This does it. What a politically naive piece of bullshit. If Bernie ran as an independent it would guarantee electing whatever douchebag the "R"s put forth in a reprise of Florida 2000. No thanks. We have enough Scalias, Thomases and Alitos on the Supreme Court. Grow up, Gibson! I'm unsubscribing from Nation of Change.

I think this article has it exactly wrong. Sanders should run in the primary (as Ralph Nader should have done during his several presidential campaigns), because that's the only way the message of a real left candidate can get to the broad mass of American people. Third Party candidates are completely blacked out, but with the primaries, there are debates and there will have to be coverage if a person like Sanders becomes the alternative candidate to the chosen front runner. If Sanders, miraculously, wins the primaries and becomes the candidate, then the party is stuck with him. That would be great. If he is bumped off by the big money and the nomination goes to Clinton, that's when Sanders should mount a Third Party run, when his name recognition and his positions will be well known to the whole electorate.

Dave Lindorff
thiscantbehappening.net

Unhappily, if the article's last sentence is correct, Sanders has made a huge and potentially fatal mistake (unless he retracts) of claiming to be ready unconditionally to support Clinton if she wins the Dem nomination.
Why should he have done this??! Having done it, he must retract and make his support conditional!
For the sake of his own credibility! On three counts:

(1) After all, has Clinton said that SHE would support Sanders if HE wins the nomination? Why does Sanders carry on as though Clinton is the 'real' Democrat and he, Sanders, is only a 'revolutionary' interloper who somehow has to prove his own loyalty to the party yet Clinton does not?

(2) Sanders is entitled to speak about 'revolution', but his standing as a Democratic candidate requires that he insist that - and behave as though - his positions represent the true and abiding not-particularly revolutionary principles of the Democratic party. He must insist that the burden of proof is not on him and Warran and Brown to prove that they represent the Democratic mainstream, but rather on Obama, Clinton et al to prove that their pro-TPP pro-Banks positions do.

(3) If Sanders really believes in the key points of his own agenda, he would make his support of someone else (running on any label) conditional not on that person winning a Democratic-label (or any particular label) nomination, but rather on that person credibly accepting these points of his agenda.

Sanders for President? We might start with spelling his name right. (See this article's headline.)

...totally disagree...Sanders NEEDS challenge corporate dems on their own ground-I will NOT support anymore corporate dems or reps...bushBAMA (no change from bushit) has been enough for all of us...who can imagine true dem supporting TTP end of U.S. sovereignty, drone wars-continuation of bushit worldwide=Pax Americana, "manifest destiny", continuation of "Patriot Act" anti-Constitutional bushit legislation, prosecution of whistleblowers telling truth, no accountability for bush-cheney war crimes, NO accountability for Wall $treet economic disaster while scapegoating VICTIMS of...????

Everybody can rant and rave all they want, In the end the conservatives will vote Repub and the liberals will vote Democrat. Pandering to either extreme is pointless from a political perspective. It's the middle, those of us that can see the wisdom and/or folly of both sides - that is where the battle is won. I have not seen anyone yet that I want to see become President. Happily, there is still time, though if a viable candidate does emerges he will have to come from another plant, jeopardizing the residency requirement.

Sorry, but that's exactly how we got George Bush, with Ralph Nader's third party attempt siphoning off liberal votes in a tight election. Do you want that AGAIN???

Bullsh*t...

Liberal Apologies for Obama's Ugly Reign

'liberal and "progressive" Obama defenders have brandished two justifications for their president’s depressingly Big Business-friendly record.

'The first rationalization claims that Obama has always and sincerely wanted to do genuinely progressive and left-leaning things to roll back the exaggerated power of the wealthy corporate and financial few and to defend the nation’s poor and working class majority and the common good. Alas, the excuse runs, the nation’s great wannabe people’s president and his peoples’ party has been powerless to act on these noble ambitions because of the combined reactionary and checkmating influences of the Republican Party and its big money and big media (FOX News et al.) backers.

