and has gone so far as to work against Dr. West’s campaign, despite him being one of Sanders' most ardent supporters in previous elections.

Turning on Cornel West

Aside from maybe the Bush-era Republicans in the immediate wake of 9/11, a political party has never been so observably and unsettlingly uniform as the current configuration of the Democrat Party. This was the same concern that many held back in 2015, which caused Sanders to see a tremendous rise in support in the first place, as many young Democrat voters saw him as an alternative to a party that seemed increasingly bought and paid for.

Political groomers like Justice Democrats took the Bernie image and its outward philosophy and imbued Alexandria Ocasio Cortez with it, creating a younger, female-of-color version of the Bernie brand to gain a foothold with his supporters. When you think of the so-called left-wing oppositional faction within the Democrat Party, you tend to think of politicians like Ocasio Cortez and Sanders.

Well, the idea of this ‘oppositional faction’ was completely demolished back in August of this year when Sanders became one of the first members of Congress to endorse Joe Biden, and went a step further to prove his loyalty to the establishment Democrat machine by publicly attacking Dr. West.

Who is Dr. West?

West has described himself as a "non-Marxist socialist" (he does not view Marxism and Christianity as reconcilable), which explains his interest in Christian socialist thought.

Dr. West is seen as a left-wing populist with socialist leanings, whose primary areas of interest include political philosophy, religious philosophy, ethics, race, caste, democracy, and liberation theology. He is a cultural icon, having made several spoken word and hip-hop albums, appeared in several feature films, and has openly engaged with conservative thought leaders in a constructive way. That is to say, Dr. West has more cultural significance than the average politician, and on the left, where consequential choices are largely based on pop-culture associations, that can be very powerful.

As time goes on, those supporters of Bernie and AOC who are looking for a politician to actually fight the establishment are becoming increasingly disillusioned, and Cornel West SHOULD BE the perfect candidate to win these voters over. However, the powers within and behind the Democrat Party are well aware of this and have unleashed their attack dog—in this case, Bernie Sanders.

The Bernie crowd is mindlessly subservient to the man, largely because his ‘movement’ is what caused many of them to become engaged in politics for the first time, and they continue to stand behind him simply because they perceive that they have nowhere else to go. This persists despite Sanders’s lack of backbone and tenacity to continue fighting for the people who believed in his original message and stance. The establishment has since absorbed his entranced base, and now they are trying to make Cornel West into a fool.

Below is a series of videos from The Hill’s weekday morning show, Rising. Watching the first couple minutes of each video should give you an idea of what I’m referring to. The hosts at Rising, despite being a more mainstream outlet, have actually reported quite fairly on this subject.

The highlights of this video are when Anderson Cooper and James Carville hammer home the age-old PSYOP that running third party is a “threat to democracy” and when Carville Claims that Jill Stein is somehow an agent of the Kremlin

Basically, if you don’t play ball with the establishment, you must be a Russian asset.

Again, I’d like to draw a comparison between Trump and Bernie, who both claimed to have set out in 2016 with the same goals of challenging the establishment arms of their respective parties.

Donald Trump, seven years later, is on track to render establishment Republicans obsolete. They cling to power here and there because they are still backed by big-money interests (not to mention deeper speculation regarding the legitimacy of our elections), but the average conservative has tuned out for the most part on anyone who doesn’t align themselves with MAGA. This has been exemplified by both the lack of interest in the first two Republican primary debates, as well as the public response to Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as Speaker of the House. There may be the odd Fox News pundit dismayed about McCarthy getting the boot, but by and large, the voter base seems generally pleased that things played out this way.

Contrarily, Bernie Sanders has not only failed his base once, but twice, and has now become another pawn of the permanent political class in Washington, DC.

Who is Bernie, Really?

Let’s take a stroll through Bernie’s history to see if the man has lived up to his convictions.

Bernie’s entry into politics came in the 1970s, when he remained largely unemployed, yet was endlessly running for political office. He ran two campaigns for the Senate as part of a minor political party called Liberty Union. His campaign rhetoric in those days has been described as “downright apocalyptic and conspiratorial.”

In announcing his 1974 bid for the Senate, Sanders proclaimed,

“I have the very frightened feeling that if fundamental and radical change does not come about in the very near future that our nation, and, in fact, our entire civilization could soon be entering an economic dark age.” - Bernie Sanders, 1974 (#)

Later that year, he sent an open letter to President Gerald Ford, warning of a “virtual Rockefeller family dictatorship over the nation” if Nelson Rockefeller was named vice president. He also called for the CIA to be disbanded immediately, in the wake of eye-popping revelations about the agency’s misdeeds. (For me, these two things rank among the most based things Bernie Sanders has ever done or said.)

Promises Unkept

He failed the two Senate bids, but in 1980 he would aim a little lower and run for mayor of a picturesque town in Vermont called Burlington.

