Yeah, I didn’t get a Weekly Bern installment up last week. The reason for this was because I was focused on a bunch of other shit, and nothing really eventful happened. Anyway, it turns out that Bernie Sanders just dropped out of the Presidential race, meaning that creepy Joe Biden is now the nominee.

While it should be noted that Bernie is still on the ballot, he is done campaigning. This effectively means that Biden will be the nominee unless by some miracle, everyone who already favored Biden decides to vote for Bernie instead, and lord knows the normie Democrats are too complacent to vote for a candidate that has already stopped campaigning.

Three weeks ago, I said we are going to figure out whether or not Bernie Sanders is a real revolutionary or not. We now know that he is not by pledging his loyalty to the Democratic establishment. As much as I appreciate everything Bernie has done to shift the narrative and fight for genuine change and reform, the problem is that he has grown too complacent.

If Bernie was to win this primary, he needed to risk his entire career by pointing the finger at Joe Biden, the DNC, and the Democratic establishment as a whole. Instead, he choose to continue playing by their rules, and he naively believes that Biden can beat Trump. And as a result, he choose not to mention Joe Biden’s cognitive decline or the fact that he was accused of rape.

Once again, I appreciate everything he has done, but Bernie has greatly disrespected every one who has been harmed as a result of Joe Biden’s policies, or anyone who was ever a victim of sexual assault by not doing the right thing and calling him out! That being said, I’m not calling on us to cancel Bernie or anything, as I it is entirely likely that any one of us may have done the same thing if we were in his shoes.

One recent bit of controversy was a piece stating that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has basically sold out and is now with the establishment. This subject is one of the reasons why there wasn’t a Weekly Bern piece last week, I just did NOT want to talk about this subject. I didn’t want to talk about it because I was initially unsure what to think about it. The criticism in question comes from AOC’s decision to try and work from within the Democratic party rather than combat it, as well as her refusal to endorse other progressive primary challengers and creating her own PAC rather than working with Justice Democrats.

While AOC does deserve criticism for effectively turning her back on candidates that were in her position and thus being a gigantic hypocrite, it does not change the fact that she still supports the same policies, and is one of the few members of congress to actually believe in something rather than just sitting there to collect a paycheck. But more importantly, we should probably examine WHY so many progressives start to become more complacent once they make it to DC.

Remember back when AOC endorsed Bernie, she talked about how the establishment will use every dirty trick in the book to make you fall in line? Suddenly it makes much more sense why she has caved to pressure before she even completed her first term. It becomes immensely difficult to hold on to your values when they will do everything to tempt you away from them, or to put pressure on them. It becomes significantly harder for one to constantly fight back against the rest of congress when so much of your career is based on working with them. It ends up like high school all over again where you feel like you need to fit in.

A lot of us underestimate how much of our personality is shaped by our environment. Back in 2015, I was not the leftist feminist activist I was now. I was an anti-feminist GamerGate supporter who was subscribed to try-hard edge channels like SargonofAkkad and Razorfist. I ended up changing my entire belief structure because I made more leftist friends, and started to like what they said more than the edgy dipshits who compare feminism to Nazism. I also likely would not have pushed AS far to the left if I didn’t get my Twitter account brigaded by transphobic fuckboys and effectively need to rebuild my following from the ground up on another platform, this time with significantly less centrists.

The point is, many of you ultra lefties can grandstand enough about how it’s pointless to support Bernie because he’s an imperialist sellout like all the rest, and he does have some genuine blights on his record. But no matter how far left your beliefs are, when you are put in that kind of environment, they will find ways to make you compromise them, even if it is bit by bit. It’s how you can have someone like Bobby Rush, who went from a Black Panthers member who called the police “pigs” in 1968, to someone who endorsed Michael “put em up against the walls” Bloomberg for President in 2020!

Bernie himself said that real change happens from the bottom up, so it becomes clear that whichever demented rapist wins this election, our next move remains the same. The only way we will get any serious change is with full on revolt. We are already seeing this with the increase in general strikes, and we must do what we can to support any of those who fight back. We need to remind our government that Bernie Sanders was the compromise, and that the real solution is to bring back the guillotine.

And the second thing to focus on, is the down ballot races. Bernie may be out of the race, but that does not change the fact that we already have a number of major down ballot candidates that are still in the race and need our support now more than ever. And as we saw with Marie Newman, their blacklist still isn’t enough to keep pushing them out. I will once again take the opportunity to plug the list I have been keeping and frequently updating of progressive down ballot candidates.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JJRicHSSge-Ye9Nwo_ND72YdkgFY9MkClmY4p4-TsPg/edit

Of course, I have my limits so this has mostly focused on congressional candidates. I didn’t even get to take into account local elections, so the best suggestion I can give is to stay informed, and also to support organizations like Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Brand New Congress, and the Rose Caucus. And also here’s the obligatory shameless plug for my Pink Tsunami article series, where I talk about the elections of note on a state by state basis. I have already covered, Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Texas, and Ohio, and I plan to cover many more.

Bernie may have dropped out of the Presidential race, but this war has only just begun.

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