'A second liberal and “progressive” apology for Obama’s corporatism, imperialism, militarism, and eco-cidalism places the blame on the rest of us. It’s our failure, this second storyline goes. The citizenry and activists are at fault for not making Obama be the progressive, populist, environmentalist, and peace-dividend president he really wanted to be. We didn’t compel him to advance the decent, egalitarian, and ecologically sustainable policies he sincerely desired to enact by organizing and protesting from the bottom up.'

http://www.counterpunch.org...

If Bernie runs as an Independent it will only serve to sabotage the good in pursuit of the perfect. If he continues to run as a Democrat he's as likely to lose as if he runs as a sabotaging Independent. As a Democrat he'd at least have a remote chance of becoming Hillary's vice presidential nominee. Be patient; in 2016 or 2020, Elizabeth Warren could be elected to the "highest office."

Bernie has to run as a Democrat even though he is not one for very practical reasons. Under the current rules of the game two of those reasons are: 1. to be allowed on the ballot; and 2. to be allowed in the debate. Sheesh. I too wish he could run as an Independent but that is just not possible (yet).

I, too, disagree with Carl Gibson as many of the responders also have. Just because he is running as a Democrat does not mean that he will be like Obama or Hillary. Nor does it mean that he has to drop all the things he says he wants to do if elected. The reason that most people have dropped out of voting is that no one is laying the right kind of cards on the table as Sanders does. And unlike Obama, Sanders will not back off of his platform because he is not financed by the 1% as Obama was. Obama's weakness is that he did win by the vast amount of money he got from the wealthy donors and supporters and became their servant.

By running as a Democrat, and winning, he has the chance to be on all 50 states ballots whereas as a third party person he could not be on all the ballots.

If Sanders has any weakness it is his foreign policy which he has said little of, but his past votes as a Congressman and Senator gives us an insight as to how he stands on foreign issues, and I would not like some of his actions like supporting Israel's attack on Gaza. What we voters who like Sanders domestic policies must do from now to the day of voting in 2016 is to tell him what our views are regarding foreign policies. There are thousands of warriors whose life showed them how awful and fruitless these wars have been under the Republican and Democrats since the Vietnam war to the latest Drone killings. There are millions of citizens suffering from lack of a living wage, lack of universal healthcare, both husband and wife working to the detriment of their children, - all under both Democrats and Republicans politicians. There are millions of Americans seeing that we must take quick action to save our climate or else our grandchildren will be saying "why did you wait so long to save our environment?" Alll these citizens are hungry for the needed changes and will be quite willing to vote for a Sanders whether he is a socialist, independent or democrat.

Dr. Ben Carson - 2016

WRONG WRONG WRONG. Ross Perot helped (republican in disguise) Bill Clinton get elected. Ralph Nader helped beat Al Gore (along with voter fraud in Florida). The best thing Bernie can do is bring the disillusioned true Leftists and Progressives out of the closet to make the Democrats a Left party again.

The best way i can see right now to seriously shift Democratic policies Left is to adopt as many of the Green Party platform policies as we can, then train, train, train people in Party politics to get the delegate seats and platform resolutions from the precinct level up in the 2016 elections...and I mean STORM the Democratic Party with them. It means serious engagement from the local level up and boots-on-the-ground activism to counter the Big Money corporatists. I think it can be done, unless we are overwhelmed by people on the left who think hardcore community organizing is acting too much like "sheeple".

Hardcore community organizing for the broken duopoly which exists solely to service the plutocratic interests is gatekeeper bunk.

Third parties and grass root organizing in their name, or non-voting disengagement and delegitimization of the status quo, are the only paths forward worth entertaining.

Yeah, that non-voting strategy worked really well during the last redistricting in 2010. And strategically speaking, am I supposed to vote for the Green Party...or the Justice Party....somehow vote splitting doesn't seem to get very far either. Don't get the idea that I don't engage in direct action, I do very much. But the American public's LACK of engagement is very much part of the reason why we've got the exceptionally high influence of corporations in our political system. Vigilance isn't exactly the strong suit of the easily distracted.

