Well, we have been given our marching orders, but no chain of command. General Sanders said we were to provide a new generation to go into public service and spread out across the country doing things with strength and effectiveness. Fresh recruits are to be thrown into action. They have a guide: it is at berniesanders.com/win.
I could go to that site but not until I first deplore this tactic. It is wrong to send people into pitched electoral battles that will simply serve to benefit the corporate ruled Democratic Party, sans Sanders' leadership there, to ensure that the direction of effort is not just providing further empowerment to the reprehensibly wealthy few running Hillary and her legions.
It is false to say that we have to join the Dems because the bad problems are all due to the Republicans having control over government in legislatures and as governors. Two Parties can play at that corruption game and two parties are playing the game. The Dems relish it as much as the Republicans. As my opponent recently said when she decided to run her Bernie "moderate" (con artist) campaign in a Primary against me, "Let the games begin!"
Denk, my opponent, is now the winner of that race, due to establishment Dems and Clintonites supporting her. She is a national Bernie delegate, despite her equivocating on Bernie. The Party put all its firepower into helping Denk; they promoted her run against her Dem opponent Jill Barkley for Maine's Rep on the DNC (meaning she will be a super delegate next time).
She was able to speak before the entire Convention, and called her opponent a 'show pony'. Denk was also put on a special panel, entitled "Running for Office, Why do it?". She could make the case for why she ran after declaring she wouldn't, and justify her reasons for running against me, the pro-Bernie volunteer. I was told by the leadership that I couldn't speak on the panel.
The Maine Dem Party promised me at Maine Dem Headquarters in Augusta, where I volunteered, that they would not support her in the Primary. This was reinforced to me by the leaders at the Candidate's Training.
Nevertheless in disregard of this, they also helped Denk by stuffing envelopes with her campaign material for every convention goer. They helped her with staff volunteers and special favors that are somehow allowed(?) in a supposedly clean election campaign. She won with Party backing and many bowed to kiss her ring.
Denk canvassed with the newly elected Senate candidate, Deschambault, who got tremendous amounts of campaign literature paid by the Party so that she could become the nominee for interim State Senator three weeks prior to the Primary, giving her the advantage over her Dem rival, Twomey. In addition, this Senate candidate received a considerable sum, (according to someone running as an incumbent for State Senate), from PAC money given to her by another Senate candidate, Russell.
My opponent got some extra help also, apparently, judging from the amount spent on her campaign materials (detailed on her supplier's price list), since the cost of her materials was more than the allotment from Clean Elections would normally cover.
Deschambault also promised not to get involved in my Primary. Is she a Bernie supporter? No, yet Denk and she canvassed together, when she doesn't even support a core tenet of Bernie's plank: the minimum wage increase. This is a betrayal of Bernie, who is fighting for the survival of his Candidacy.
Many others in the Party helped my opponent. Democratic Party staffer Marc Mallon was off to make calls on election day after telling voters he was a friend of Denk's. Other legislators assembled in a curious gathering purportedly for outgoing Speaker of the House Mark Eves' special issue, senior care (also Denk's TOP issue!) inviting the public to attend to hear her share her concerns for seniors, truckled into a self-centered campaign speech. Legislative supporters came from many areas of Maine to our local town just days before the Primary.
Many prominent writers of my opponent's support letters were Clinton caucus delegates. They were there when Denk, then the Caucus Convener, asked caucus goers for a volunteer back in March. They witnessed that I accepted her request for a State Rep Candidate to run against the Republican incumbent for District 9. Despite the great response when they announced to the 800 people gathered on Primary Day that they had a candidate, (me), they still chose to support her, despite this double dealing, and nobody told me of this strategy until after I was on the ballot, and committed to run.
Strangely, my campaign signs were held up for up to a week longer than promised by my supplier who just happens to handle all the mail for the Democratic Party—the Party Bernie now wants us to support.
My local race makes it abundantly clear that what happened to Bernie is not an isolated incident. Back to Bernie, then. The rationale he gave to us in his live stream on the 16th of June, is that Republicans are the ones who keep Democrats from winning. He doesn't say that this is because Democrats themselves are the ones who fail people. They promise, Obama style, what they don't deliver, which frustrates people, who then retaliate by switching to the Republicans, or not voting. The Democrats lose but console themselves by steeping in a rich broth.
Neither side is there for people any more, this is becoming painfully unmistakeable. So why make people think that the billionaire class is now only on the Republican side? Bernie was calling Hillary out for that all season. Now he is pointing his ire at the Republicans, whose defeat, even across smaller races, he makes paramount.
He is saying that it is okay that the lesser evil will be the nominee, even though it is doubtful that she will prevail against Trump the way things look now, even if Sanders falls on his sword and breaks millions of hearts doing it.
The battle lines have been redrawn. Enemies are now friends. If General Sanders will be there to handle this new strange reality, help make the necessity clear, and hold a steady hand in steering the new direction, maybe this could fly.
That isn't happening.
Sanders has only mildly hinted that he will be heading up some new something very soon. So we hope that there is more direction. I am ready to expose, play by play, exactly how the Party keeps Bernie people outside the process. Meanwhile Party insiders infiltrate and sabotage the honest efforts of those who believe that he has created room for change.
There is indeed ample evidence, of which I can attest, that the Party will throw his supporters to the wolves. Telling people to run for office under these conditions is a tragic sacrifice of good hearted people.
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