The political revolution continues
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won 74 delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 27 in Washington’s May 21 caucuses. The corporate media’s reluctance to mention the Revolution of 2016 has not stopped it from gaining momentum. Democrats in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and other states joined the Solid South in opposing the political revolution, but it continues to grow.
Yet to be determined is who will be its leader – Sanders or Donald Trump?
Proud status quo candidate and former Secretary of State Clinton bragged in an early debate that Henry Kissinger approves of her handling of the job. “Not my kind of guy,” responded Sanders about the architect of the current world order. It has its fans, including Clinton. Long gone are her days of protest against Kissinger’s handiwork, the Vietnam War and right-wing Latin American dictators who disappeared socialists like Sanders. Today’s Hillary is a war hawk, to show a woman can be tough.
Like Richard Nixon and Barack Obama, Trump will run as a peace-and-reconciliation candidate. Recently, he met with Kissinger, winner of a peace prize for ending the war in Vietnam which today he said ended too soon. Their meeting signaled to nervous conservatives Trump’s proposed dramatic changes in foreign policy were not to be taken seriously, unlike his sincere love of the poorly educated and sympathy for dupes.
Longtime David Rockefeller associate Kissinger approves of Trump’s lust for Mideast oil, having made U.S. domination of the Arabian Gulf a foreign policy priority. The result is too much carbon in the atmosphere and endless warfare. Rockefeller lives on at 100, but the next generation’s Abby Rockefeller is in her seventies and a revolutionary.
Momentum is everything in political revolutions. Powering the present demand for fundamental change are the traditional causes – intolerable social and economic conditions. But added to these motivators and putting them in the shade is the poisoning of the environment Rachel Carson documented in 1962’s “Silent Spring,” now at a critical stage. Every day, 130 species become extinct.
Trump’s momentum is also fueled by economic and social injustice as felt by his middle-and-working-class supporters. It may propel him to the White House. In recent polls, Trump has caught up to Clinton’s lead or overtaken her, a trend likely to continue along with more Clinton primary losses to Sanders.
If Trump is beating Clinton in the polls at the end of July, superdelegates at the Democratic convention, especially those on the ballot in November, may well become revolutionaries and nominate Sanders rather than lose the presidency to Trump and more seats in Congress to Republicans.
Jim Greenwood
Washington