Of course, in the end, you'll vote for Hillary....

Why not just admit it, and be done with your the charade?

[A] study published in the Political Research Quarterly found that only the rich get represented in the US senate. The researchers studied the voting records of senators in five Congresses and found the Senators were consistently aligned with their wealthiest constituents and lower-class constituents never appeared to influence the Senators’ voting behavior. This oligarchic tendency was even truer when the senate was controlled by Democrats.

- https://www.popularresistan...

Also, I was never of the opinion that voting was the ONLY thing one should do; if anything I was taught growing up and also learned from great activists that voting is only one part of citizenship; and that it is our responsibility to always be working towards a more just and inclusive society and world.

For those who posit that not participating in elections is an effective way to protest that our government no longer exists with the consent of the governed--I don't remember anyone asking my consent on whether I thought this was an effective way to carve a path forward--indeed, most frequently I encounter insult and derision, accusations of being (at best) naive and (at worst) just stupid or a pawn of the powerful. I also wonder if you've considered in the non-voting strategy (or asked the opinion or consent of) those who, once again will be the first and hardest hit by the extra vacuum of votes--people already and historically disenfranchised due to income, race, ill health, over-incarceration, lack of decent jobs, failure of representation in the judicial system, targeting by law enforcement, lack of educational opportunities, adequate food and decent housing...and historically, and shamefully recently, robbed of their votes.

So non-voting as a tactic is a non-starter for me, and actually sounds more like a strategy for the Left promoted by a Republican shill. If the Green and Justice and liberal Dems want to get serious about talking strategies, I'm way up for that.

You're stuck attempting to imagine differences where none exist between the Dems and the Republican cohort of Wall and War Street corporatist stooges.

As Glen Ford aptly noted; the Democrat(ic) party represents "the more effective evil." Yet here you are in your partisan bubble attempting to paint me as a Republican shill, and hence as the "LOTE" in this macabre; oligarchy orchestrated, bought and payed for, political charade.

You will vote for Hillary, since rather than casting your vote to the Greens up front, you want to talk "winning strategies," where the meaning of winning means primarily keeping the Republicans from winning for the oligarchy, because that job should be reserved for the Democrats, or some such, quadrennially warmed over, inane crap...

Brilliant!

I didn't "paint you" as anything...YOU are doing all the painting and evaluation. I simply pointed out that a Republican shill could ALSO suggest the same strategies as you for entirely different reasons! You have NO idea what i will or won't do and your inability to distinguish differences even among members of the Democratic Party (because you choose not to) does not instill confidence in your powers of discernment nor that you have any suggestions except "my way or the highway" which probably means any further exchanges are rather pointless. And frankly your vitriolic personal attacks make you a lousy ambassador for the Green Party.

You don't know me nor have any idea what i will or won't do, or what I have or haven't done in this life or in my activism. Seeing as how you think you are either the only smart person in the room or the only one who cares (from the way you've dissed just about everyone else discussing potential strategies for getting out of the rightwing hellhole) why don't you lay out yours for how you see either a Green Party or the Justice Party Presidential candidate winning in 2016 and the influence you think it's possible for them to have?

Considering the roadblocks which both of the corporatist parties, over the past 40 years and with much heavy lifting done by Democrats, have thrown up against democracy and have managed to grace us with an oligarchy, I'm not your Huckleberry...

The only sane response is to delegitimize a government which has been described, variously, as: inverted totalitarianism, an oligarchy, plutocracy, corporatism and fascism.

“The legitimacy of the US government is now in question. By illegitimate we mean it is ruled by the 1%, not a democracy ‘of, by and for the people.’ The US has become a carefully designed plutocracy that creates laws to favor the few. As Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissenting opinion, American law is now ‘incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy.’ Or, as former president, Jimmy Carter said on July 16, 2013 “America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.”

