The next presidential go-round holds real promise for Sanders, the more left(ish) candidate, despite the double-trap that the duopoly system usually presents for Black voters. Recent polls show Sanders gets his highest ratings from Blacks: 73 percent favorable, while only about half of whites and 68 percent of Hispanics are favorable to Sanders.
While most U.S. voters believe they are effectively restricted to choosing between two corporate parties, Black voters perceive only one choice within the duopoly: to oppose the White Man's Party by voting for the Democrat most likely to win. That double-bind almost always means Black support for the candidate with the deepest pockets -- the most corporate Democrat. This, despite the fact that, according to political scientist Michael Dawson, the largest group of Black voters most closely resembles "Swedish Social Democrats" -- the "socialist" bloc Bernie Sanders claims to most admire. (Dawson adds, "and many [Blacks] are more radical than that.") This time around, however, the "left" candidate is also the one with the winner's glow, who would have beaten Trump in 2016. By next September, Black folks may well see Kamala Harris as the spoiler who could screw up the chance to be rid of Trump.
"Sanders is seen as a winner, a man who can remove the Orange Terror from the Oval Office."
Of course, the only way out of the duopoly is to leave it, by building a real "socialist" party -- or one close enough to encompass a minimal program against endless austerity and war, the only items on the capitalists' menu in the twilight of U.S. empire. Sanders remains "an imperialist pig," like Truman and all the Democratic presidents that came after him -- and also plays the "sheep dog" that gathers in the wayward lefties of the flock. But that struggle for a new party occurs in an environment in which most of its prospective members are ensnared in the Democratic Party, which holds captive the 40 percent or so of the U.S. population that are actually social democrats, or "more radical than that." This cohort includes the vast majority of Black people, and is larger than the second-biggest ideological bloc in the country: Trump's White Man's Party GOP. The corporate Democrats will never relinquish their control of half the duopoly, and would rather repeat their loss to Trump than open the door -- even if only rhetorically -- to "socialism." They will either crush Sanders in the cruel light of day or, should he get the nomination, abandon and sabotage his candidacy -- as they did George McGovern (non-socialist, but anti-Vietnam War) in 1972.
"The Democratic Party holds captive the 40 percent or so of the U.S. population that are actually social democrats, or 'more radical than that.'"
From such a heady, nasty mix, one can never know the outcome. But it could be the opening that breaks the duopoly -- a process that began with Donald Trump's primary victories, in 2016, prompting most of the ruling class and their national security spooks to crowd into Hillary Clinton's "big, nasty tent" -- from which they launched "Russiagate" on election night.
It could also be the historical point when Black voters split dramatically with the Black Misleadership Class, as exemplified by the Congressional Black Caucus, which tried unsuccessfully, last week, to retain the rules that empowered "super-delegates" to thwart the will of Democratic primary voters on the first ballot of the presidential nominating convention. The Black Caucus can always be counted on to go with "the money." Black voters may perceive that, in 2020, they have a chance to go with "a winner" whose politics -- except for the imperialist pig part -- is also closer to their own. And once the duopoly is fractured, a whole world of politics and parties becomes possible.
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