Burlington sits on the beautiful Lake Champlain and is the largest town in the state. He entered the crowded race as a socialist and leveled a series of attacks toward a local developer named Tony Pomerleau.

The socialist stance and his critique of the wealthy land developer launched the Bernie brand, and it would be effective, if only just barely. On election day, Sanders upset Burlington’s local political establishment by winning the race by ten votes out of 8,650 cast. (#)

But despite all his socialist rhetoric, those with access to the man found that he was indeed a fellow with whom one could do business. As the former director of the Burlington Mall said at the time,

“He has figured out that there is a cow to be milked. He wants to build a tx base. What he does and what he says are two different things” (#)

Bernie’s fellow progressives were surprised at the rate at which he was able to consolidate power. What was most surprising was his budding interest in real estate development, especially considering his stance during the election, where he campaigned on the phrase, “Burlington is not for sale!” which he directed specifically at Pomerleau.

Pomerleau’s plan during the election was to build a condominium and shopping center on Burlington’s lakefront. Naturally, Bernie attacked Pomerleau and denounced his waterfront project as an “enclave for the rich.” However, once Sanders was safely on the other side of Election Day, he struck an alliance with the wealthy family, a relationship that would last until Pomerlaeu’s death in 2018. (#)

Sanders eased back on the rhetoric and began collaborating with Burlington’s upper class on a variety of projects.

As progressive journalist Greg Guma recalls, fighting real estate development was largely why Sanders won the election in the first place. A coalition of local progressives was concerned that the city was changing through gentrification.

Guma wrote,

“Low-income people were being driven out of town, they protested, by condominium and office conversions and high rents. They were being replaced by upwardly mobile, young professionals with disposable income.” (#)

Once Mayor, Sanders abruptly changed his tune and embraced a new development plan for the waterfront called “Aldean” that would “dwarf the $30 million Pomerleau project.” Outside investors, including the heiress to the DOW Jones fortune, were brought in for the project.

Eventually, supporters would discover that Mayor Sanders was holding private meetings with these investors, and would rightfully note that he had railed against the political establishment for exactly the kind of behavior he was now participating in.

Bernie talked his way into office on the grounds that he would end the Pomerleau plan, which he did, but then he replaced it with a much larger plan that opted for outside investors instead of local ones who might have pumped some of the revenue back into the community.

His former allies were livid over the new plan. When Citizens Waterfront Group pushed for transparency and an end to the closed-door meetings between Sanders and the developers, Sanders “blasted the group.” Others in the green movement accused him of “collusion with business interests.”

In the end, Sanders pushed for a city referendum to approve municipal bonds to make the project happen, but the voters rejected it.

Anti-war Hypocrisy

Another interesting factoid regarding Bernie’s integrity was the hypocrisy of his antiwar record.

Sanders has railed against big defense corporations at rallies, but he never mentions his complex history with the military-industrial complex.

After his defeat by the public over the municipal bond referendum, Sanders remained popular due to the booming Burlington economy, which was partly propped up due to the presence of a General Electric plant (GE was one of the nation’s largest defense contractors at the time) and the very same ‘profligate military spending’ that Bernie would rail against through all of his various campaigns over the years.

He’d been quoted as saying that he would:

“challenge Reaganism and imperialism in its every manifestation.”

Well, maybe not every manifestation.

It turns out that he doesn’t mind expensive war machines—as long as they are being manufactured in his home state.

The plant that helped Burlington bloom employed three thousand workers, and by 1986, it had nearly doubled its defense contracts. (#) The plant produced Vulcan Gatling guns, a type of rotating rapid-fire gun that is typically mounted on attack helicopters and fighter jets.

Ironically, these same Gatling guns were used to mow down socialists in Central America.

Naturally, Bernie’s more progressive base was not thrilled, and opposed what the plant produced and represented. They began to show up outside the plant with banners and picket signs. These protestors, many of them his own supporters, were shocked when Bernie appeared to side with General Electric executives and denounced the protests. He even went so far as to have some of them arrested. (#)

Sanders has slammed defense corporations for political gain all throughout his career, but when those defense corporations come to his own backyard, he quietly welcomes them in.

The Vermont senator persuaded Lockheed Martin to place a research center in Burlington, according to Newsweek, and managed to get 18 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets stationed at the city’s airport for the Vermont National Guard.

The World Socialist Web Site called Sanders a “silent partner of American militarism.” Counterpunch, a left-wing magazine, has criticized Sanders on more than one occasion for being insufficiently pacifist.

There are plenty of additional skeletons in the Sanders closet that will have to wait for another SubStack to see the light of day.

I think the brief history included above sufficiently showcases that even populist underdogs like Bernie Sanders are just susceptible to the kinds of shenanigans that come part and parcel with establishment politicians.

Primary Sources

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