“Even members of Congress admit there is a problem. Long before the McCutcheon decision Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) described the impact of the big banks on the government saying: ‘They own the place.’ We have moved into an era of a predatory form of capitalism rooted in big finance where profits are more important than people’s needs or protection of the planet.”

Throwing good apples into a basket of foul ones has been known to deliver only one result. Doing so repeatedly, expecting different results has been named... Hence:

If Voting Changed Anything…The Sham and the Shame of It - http://mosquitocloud.net/if...

I see you throwing out a lot of criticisms, but I don't see you offering any solutions, unless you think voting for a party that most people have never even heard of is a good one. You are demonizing the people who seem to care enough to read articles like this one and to make a comment. You might want to check into an anger management program. I don't blame you for being angry. We all are, but get a grip. You need to realize that bullying people on the Internet is not going to help your cause. Peace.

I don't see why you should feel bullied.

The solution, BTW, is suggested, and the reason for it is explained, at the link above. And reposted here:

If Voting Changed Anything…The Sham and the Shame of It - http://mosquitocloud.net/if...

The corruption of money within the Dem party is so deeply institutionalized, by now, that your solution can only be understood as belonging to the "rainbows and ponies" ravings of a reality detached loon.

Let's hope that Bernie finds the Democrat's stand on TPP to be untenable and does leave the Democratic Party. It might be the best boost the Independents ever had.

What are you talking about? The Dems stand in almost total opposition to the TPP and to Fast Track authority, the same as Bernie. The Senate set out some issues to be discussed in separate bills, but the fight has always been in the House and that is where all the TPP activists beg everyone to pay attention this week. The House DOESN'T have the votes to pass it right now! (the bill should have originated in the House and knowing they didn't have the votes, shuttlled it over to the Senate for action). This is gametime folks. Flooding the offices with calls to oppose Fast Track authority...too many secrets... and the idea that under Fast Track they can see it, but not make any amendments, is ridiculous since the Constitution specifically gave them authority over trade. If they are already on board, thank them and beg them to hold fast.

Call the GOP Reps too...the GOP doesn't have a solid block right now. The corporatists want it BAD, but a lot of the Tea Party members do NOT want to give Obama ANY additional Authority and you can reaffirm that you don't approve of taking the authority given to Congress by the Constitution to negotiate trade and turn it over to ANY President. That was not the Founders' intent. Even if they know you, and know you don't agree on many issues, let them know that on this you can agree -- that the Founders meant for Congress to negotiate trade deals, not the President. You can also let them know that if they pass a local initiative, like a "Buy American" campaign, and one of the foreign corporations thinks what you've set up would lose THEM money, that corporation can SUE the U.S. for the profits they think they'd lose. And it wouldn't go through American courts either, only through a special court made up of other corporate lobbyists whose decision would be final, no appeal, and the American taxpayers would have to pay. They could also sue if you ALREADY have a Buy American campaign in place! That's WAY too much power for foreign companies.

If you want updates on where the House negotiations are, and what is needed from us to kill Fast Track. Citizens Trade Campaign is good and also there is a multi-group Fast Track activist webpage at flushthetpp.org Here also is an excellent information page from Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division THE go to site for in-depth analysis on trade agreements. http://citizen.org/TPP

There's a depressing number of Democrats, starting with the prez, who are for the TPP. Or do you think that I'm making things up? The "party of the people" is having a hard time living up to its designation.

As for that quaint document called the Constitution, it has suffered greatly under both parties. Makes one wonder where all the "Constitutional lawyers" are hiding. Where are all the academics in law schools? How come we don't hear much from the final arbiters of everything (judges) on activity that is clearly unconstitutional? The mouthiest group of people on earth are exceptionally quiet while the Constitution is being shredded. This has to be by design!

Is any department or agency of our government operating strictly within its charter limits? Why aren't the people out in the streets daily?

