Lots of friends went to the Bernie/AOC rally, and wondered why the one with the most radical politics, did not join.

Anyone who has read this blog and contemplated what I write about already knows but, in a nutshell, the Bernie/AOC traveling circus is simply perforative theatre, designed to “sheepdog” restless progressives back into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party, whose poll numbers are in the toilet. According to a CNN poll released in March, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has collapsed by a whopping 20 percentage points in just four years, and now stands at just 29%–the lowest in the history of CNN’s poll, which goes back to 1992. 

After Harris’s disastrous campaign and the Democrats ongoing capitulation to Trump’s authoritarianism they really, really need something to fire-up the progressives who are abandoning the party in droves. This is how the New York Times, frames the tour. “Bernie Sanders and his apparent heir, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have drawn enormous crowds on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, energizing a beaten-down Democratic Party.”

Apparently, some narrative management, with better messaging, is just what the spin-doctor ordered. As a nice bonus, Bernie and AOC’s perforative theatre thrills the professional/managerial/caste (PMC), who largely control the Democratic Party, because it requires little change in their policies and more importantly, zero sacrifice from their billionaire benefactors. I mean we’re not talking about protecting Social Security, Medicare-for-all, raising taxes or anything crazy like that.

I went to Bernie’s rallies in 2016 and really thought that he was offering up an alternative to the toxic neoliberalism and neoconservatism that is embraced by both parties. The way in which the Democratic party deep-sixed his campaign was disheartening but not surprising. But I’m still pissed that Sanders turned around and supported Clinton, even after after she red-baited him as a “Russian asset.” Then, rather than taking his small donation army and growing the Democratic -Socialist party, he herded his followers back to the same Tweedle-De/Tweedle-Dum bi-partisan cluster-fuck that has brought us to this point.

After again campaigning against oligarchy in 2020, Sanders proved his capitulation wasn’t a fluke. When the other Democratic primary candidates dropped out to fall in behind Biden, Bernie endorsed Genocide-Joe, even when his cognitive decline was an open secret in the Beltway. The Biden Administration was truly abysmal, initiating a dangerous proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and actively participating in Israel’s live-streamed genocide, while ending Trump’s Covid social welfare policies.

Jeebus! Am I the only one who remembers this shit?

The brutal reality is that the Dems can’t be bothered to promote universal policies that benefit average Americans but they fought like hell, in 2016 and 2020, to make sure Bernie lost, even at the cost of a Trump victory. What’s crazy is that Bernie Sanders is only a sort of warmed-over New Deal Democrat, but that’s how far we have descended in our flight into terrain. The Donkey Party did that even as the price of not backing Sanders has been Trump, since he consistently polled as beating Trump, and by a bigger margin than any Democrat pretender. What’s darkly humorous and emblematic of the crazy times we live in is that Trump’s erratic tariff economic policies are driving the billionaires, who were instrumental in Trump’s election, to pine for a Sanders presidency.

I’ve said this before but in a capitalist country like ours there will always be a political party that represents capital. It’s a real problem, however, when both parties do. The PMC’s that run the Democratic Party disagree. Furthermore, they understand that many progressives know little about political realities and will happily return to the Democrats warm embrace if an enticing narrative is presented. After all, our political opinions, ultimately, are what we feel about the world, not what we think about it.

It took me a while to realize this, and I probably wasted years of my life under the delusion that people could be convinced by rational argument. Having changed my opinions a number of times in my life on the basis of new information or better arguments, I thought that everybody did the same.

I won’t get fooled again.

Update:— It’s even worse than I thought.

Bernie Sanders has been repeatedly uttering the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which in the year 2025 can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia.

Israel does not have “a right to defend itself” against an occupied population in a giant concentration camp. Under international law it has a right to end the occupation, and that’s it. “Israel has a right to defend itself” is just a slogan people say when they want to justify supplying an ongoing genocide.

At one point in the tour Sanders stood passively watching as police dragged off rally attendees who draped a Free Palestine flag over the US flag during his speech. He just awkwardly continued monologuing as their flag was confiscated and they were forcibly removed, even as the crowd booed and eventually began chanting “Free Palestine”.