So that happened. Yesterday in Florida, Bill Clinton compared Bernie Sanders supporters to the Tea Party.
It is well known that the Tea Party was a ginned-up PR phenomenon that started on February 19, 2009 with CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange wherein he attacked President Obama’s agenda and blamed the intentional, organized mortgage fraud and meltdown perpetrated by the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street on “losers” and “deadbeats” who, gosh darn it, should not have taken out those mortgages. Then it was expanded by the various organizations controlled by the Koch Brothers and their allies. The Tea Party “movement” was funded by millionaires and billionaires who don’t want to pay taxes. Its activists have been local Republican “grandees” (various Chamber of Commerce types) and their usual chorus of poor white bigots.
Bernie Sanders has mobilized millions of ordinary American people from all walks of life---Democrats, Independents, and Republicans-- who are tired of the failed status quo of the Establishment, including the power Establishment of the Democratic Party. This is an authentic movement. Bernie Sanders has mobilized millions of smart, educated middle class people who finally see a chance to liberate government from the morally and intellectually bankrupt “elites” that have botched political economy for the past four decades.
Bubba has no clothes.
The record speaks for itself. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996: threw poor blacks under the bus. The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994: exploded the prison population and accelerated the privatization of prisons, mostly oppressing blacks and Hispanics. Graham-Leach Bliley 1999: erased Glass-Steagall and de-regulated Wall Street, leading to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The man who destroyed the Party of FDR, the man who sold the soul of the Democratic Party to Wall Street, the man whose surrender to the Neoliberal Reagan-Thatcher economic program turned much of America into Arkansas, has the spectacular nerve to compare a movement of real Democrats to a fake party of right-wing operatives.
Hillary needs to put a sock in his mouth, but quick.
We are deep into a struggle for the soul of the party, and all of the corporate, “third-way”, “no-labels”, triangulating, Neoliberal shills who think they run things better look over their shoulders. The People are Rising.