I think people hear the words "free trade" and they just think, "Oh, that sounds good!" and don't even bother to find out what it means. So many people too, as jobs have become scarcer, and pay less than what they used to, are scrambling to make ends meet and consider "politics" a luxury of time they don't have....where, in fact, it is a major reason WHY they are having to scramble so much more these days. Well, that's kind of what many Very Important People want, isn't it? People who are too busy making ends meet that they don't have time to pay attention and mess in things the VIP's don't want them too. And THAT's just for the citizens who are actually somewhat engaged. Then there are others who just write off jsuch matters as "What do you expect from government?" and who honest-to-God, think that everything IS better run by the private sector. Never mind that private business doesn't run with your benefit built into its goals--just considers you an entry on an expense sheet. I get it. Hard not to be discouraged. I'm exhausted and broke myself.

Revolution is the Solution! It is after all, how this fine experiment in Democracy got its start.

Have you got a plan for who is going to look after the kids when mom and dad are in jail for civil disobedience? It's no accident that one of the major growth industries in the country is private, for-profit prisons, nor that with the passage of such ALEC bills as the Prison Industries Act, private corporations have a truly captive source of cheap labor even less expensive than shipping jobs overseas. Meanwhile we spend endless hours fighting among ourselves while the Corporateers keep honing their OWN platform...one which also gives them plenty of money to get that platform enacted into law, and upheld by the Courts. We have to get WAY more strategic in our planning...and get out of issue silos to form an honest-to-God bloc across issue areas. And a WHOLE lot more strategic in our messaging as well. Frankly, some of the best community organizing I'm seeing these days is in NC. (Oh and it does help to remember that it wasn't just a matter of convenient targets that tea got dumped into Boston Harbor. Local colonist entrepreneurs were bootlegging tea from the Dutch and didn't like cheap tea being dumped on the colonies to shore up a failing corporate trading company. Cut into their business, and then they were taxed on it to boot.) :)

There are always plenty of side issues to any revolution (Boston Harbor) but they occur largely because the people have had quite enough of the ruling power. I suggest that the time is upon us once again, where we've reached saturation insofar as the drastic inequality that exists and is only getting worse, is concerned.
Revolution is NOT a plan, it is a desperate move to get rid of the corrupt existing power structure when every other means has been exhausted and what follows from this act of anger and exasperation is neither predictable nor necessarily better. That's the unfortunate nature of revolutions. Once set in motion they become a juggernaut, with very little discretion guiding their desperate action.
To be sure, 'divide and conquer' has always been a favorite tool of the powerful but there will be little 'ighting among ourselves' once a common enemy is identified and then, woe to the chosen.

Incidentally, I saw no 'plan' that you put forth.
There is a slim chance that Ralph Nader's efforts to join the various and diverse political groups and bring them to a common center, will provide a way, short of revolution, to finally solve the nation's civic problems. You'd better hope that he is successful,,,, as for me, I ran out of hope in my adolescence.

I don't care what letter Bernie Sanders has after his name, I will vote for him. He is a leader with integrity and he seems to be fighting for the middle class like no one else in the running.

The moment Jill Stein announces, Bernie's 12 point "platform" will look rather thin on substance, and self contradicting when the absence of the starving off of the Pentagon is considered.

I like the Green Party, but she doesn't have a chance. We need someone with a high profile who will wake the masses. This all boils down to the people. There is nothing more important than convincing our fellow citizens to pay attention. Even then, they will only read headlines and vote along party lines. In the June, 2014 California primaries 300,000 Democrat voters chose gun control advocate Leland Yee on the ballot, not knowing that he had dropped out of the race after being charged with gun running. The main stream media barely mentioned it.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/...

http://www.sfgate.com/bayar...

So, not only did a Democratic candidate who promoted strict gun control to gain the political advantage of getting pay-outs in exchange for making it easier to sell guns on the black market, but 300,000 voters didn't do any research to know it before they voted.

Whoa, I didn't hear about that. Incredible. The man was not only involved with gun running, but they were serious artillery.

