I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. For most of my life I voted for Democrats. When the party started moving to the right in the ‘80s, I continued to lean progressive. If I vote in 2020, it will only be for a truly progressive candidate.
The 2020 campaign in the U.S. isn’t even in full swing yet, and already the corporate Democratic propaganda has started with one of the main talking points: “Vote Democratic in 2020 no matter who the candidate may be.” This is similar to the way party manipulators tried to coerce people into supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016.
First the propagandists hand you a false choice, and then if you don’t like their choice, they throw misleading slurs at you. In 2016, the Hillary pushers slurred Bernie Sanders supporters as “misogynists,” “Bernie bros,” etc. Today, corporate Democratic “any-blue-will-do” pushers are already trying to smear progressive dissenters falsely as “secret Trump supporters,” or “spoilers” for the corporate Democrat.
What we need in 2020 is a genuinely progressive candidate. The Democratic Party leadership could give the public that option, but there’s more money for them in appeasing corporations by running a candidate with a track record of doing corporate-bidding in exchange for cash, favors and power.
Any time you see anyone trying to gaslight people into thinking they must vote for the Democrat in 2020 no matter how right wing or beholden to corporate money, you should realize they are trying to bulldoze you into voting against your own interests. Unless progressives hold out for real change and at last stand their ground, they will never have leverage.
We have survived many changes of power, including from Clinton to G. W. Bush to Obama to Trump. Part of the corporate Democrats’ propaganda line is that Trump is an unprecedented big scary monster, but he is no worse than many past presidents, including George W. Bush.
We can afford to stay home, not vote and cede one more election, but we can’t afford to indefinitely relinquish the chance for progressive change. As for me, I’d vote for a third party progressive candidate or a Democratic party progressive, but not for a corporate Democrat. If all progressives would vote for a progressive third party or an independent progressive or withhold their votes (and not participating is also a powerful way of making our voices heard), we would gain more leverage in coming election cycles.
Carla Binion is an Intrepid Report contributing writer.
