Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump; assuming no strings are going to be pulled, the latest polls show that this is the match-up we will see in 2020. If so, it would mark the culmination of the rise of two dissenting forces in America, both powered by "boots-on-the-ground" activism.
When it comes to the Trump camp, nation-firsters and white reactionists have been the lifeblood and powering force; both worked hard in 2015/16 to push Trump as the one who would address the border, job outsourcing, cheap labor in-sourcing, replacement immigration and other issues, after Trump's rhetoric hit on these points. By comparison, the Bernie camp had its own battle-hardened volunteers, civilians committed to fighting big banks, Wall Street and corrupt lobbyism, inspired by Bernie's aggressive stances on these issues. Ironically, both candidates belong to mainstream political parties that did their best to make sure each candidate was not elected, or did not follow through on his campaign promises.
In 2016, Trump rode the Republican Party ticket to victory, even though the Republican establishment generally opposed what Trump seemed to represent. The opposition within should have come as no surprise; the Republican Party has long been a business-first faction and with that came the embrace of things like job outsourcing and cheap-labor insourcing, not to mention trickle-down economics. For Trump's supporters, there was this idea that the Republican Party could be reformed to become a bastion for America-first ideas. But so far, it is largely unchanged, and we can continue to assume that the Republican Party will continue to be what it has been as long as the Party is the vehicle through which business-first seeks to influence politics.
As for Bernie, everyone knows the Democrats shut him out using technicalities in 2016 and went with establishment candidate Hillary Clinton instead. This happened because the Democratic Party is fixed to remain pro-business too, and Clinton was the safer bet in that regard. For one, she was not going to be as hard on the wallets of the ultra-rich as Bernie. Clinton was also a safer bet for the open-borders industry based on her voting record, and the safest bet overall given the uncertainty about where Trump stood on the issue.
In any case, the fury over Sanders' betrayal was quickly forgotten by all the "Trump won because of Russian ads" noise. But, with the Sanders campaign again soaring, the "centrist" Democrats might be playing with fire if they carry out more of the same. This goes back to the Bernie-favoring demographic tilt in American society, where a growing number of Democrat-supporters are more into Bernie's hardline economic reforms because they are young, poor and far- left. Arguably, given this trend, the stategy of pushing the non-white contingent towards an Obama-like chameleon centrist - or, rather, a "Squad" of chameleon centrists bankrolled by Apple, Alphabet Inc., Creatis Capital, Evercore Partners, Fedex, Boeing, AT&T, Evercore, the End Citizens United PAC, East Bridge Capital, Microsoft, DISH Network, iHeart Media, Estee Lauder, Verizon, Brownstein, Hyatt, WilmerHale LLP, T-Mobile, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Sprint, Hilton, Morgan Stanley, Dell, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Twitter, and Oracle - might not be enough.
If Bernie triumphs and takes the Democratic nomination, it will be because of demographics and the Democrats' inability to direct that tilt towards a centrist. Another factor will be the left's own rhetoric, used for years to rally against richy-rich Bush-Cheney Yale-ish types, as the chickens finally come home to roost. But Bernie's triumph would also be because the pro-business influencers in the Democratic Party went along with it all fait accompli. It would mean that former Republican-turned-Democrat "centrist" Michael Bloomberg and his money to produce campaign propaganda ($184 million in three months alone plus a Super Bowl ad) along with all his Obama's endorsements, cannot change the fact that people are angry and tired of "centrists", and there is no holding the storm back.
When it comes to the Trump camp, nation-firsters and white reactionists have been the lifeblood and powering force; both worked hard in 2015/16 to push Trump as the one who would address the border, job outsourcing, cheap labor in-sourcing, replacement immigration and other issues, after Trump's rhetoric hit on these points. By comparison, the Bernie camp had its own battle-hardened volunteers, civilians committed to fighting big banks, Wall Street and corrupt lobbyism, inspired by Bernie's aggressive stances on these issues. Ironically, both candidates belong to mainstream political parties that did their best to make sure each candidate was not elected, or did not follow through on his campaign promises.
In 2016, Trump rode the Republican Party ticket to victory, even though the Republican establishment generally opposed what Trump seemed to represent. The opposition within should have come as no surprise; the Republican Party has long been a business-first faction and with that came the embrace of things like job outsourcing and cheap-labor insourcing, not to mention trickle-down economics. For Trump's supporters, there was this idea that the Republican Party could be reformed to become a bastion for America-first ideas. But so far, it is largely unchanged, and we can continue to assume that the Republican Party will continue to be what it has been as long as the Party is the vehicle through which business-first seeks to influence politics.
As for Bernie, everyone knows the Democrats shut him out using technicalities in 2016 and went with establishment candidate Hillary Clinton instead. This happened because the Democratic Party is fixed to remain pro-business too, and Clinton was the safer bet in that regard. For one, she was not going to be as hard on the wallets of the ultra-rich as Bernie. Clinton was also a safer bet for the open-borders industry based on her voting record, and the safest bet overall given the uncertainty about where Trump stood on the issue.
In any case, the fury over Sanders' betrayal was quickly forgotten by all the "Trump won because of Russian ads" noise. But, with the Sanders campaign again soaring, the "centrist" Democrats might be playing with fire if they carry out more of the same. This goes back to the Bernie-favoring demographic tilt in American society, where a growing number of Democrat-supporters are more into Bernie's hardline economic reforms because they are young, poor and far- left. Arguably, given this trend, the stategy of pushing the non-white contingent towards an Obama-like chameleon centrist - or, rather, a "Squad" of chameleon centrists bankrolled by Apple, Alphabet Inc., Creatis Capital, Evercore Partners, Fedex, Boeing, AT&T, Evercore, the End Citizens United PAC, East Bridge Capital, Microsoft, DISH Network, iHeart Media, Estee Lauder, Verizon, Brownstein, Hyatt, WilmerHale LLP, T-Mobile, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Sprint, Hilton, Morgan Stanley, Dell, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Twitter, and Oracle - might not be enough.
If Bernie triumphs and takes the Democratic nomination, it will be because of demographics and the Democrats' inability to direct that tilt towards a centrist. Another factor will be the left's own rhetoric, used for years to rally against richy-rich Bush-Cheney Yale-ish types, as the chickens finally come home to roost. But Bernie's triumph would also be because the pro-business influencers in the Democratic Party went along with it all fait accompli. It would mean that former Republican-turned-Democrat "centrist" Michael Bloomberg and his money to produce campaign propaganda ($184 million in three months alone plus a Super Bowl ad) along with all his Obama's endorsements, cannot change the fact that people are angry and tired of "centrists", and there is no holding the storm back.