Well, if you want someone who is willing to prop up fascists in Ukraine; conceivably start up a new Cold War 2,0, and who is so blinkered by his Zionist conceits that he doesn't see Israel as an apartheid, colonialist regime, operating a dehumanizing concentration camp en plein air, as that "someone with high profile," go for it. But Bernie has even less of a chance going against the Dem party royals from within, than Jill has by attacking the entire corrupt status quo, from outside...

Seriously, if you're an ambassador for the Green Party, they'd better hire some really good PR people. So far, all I've seen you do is tell everyone in this space what idiot, know-nothing pawns they are. Eating nails would be more enjoyable than block-walking with you. Maybe insisting you're the smartest kid in the room and telling everyone else what a bunch of dumb brainwashed fucks they are is your idea of entertainment or enlightenment,but so far I haven't seen you garner much support by saying how the Greens are going to transform and win by a landslide. I rather think you would much rather see the country collapse into chaos. only problem is the people still most likely to get shot and imprisoned are black and poor. Be sure you let them know what's coming. Curious. Did you find Martin Luther King a huckster con-man?

I'm not. I'm a non-doctrinaire libertarian socialist. 100% against capitalism and empire (Wall and War Street.)

I find your BS spiel about the poor and blacks, given the role played by Democrats in creating the abysmal conditions for both of these most vulnerable segments of the population - and your dragging in of MLK into this conversation like some effin' scalp on a stick - exceptionally distasteful.

I never said who all was responsible for the abysmal conditions "enjoyed" by African-Americans and the poor. I actually agree that both parties have more than done their share. I asked that it be considered who is always to suffer first? I brought up Martin Luther King because you seem to feel that EVERYONE in the Democratic Party is either a corporate shill or an idiot...which includes all the African-Americans in the Democratic Party, including some who've been in the Civil Rights movement from day 1. I'm not claiming Dr. King to be a Democrat either. I just want you to see how alienating your "my way or you're an idiot" posits ring.

The once civil-rights leaders have largely been coopted by the duopoly.

"If the purpose of Black electoral politics is to protect African American interests, the Black political class has been a colossal failure...worse than useless, most Black elected officials are collaborators in an oppressive system." - Margret Kimberly

Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon refer to the majority of the civil-rights movement leaders as mis-leaders...

RIP Malcolm X.

Point taken, but I think he's the best chance we have now. Get it? It's not about the politicians, it's about waking people up to pay attention, so they will see what those of us who pay attention see already.

Okay, lot's of people buy the line that Nader wasn't responsible for Bush II. Regardless, Sanders will lead a movement for political revolution with HIS MESSAGE and his voice. He's made his decision. You either support him or you don't.

Why argue something that's not going to happen? What makes any of you smarter than Bernie?

Nader WASN'T responsible for IdiotBush. However many votes Nader got, they were HIS and his alone. Neither Gore nor IdiotBush have a right to those votes, period! It is the height of arrogance to declare that those who voted for Nader should have voted for either Gore or IdiotBush.
I support Bernie, not because he's the perfect candidate but for the ruckus he will cause

in this political duopoly that has all but strangled our political system. We have to get away from the two-party system before any change can occur. It isn't democracy when only two indistinguishable parties have a lock on the board.

"I support Bernie, not because he's the perfect candidate but for the ruckus he will cause..."

Right on! I <3 Bernie!

A connection with reality?

So you think. Clearly, you have no vision.

Clearly not. I have a connection with reality, and it tells me that legitimizing the plutocratic status quo duopoly is a hopey-dopey hallucination. A "vision" of a special sort...

Please enlighten me on how Bernie Sanders has anything to do with legitimizing plutocracy.

It's the endorsement and continuation of the Duo-Poly that prolongs the status quo - The Oligarchy / The Plutocracy -- Some call it the Aristocracy -- Ultimately they're referring to the same economic power structure that's maintained for the benefit of the financial elite.