The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Elections

A View of Sanders’ Campaign from the Left

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Bhaskar Sunkara says we should welcome Bernie Sanders’ presidential run, while being aware of its limits.

Sanders’s candidacy doesn’t have to channel left forces into what will likely be a Clinton nomination. Instead, it could be a way for socialists to regroup, organize together, and articulate the kind of politics that speaks to the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of people. And it could begin to legitimate the word “socialist,” and spark a conversation around it, even if Sanders’s welfare-state socialism doesn’t go far enough.

Read the Essay: Bernie for President? | Jacobin

Toward an Independent Politics

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From Socialist Worker:

The Democratic Party is a capitalist party, not a party representing the working class. No matter who votes for it–and, of course, the majority of Democratic voters are workers–the party apparatus itself is set up to reflect, and to some extent, organize the political interests of big business.

The mechanisms by which this takes place are hidden in plain sight: a campaign finance system that channels corporate money to political candidates; a network of think tanks and academic institutions that articulate the positions of Corporate America; a lobbying machine that applies continual pressure to legislators, the executive branch and the unelected government bureaucracy, at the federal, state and local level, to carry out the corporate agenda.

Read the full editorial. Declaring independence from the 1 Percent | SocialistWorker.org.