Backs to the Wall

       Maybe it will all blow over, especially if Bernie Sanders does not carry California, but as things stand today he has drawn even with Hillary Clinton and his surging candidacy is pushing democratic liberalism up against a possibility that their preferred candidate may be unable to defeat Donald Trump in November. Their careers and much more are at stake. 

       This looming twilight of the gods is creating intense hard feelings. Knives have been drawn. Famous figures like NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, Dodd-Frank’s co-author, Barney Frank, and Senators Schumer and Feinstein believe it to be true that Sanders’ proposals are impractical campaign pie-in-the sky promises. However, they are up against a different truth: that Sanders has created a social change movement of biblical proportions.  He intends to overthrow the status quo in ways the Clinton era has been unable to accomplish, and he’s caught a big wave.    

       A political revolution is underway. The Sanders movement has parallels  with the intense dissatisfaction in the country mirrored in the Trump candidacy.  Both candidates are drawing upon the “fed-up” crowd in both party traditions.  The Trump constituency is diverse in its own way, attractive to many and also growing.  

       Although thousands in the crowds Sanders now attracts several times every day show a lot of young college age faces, the California Board of elections this week reported the astounding number of 850,000 new voters have registered in California since January 1^st.  That’s one reason why the Sanders campaign last evening (Friday the 27^th) sent a formal letter to the DNC asking them

“to remove Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank as the chairmen of two Democratic National Convention Standing Committees….Malloy serves as the co-chairman of the Platform Committee and Frank is the co-chairman of the convention's Rules Committee….”

“Their criticisms of Senator Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the Senator and his Campaign"

       A New Yorker cartoon years ago pictured a conversation between two goldfish in a bowl. “Okay,” says one, “if there isn’t a God who changes the water?”  In the common person’s political theology the fish have to figure out how to look after themselves. In the democratic establishment view it’s better to count on the experts in power, but it’s their twilight the Bernie Sanders movement is threatening to make real.

       We've observed before that historically speaking social movements not well-anchored politically often fail. If Bernie Sanders wins California watch for the burly Barney Frank to start throwing the fists before and at the Convention in Philadelphia.  His problem will be that the youthful spirit of the times, if defeated, could put Trump in the White House.