To anyone who groks the urgency of implementing the GND, our desperate need to deep-six Joe Biden and similar "moderates"--in fact, staunch guardians of an untenable, extremist status quo--should be obvious. Such "moderate extremists" are in fact the deeply entrenched, self-serving Ancien Regime against whom all justified political revolutions are launched. To be a "moderate" in the face of criminally unjust government is to be an extremist, just as Biden, Clinton, Schumer, Pelosi and their establishment Democrat ilk are extremists in their "moderate" rejection of radical, but essential, measures to address humanity's climate emergency. Only those calling for revolutionary measures--especially if they're peaceful revolutionary measures--have any current claim to being rational or moral.
Even in 2016, based predominantly on runaway economic inequality and its democracy-destroying political and painful social consequences, Bernie Sanders was already calling for "political revolution." This was even before the GND's sudden explosion on national consciousness placed these inequality-related issues in the context of humanity's climate emergency. So, even though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) was the first national politician to openly publicize and promote today's GND, it's impossible to imagine her winning it national recognition without Sanders' 2016 Democratic presidential campaign and its sweeping attack on economic inequality. Indeed, the Green Party (deliberately marginalized by our bipartisan political establishment and their lackeys in the corporate media) strove heroically but vainly for years--long before any voters had heard of AOC--to popularize the GND and thereby improve its own regrettably bleak electoral prospects.
Since AOC required Sanders' insurgent Democratic presidential run to make the GND wildly popular, he richly deserves to be called the "godfather" (as Grist's Zoya Teirstein insightfully called him) of today's GND. All the more so because he--unlike most Democrat presidential hopefuls--warmly, openly embraces his GND "godchild." As evidence, note that he is the first--and perhaps the only--presidential contender to appear (alongside AOC and Naomi Klein!) at a Sunrise-sponsored event promoting the GND.
But even more importantly, the GND seems the clear logical fulfillment--amidst 2020's far more alarming climate crisis--of Sanders' 2016 call for political revolution. The 2020 GND, in short, is Sanders' 2016 "political revolution" writ large. Which is why purported progressive presidential contenders too spineless to endorse Sanders' political revolution in 2016--we think especially of Elizabeth Warren--should be distrusted as fitting stewards of today's Green New Deal.
Consider, by contrast, the miraculously gutsy Tulsi Gabbard--hated and feared by establishment Democrats and their subservient media for precisely that reason. In 2016 the opportunistic Warren, possibly after cutting some private deal with Hillary Clinton, refused to endorse anyone, leaving Sanders--the candidate who clearly shared her anti-plutocratic principles--to swing in the wind as the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with Clinton and major media to sabotage his candidacy. While Gabbard, with a far more precarious perch in the party yet acting as Warren's full-spined anti-matter, indignantly resigned her post with the DNC to work on Sanders' campaign. And on foreign policy, Gabbard has clearly been the gutsiest, most anti-establishment of Democrat presidential contenders-- more so than Sanders, which posed us Bernie or Bust strategists quite a quandary, since global peace is a crucial component of an effective GND.
Ultimately, we sadly decided (as pragmatic radicals) that Tulsi can't possibly win this time around, being so unfairly treated by liberal establishment media and having had little time to build the name recognition and national political organization of Sanders. But we decided to honor her in the same fashion we honor the regrettably unelectable Green Party: by making her a backup threat if Bernie loses the nomination (see next section).
Counter-extortion vs. Democrat Extortion: Preventing the "Empty Suit Election" at All Costs
If Bernie or Bust 2.0 is an improvement over the original version, it's not simply because Bernie now represents not just "political revolution" but a climate-saving GND (which we frame as a green revolution). That's certainly a considerable upgrade, but it's just our luck and not at all our doing. If Bernie or Bust has improved our game, it's by reflecting on the logic of own strategy, so as to better understand, communicate, and implement it.
What voters need to understand about Bernie or Bust 2.0 is that we're all about counter-extortion in defensive response to establishment Democrats' intolerable, civilization-threatening electoral extortion. Which means, in short, extorting our votes for Joe Biden in an "Empty Suit Election" versus Donald Trump where no policy remotely relevant to average people's concerns--and worst of all, humanity's ever-worsening climate plight--will be offered.
With more than ever at stake, we cannot allow the Dem establishment to extort our votes for Biden simply because "we know his face" and "he's not Trump." The fate of civilization demands that a serious Green New Deal be on the table--which requires that empty-suit establishment DINOsaur Biden not be on the ballot. To guarantee that result, Bernie or Bust 2.0 is fully justified in exercising organized counter-extortion: we pledge never to vote for Biden under any conceivable circumstance but one, and that's the virtually impossible case of him picking Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate (and Tulsi inexplicably accepting). We call this backup demand to run with Tulsi "#TulsiOrTrash the Democratic Party," and it's our tribute to Gabbard's exceedingly rare anti-establishment courage.
We do offer other prospective non-Bernie nominees the option of receiving our votes provided they (again) meet the inflexible condition of making Tulsi Gabbard their running mate--in the hope of one day making her president. Whereas with Bernie, we allow him the liberty of using the vice-presidency as a bargaining chip to improve his chances of winning the Democratic nomination should no clear winner emerge from the primaries. But clearly, I'd prefer that Gabbard be his running mate, to keep GND stewardship in gutsy, anti-establishment hands for the long haul required to implement it. FDR's original New Deal not only shows just how long the long haul of a major political overhaul can be (he was elected to four terms, no longer possible for presidents), but also the vehement opposition its stewards must face from self-serving establishment types. In Bernie and Tulsi, we see candidates provably willing (like FDR himself) to "welcome their hatred." To feel serious cognitive dissonance, just try imagining Biden in that role.
Establishment Democrats will of course argue that by rejecting Biden, we're electing Trump. To which we simply respond that by shoving an establishment GND enemy like Biden down our unwilling throats--when a popular GND could bury Trump in a landslide--they will be the ones electing Trump! And even without Bernie or Bust 2.0, the prospects of a warmongering, neoliberal #GaffeMaster like Biden (essentially Hillary 2.0) beating Trump are shaky at best. Our counter-extortion--all for the sake of a climate-saving GND a President Biden would never promote--aims at making Trump's victory over Biden even more likely, so as to stave off Biden's catastrophic candidacy in advance.
We hope all GND lovers will join us in categorically rejecting the Democrat most inherently hostile (by his outmoded worldview) to GND policies. Anyone who has recently called Dick Cheney or Mike Pence "a decent guy" and is eager to reach "across the aisle" to a Republican Party Noam Chomsky has rightly branded "the most dangerous organization in human history" is clearly living on a different planet--or in a DINOsaur era of this one. We need a populist GND championed by a principled populist like Sanders--to sweep today's criminally insane Republicans (whom Biden likes so much) into the dustbin of history. That's why we're Bernie or Bust 2.0.
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