Tag Archives: California primary

The System Rolls Over, Groans And Goes Back To Sleep

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Forgive me while I show my disgust with the President,  the Associated Press, the entire cadre of phony progressives and all who are pretenders to the thrones of both journalism and progressive politics, as they now turn their focus to pulling the Democratic party back together again, convincing Bernie Sanders to go away and behave himself, joining the mainstream club or being forced to face the possibility of being indicted by the jabbering mob for handing the election to Donald J. Trump.   Or worse yet, to be accused of not supporting the first woman candidate for president, regardless of her “baggage.”

From the beginning the Bernie Sanders campaign was an interesting aberration but we all know that he never had a chance.   That’s what they kept telling us.  Not a chance.  Not when millions of new and mostly younger voters joined his push to restore progressive politics to the Democratic Party which had been turned into a clubby bunch of centrist Republicans posing as Democrats.   Not when Hillary Clinton hijacked much of his platform and claimed it for herself, possibly one of the cleverest lies of any politician in any time while pundits and reporters alike moved her campaign along – buying into her gameplan by telling us that numbers don’t lie and that the election was a done deal dictated by DNC-approved “superdelegates.”  Even before it was.

A post-primary analysis in the San Francisco Chronicle makes the interesting point that Sanders was let down by young and poor voters in California, a state that might have offered him one last best chance at a true challenge to Hillary Clinton.   It’s an interesting proposition, but you must also wonder how things would have gone had the media been less of a cheerleader for Mrs. Clinton all along.   From the very beginning, the mainstream treated the Sander’s canididacy as a joke, even when it became clear that he was picking up serious support, the Clinton-biased media continued to blather on that “The Sanders candidacy is interesting, but we all know he really doesn’t stand a chance…”   No, he didn’t, not with that kind of bias being fed to the electorate day after day from a crowd of political insiders with no concept of the changes taking place away from their insulated and well-healed orbit.   What chance did Sanders have with MSNBC becoming the “Hillary Channel?”

The cherry atop this hot smudge sundae of bluster and bias came the day before the California primary when the once venerable Associated Press announced to the world that they had contacted enough superdelegates to determine that Sanders was officially done.    A new poltical meme that was dutifully picked up and spread like a rash throughout the corporate media, delighted that what they had been saying all along was finally coming to pass.   It must be true, if it was coming from the mighty AP, giving so many California voters no reason whatsoever to go to the polls.   If it was over, it was over, so why bother?

This wasn’t some pundit or small town paper or blogger speaking out, this was the mighty Associated Press.  What giant of journalism at the AP decided it would be a good idea to officially invalidate the California primary?

How sad for the press and for America.   But never mind any of that. So much more important to now join together in one massive effort to defeat Donald Trump, no matter the cost.  Time to forget the past and come together to insure our future regardless of the process.   It will all be forgotten soon anyway as we move on with more of the same old, same old and the old man from Vermont and his crazy egalitarian ideas become nothing more than a distant bump on the political highway.

Oh, California! – A Morning After Poem

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Oh, California!

By Ron Olsen

The Surfliner pulled out in the early morning haze

Rattling down the tracks

No looking back now

Hillary dressed like the palace guard

Wearing a white tent

Smiling far too broadly

A cheshire cat that swallowed a server

That ate the dove

That gobbled up a relationship with greed

Secrets impossible to keep

Smiling ear to ear

Supported by superdelegates

And a system rigged from the top

An unimpartial media

Telling us all along

Bernie had no chance

Sooner or later

You too will believe

As they peat and repeat

Endlessly bellowing

Bernie can’t win

Bernie’s a joke

Bernie’s a Socialist

The only straight-shooter out there

Who

In the end

Was betrayed by even the free-thinkers

And radical freaks in California

Who turned their backs for a woman

No matter the price

Or didn’t know they had to ask for a special ballot

Confusion breeding success for the lady candidate

And her husband’s Foundation

Depriving the country

Of one last chance

At throwing the money changers

Away from the temple doors

You did it sunny Cal

No calling it back now

As media mavens gush

With satisfaction and self-congratulation

Oh, California!

Liberal, righteous, progressive California!

Proving they were right all along

Bernie never had a chance

Even when he did

The old Vermont steamer

Slammed by a wall

Of conspiracy and collusion

Intended and unintended alike

Leaving those on the inside

Insulated from any real accountability

As the nation returns to business as usual

And the political hacks blather on

About all the baggage she carries

Needing safari bearers

Hauling it on their broken backs

The train now just a dot

In the distant

California sun