No self respecting leftist is going to vote for Trump
Doesn't that say something about how good or bad he really is for the left? There's a lot of tension between "Trump would be better than Biden for the left" and "no fucking way would I ever vote for Trump."
So you really think the corporate elites are going to let even a center left soc dem like Bernie Sanders come close to power again?
You could have said the same thing after 2016, yet there he was as the Democratic frontrunner in 2020 through the first four primaries. Corporate elites have enormous sway over elections, but they can't just determine the outcome by flipping a switch. To kneecap Bernie they needed (1) the left not to be too strong, (2) a centrist politician with at least some credible public support, and (3) some coordinating force -- Obama, in this case -- to persuade centrist candidates to drop out on cue. There were other factors that helped them pull it off in 2020, and there are a dozen random things that could have wrapped it up for Bernie no matter what they did (imagine if covid or the Tara Reade story hit two months earlier). And don't forget, Bernie is not an especially strong candidate. He's old, he's not particularly charismatic, he had to create a political base from scratch, he had no allies in the party, and he comes from a state too tiny to have much of an electoral impact. If anything about that situation changes in the future, there's no guarantee they'll be able to job another candidate the way they jobbed Bernie.
But now if his supporters capitulated, the bourgeoisie will not be afraid anymore.
No matter what the left does, the left doesn't get to decide how that's portrayed in the media because the left's media arm is still in its infancy. They're going to try to blame the left for any negative outcome no matter what we do. We can't control the narrative, so the discussion is about what little influence we do have on the end result, and what result we'd prefer.
Doesn't that say something about how good or bad he really is for the left? There's a lot of tension between "Trump would be better than Biden for the left" and "no fucking way would I ever vote for Trump."
You could have said the same thing after 2016, yet there he was as the Democratic frontrunner in 2020 through the first four primaries. Corporate elites have enormous sway over elections, but they can't just determine the outcome by flipping a switch. To kneecap Bernie they needed (1) the left not to be too strong, (2) a centrist politician with at least some credible public support, and (3) some coordinating force -- Obama, in this case -- to persuade centrist candidates to drop out on cue. There were other factors that helped them pull it off in 2020, and there are a dozen random things that could have wrapped it up for Bernie no matter what they did (imagine if covid or the Tara Reade story hit two months earlier). And don't forget, Bernie is not an especially strong candidate. He's old, he's not particularly charismatic, he had to create a political base from scratch, he had no allies in the party, and he comes from a state too tiny to have much of an electoral impact. If anything about that situation changes in the future, there's no guarantee they'll be able to job another candidate the way they jobbed Bernie.
No matter what the left does, the left doesn't get to decide how that's portrayed in the media because the left's media arm is still in its infancy. They're going to try to blame the left for any negative outcome no matter what we do. We can't control the narrative, so the discussion is about what little influence we do have on the end result, and what result we'd prefer.