Our Revolution

Larry Sanders cast his official vote from those for Sanders Abroad for his brother, Presidential Nominee Bernard Sanders 7.26.2016.

Popular Votes Total for Bernie: 13,168,222

Popular Votes Total for Hillary: 16,847,084

Yesterday Bernie Sanders officially conceded as he gave his electoral votes to Hillary Clinton. In so doing his remarkable campaign has come to an official end. Today the sadness sunk in for me. Bernie got so close. The votes short could easily have been made up from votes tossed or lost, and of course from Independents who were not eligible to vote in primaries in so many states, including our own here in the Land of Enchantment. 

Bernie supporters knew all along of an obvious bias for Clinton coming directly from the democratic headquarters as well as the mainstream media. Too late in the process this finally got exposed. The media started to question it's own reporting and tried to make up, while the chair of the democratic party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, due to exposure of damaging e-mails via Wikileaks (Russia?) finally, under pressure, stepped down just before the convention. Now she may be in trouble for her re-election to the senate and given her support of TPP I am not sorry for her.

So with deep sadness I mourn the loss of my vision of a Social Democrat for President of the United (or divided) States. This would have been a president not swayed by corruption, a president not filled with lies (Bernie has not yet been caught with his pants on fire) but a Jewish president with a heart big enough to hold concern for the Palestinian people. A president for the working class people and the poor, not only the upper middle, professional class and rich. A president that wold have pushed for a green economy and opposed TTP and fracking for real. A president that would have understood the dire urgency of climate change and toxic load on our environment. It would have been a damn interesting experiment. It could have been so very exciting to see those changes we hold so dear for so long in our heart become reality. Solar power for all, certainly in our mostly sunny state. Our national lab focused primarily on the developing of green energy, rather then in service to the weapons industry. A living wage that would stimulate our local economies. Last, but not least health care for all, rather then a give-away to the pharmaceutical industry. 

The reality Social Democrats or Bernie supporters envision is not extreme, rather it is a reordering of our values, of our priorities with the recognition that the top 1%, the cream of the cream, profit from the current system unfairly, while the poor  and working stiff have it too tough. The system is rigged in so many ways, it needs an overhaul badly and the majority of Americans seem to agree on that, if not the remedy.

Besides policies there is the simple human factor, men like those Sanders brothers, able to cry in public, because we no longer belong to a patriarchal system of thought that equates emotions with weakness and strength with dominance and bullying.

Bernie, as I like to refer to him affectionally, not disrespectfully, has been nothing but a model of civility and eloquence, even under an enormous amount of pressure. The work to steer the US back toward the left and progressive values will continue. Bernie started the Sanders Institute, this e-mail was sent out yesterday.

"Our work will continue in the form of a new group called Our Revolution. The goal of this organization will be no different from the goal of our campaign: we must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families."