Bernie Lovers: A Revolution Is What You Signed Up For, And This Is Only The Beginning

If one accepts that Hillary is the most likely Democratic nominee for president does that mean we pack it up and go home? No. We signed up for a political revolution, not just this campaign.
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Attendees listen during a campaign event for Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, not pictured, in Huntington, West Virginia, U.S., on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Sanders' single win in Rhode Island out of the five contests held on Tuesday puts his opponent Hillary Clinton on the brink of the Democratic presidential nomination. Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Attendees listen during a campaign event for Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, not pictured, in Huntington, West Virginia, U.S., on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Sanders' single win in Rhode Island out of the five contests held on Tuesday puts his opponent Hillary Clinton on the brink of the Democratic presidential nomination. Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images

First, my Bernie comrades, a little dose of reality.

Hillary Clinton won four out of five states Tuesday night. Including the superdelegates that are currently aligned with her, she is 245 delegates away from winning the nomination. Superdelegates have historically sided with the candidate who wins the popular vote. Also, the DNC which is manifestly the handmaiden of the Clinton campaign has significant leverage over the superdelegates.

So, short of landslide victories in California, Indiana and New Jersey -- where most of the remaining delegates are -- the numbers game is over. As it is, almost every poll shows Clinton holding a slight lead in all three of those states. The only other scenarios in which Hillary Clinton will lose the presidential nomination would be either a brokered convention in which virtually all superdelegates switch over to Sanders or an indictment as a result of the FBI investigation into the email scandal. Even in the unlikely event of the latter, there are legal loopholes that may allow her to stay the nominee.

So, if one accepts that Hillary is the most likely Democratic nominee for president does that mean we pack it up and go home?

No. We signed up for a political revolution, not just this campaign.

Does it mean we stop posting, blogging, phone banking, knocking on doors and getting out the vote?

No. The contest is not yet over and if there is one thing about the Bernie campaign that you can be sure about, it is the belief that we can make the impossible possible.

But it does mean that we start thinking ahead and, especially, start thinking about preserving and nurturing this movement.

Bernie Sanders has repeatedly called his campaign a political revolution. I was present at the Chase Center in Wilmington, DE this past Saturday when he told a raucous crowd that this political revolution is bigger than any one individual. Sanders knows that what he is fighting for will not just be achieved by electing him President-even though that is the kickstart that we are all hoping for. It will take voting in true progressives into the two Houses of Congress and a long and difficult path of undoing the influence of lobbies on Government before true changes in government policies can even begin.

This is not a clash of egos or a winner-takes-all contest we are engaged in; it is a struggle to change the present and thus the future of this nation.

In fact this is not just about America; we are part of a movement that is global and that began with grass roots phenomena like the Indignados in Spain, the "Space for Dialogue" leftist movement in Greece and the Occupy Wall Street movement right here. In Spain and Greece the movements have actually translated into political victories and Podemos and Syriza, the direct successors of the leftist movements are now in power. But it has been a long hard road getting there even for them and yes, there is still much to do. The Indignados went to the polls and destroyed their ballot cards in the 2011 Spanish elections, a powerful rejection of an electoral system that they believed was rigged by the elitist and corrupt political establishment. They protested and marched for four years before they tested electoral triumph.

Political revolutions do not come easy.

There is much to be learnt from those two examples; the "Democratic Socialism" movement has only just arrived on the political stage in the United States. It is in its fledgling stage where we are still trying to explain what it entails to a nation that has been taught to abhor the very word "socialism". It is astonishing enough that it has already achieved such significant electoral success given that it only entered into the popular imagination last summer. We must realize that challenging the status quo is a huge undertaking; calling out the colossal web of corruption and vested interest that defines the politics of lobbying means taking on those who control the wealth, the power structures and the media of this country. They will resist us and do their best to make us seem irrelevant and impotent. They are doing that right now.

How then do we proceed from here?

Firstly, we must continue to go out and vote for Bernie Sanders, not just for a show of strength but to make the important statement that this is not a fight we are running away from and that we believe in doing the impossible.

Next and most important, if we do not succeed in this endeavor, we do not just disappear from the social media blogs, pages and groups we have built up. We do not just accept the status quo for the next four years. On the contrary, we start preparing for the 34 Senate seats and 435 Congress seats up for elections in November. We continue to share information, to inform people who the most progressive candidates are and where they stand on each issue. We do everything we have been doing for the past six months and more, because if we don't give up and we don't give in, the Bastille of the 1% will eventually fall. It must.

Regardless of where the Democratic primaries eventually lead let us continue on our path to rid ourselves of administrative corruption and incompetence. Let us continue to force campaign finance reform so that elections can become democratic again, not wealth-fueled contests among the political elite. Let us continue to work on ending the sanguineous reign of the Military-Industrial Complex, that unholy conduit that incessantly siphons wealth to the corporate elite.
Let us commit, above all, to cracking the facade of illusion that mainstream media covers the reality of American politics and the State of the Union with. The truth is most people still do not see the establishment for what it is. Only when the monster beneath the veneer is revealed will people make a truly informed choice.

Plant the truth Gospel. Revolution will grow.

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