Remember when the son of Brooklyn, the "democratic socialist" Senator Bernie Sanders finally made his way on to the national stage a few years ago? Aging, irascible, peddling the morals of the 1960s communes --one of which he may or may not have gotten kicked out of-- and the politics of the Stalin/Trotsky/Lenin/Marxist/etc. soapbox politicians of the 1930s one thing you could say about the cult hero known as "THE BERN" is that he seemed "authentic."
When he railed about the plutocrats and the bourgeoisie Bernie Sanders seemed to really mean it. Even Republicans liked his refreshing "honesty" about being an anti Capitalist and having the guts to say it publicly.
Now we need to ask... was it always a hustle?
What a difference a few years makes.
Joe Biden is president. Bernie Sanders is the "conservative" voice of the New Left. (Admit it, Senator Sanders is an old line Red, this "intersectionality" stuff probably doesn't make sense to him. Really? 72 genders? He's still trying to talk people into embracing bread lines in Soviet controlled Poland.) And Gavin Newsom is fighting a recall election in bluer than blue Progressive California.
We're on record pointing out that Gavin Newsom is a hypocrite and, frankly, a disaster as Governor. California is beginning to seem like a state on the precipice of perpetual disaster. And recall is real. The media didn't do much of a job covering recall, nationally it still seems to shock the Left that even in California people might want more than disaster after disaster. Frankly we want to turn a page and confront some problems. Because we can't fix our problems if we can't acknowledge them. Gavin Newsom just wants us to ignore reality. (Much as the media has closed ranks to attempt to convince Americans that recall isn't worth paying attention.)
Now, well now, recall is real. (If you aren't quite sure how recall happened, please read this, think of it as the 4 minute guide to a California Recall.)
With only two weeks to go things are getting kind of crazy in California. They were going to bring Kamala Harris in to campaign for Gavin Newsom. But for various reasons she may have seemed a little toxic last week. (We'd like to think she was focusing on more important things, but we doubt she ever has priorities that aren't purely political and highly partisan.) So... flailing around to find a better "big name" to ride to the defense of Gavin and fire up the base, apparently the national Left picked Bernie Sanders.
If you haven't seen the pro Newsom Bernie Sanders ad it is kind of hilarious. (And we highly recommend watching it. It is only about 30 seconds. You can see it here.) The Bernie ad claims Recall is "undemocratic" and somehow a Republican plot. (We wish it was a Republican plot. In reality Recall was a highly grassroots effort.) Most hilarious of all, Bernie seems to be claiming that the Recall effort is backed by big money and big oil. This is hilarious because Gavin Newsom has been backed by the Getty family for his ENTIRE life.
In fact, according to the LA Times, Gavin Newsom had his vacations subsidized by his wealthy Getty pals YEARS before he even started running for political office. (You can read about that here.) Since he entered political life the Gettys have continued to be extremely generous. Why is this interesting? Why is this hypocritical? Well... in California the Getty name is synonymous with big money and big oil. (The current living crop of Gettys probably has little to do with the oil business, but the Getty fortune was made in oil.)
They say politics makes for strange bedfellows. Rarely have we seen anything as strange as the proletariat Bernie campaigning to save the political career of the fairhaired Gavin, the perpetual candidate of the plutocratic Gettys.
Maybe Bernie is unaware of who Gavin really is? Maybe he really DOES want to save a "plutocratic Progressive." Maybe we should all ask Bernie why, oh why, is he betraying his true believer base to defend Gavin Newsom? Has he no standards? No core beliefs? Is he really just another "Democrat" hack these days instead of a morally superior independent "Democratic Socialist." Senator Sanders, say it ain't so.