excellent critique of Left/pseudoLeft attacks on Sanders

[cloudythescribbler]

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-does-the-radical-left-feel-threatened-by-the-bernie-sanders-campaign/

[MisterP]

1. and here's the main CounterPunch article that sparked the debate

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/21/bernie-out-of-the-closet-sanders-longstanding-deal-with-the-democrats/

[Catherina]

2. He's getting savaged by several Leftists I know

but that's ok. You can't please everyone. I've decided to be *pragmatic* this election.


From your article

As a tactical matter, then, the Sanders upsurge is an invaluable tool for the mass dissemination of left themes and solutions right now—a priceless benefit that far outweighs the realpolitik lapses that preoccupy the left-echo-chamber Sanders refuseniks. Now notice that I just used the word tactical. Allow me to explain. Whatever the rough spots in Sanders’s progressive resume, especially on foreign policy, it remains a stubborn tactical reality (and perhaps I will also be forgiven for using the word reality) that it is only through the vehicle of his presidential campaign as a Democrat that these kinds of progressive issues and solutions can flood the airwaves and touch the tens of millions of desperate but ill-informed Americans who most need to think and hear about them—in most cases, for the first time. This is the unique and irreplaceable value of the Sanders candidacy: it is strewing seeds of mass consciousness around issues of class and inequality and the environment in a way that no other person or party could accomplish right now. Radicals need to ask themselves: How is that a bad thing?

Whatever the outcome of Sanders’s campaign, the sheer scope of the audience for his progressive checklist, his slashing denunciations of the economic and political tyranny of the billionaire class, are green shoots in an otherwise barren political landscape—and who knows how they might flourish in the future?

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-does-the-radical-left-feel-threatened-by-the-bernie-sanders-campaign/

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Kshawma Sarant endorses Bernie.

http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/08/03/sawant-socialist-bernie-sanders/

[azmom]

4. Bernie's election has inspired me to

Learn more about socialism, and I'm probably not the only one.