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| Hesitant invincibility… |
As Biden falters but new “moderate” Dem saviors rise and proliferate, is
it still too early to nudge Warren & Sanders to finally tie the knot? Given
their respective crews’ extraordinary energies, campaign fusion could deliver a
populist green power source the country hasn’t seen since heartland chautauqua mobilizers
levelled the ruling megacorp trusts of the Gilded Age.
Arguments for Bernie and Liza’s swift integration are fairly
self-evident.
Waste
reduction: B&L’s open collusion would
generate unity, synergy and cohesive momentum among near identical progressive
camps that would otherwise waste vital months trading snarky barbs and
invidiously trying to distinguish themselves.
Energy
conservation: Whatever the ironies,
hoary B&L most electrify youth whatever their ethnic background. And while
it’s heartening to see green reformist zeal finally rivaling dark money as a high
octane electoral fuel, we can’t forget zeal’s peculiar volatility. The First
Law of Thermodynamics took a pass on the political realm where volunteer energy
can be created or destroyed overnight. Either Bernie’s or Liza’s defeat at the
end of the primary gauntlet could degrade the losing camp’s motive force to
bare “lesser evil” levels.
Historic
inclusiveness: Yes, there are optic
issues. B&L are both quite white, northeastern and getting on, but both
champion issues that resonate widely and transcend identity politics. And she
is very much a she and he an old-school Jew, offering an unprecedented dual
milestone in White House diversity.
Revelatory
messaging: Since our assorted climate, health,
inequality, violence and ecology crises are symptoms and subsets of a megacorp
emergency, B&L declaring it aloud could connect a lot of dots and unite diverse
single-issue activists to liquidate their common enemy.
Both
B&L already seem to sense the potential of megacorp restructuring to
downsize, decentralize and democratize these vast bodies with focused activism
and federal chartering curbs.
Consider our leading causes of eco-social disorders: Big Oil, Big Coal,
Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Tech, Big Chem, Big Ag, Big Defense and all growth-obsessed
etcetera. Their obvious common descriptor suggests corp devolution could finally
offer a true broad spectrum remedy.
Such an
agenda may sound quixotic, but it merely revives and replicates the
precautionary constraints American state legislatures imposed on corporate
bodies through most of the 19th century.
After freeing
themselves from the East India Company, Hudson Bay Company and other Brit-chartered
predators, the founding fathers were careful to curb the hell out of those we
grew at home. They entrusted all chartering to locally answerable state reps
who demanded recipients remain tiny, transparent, transitory, focused onpublic good and totally banned from politics.
Yes, the
corporates did gradually lawyer, lobby and suborn their way back to dominance
both in the US and worldwide. Nonetheless, it’s clear that a national back-to-the-future
enforcement of those prescient ancient limits could restore popular sovereignty
on a wide variety of fronts.
Even the
simple addition of workers, consumers, community reps and other key
stakeholders to megacorp boards with powers equal to shareholders could
internalize most oversight functions our corp-captured regulatory agencies were
originally designed to perform.
Democratizing
megacorp governance could thus not only internally enforce triple bottom line
accountability, it would also allow radical deflation of many bloated federal
agencies.
Our
founders’ corp-wary foresight suggests many other stratagems, but methodically downsizing
huge sociopathic bodies is a major first step.
Right now
B&L are among the few edging toward such holistic prescriptions, but that
can quickly change as more activists recognize #bigbane as a soluble scourge
and the common upstream cause of most modern global maladies.
How would a
merger work? One promising scenario:
Bernie leads the 2020 ticket with an open agreement to yield the Oval to Liza
after the midterms and then be appointed VP. Presuming Liza radically extends
the office’s purview and potency, this would scarcely be a demotion. Even now a
VP’s powers can be full-blown astonishing as countries full of Cheney
casualties may recall. But whatever the titular order, B&L would offer the
US its most inspiring progressive dyad since Henry Wallace and FDR.
Plus Liza
would enter the 2024 fray with all the bully pulpit’s perks; and continuity
will be essential given their transformative programs and the predictable
megacorps blowback as their henchmen are expelled.
Sexism disclaimer:
Bernie’s initial primacy would be less about gender than seniority and lifetime
achievement. He did push or prefigure most of today’s progressive agenda
from Medicare for All & Green New Deal thinking to 99% consciousness &
corporate coin rebuffs. In 2016 he almost single-handedly shifted America’s
“socialist” preconceptions from grim Stalinist clichés toward hip Scandinavian
tropes. Nor can one discount his poll-proven “likeability” as a precious asset
to sustain trust and introduce fresh ideas.
Also in
this scenario Liza actually does become America’s first woman prez. The champagne
is simply postponed a bit by her own results-driven selflessness. But in all
other respects both should serve as co-equals to strengthen each other and exemplify
a post-ERA world.
Exec branch
foreshadowing wouldn’t have to stop there. B&L could jointly recruit their
entire shadow cabinet early on and leverage their nominees’ cred, voices and
constituencies all along the election trail. Seeing who is chosen and willing
to serve could help voters visualize a B&L White House and inspire vital
confidence in its competence and course.
In any event,
watching Wall St, the MIC, corporate media and tycoon players all hyping mod “electables”
should kindle a few survivalist synapses and remind progressives yet again that
divided they’re vulnerable, but togethered they’re not.
For all we
know this may be B&L’s own game plan: individually galvanize their
respective teams with personal pitches & rallies and then conjoin them near
the end zone to prodigious effect.
If that be
true, hats off, but the faster they unify the more they could boost down-ballot
allies and primary challenges to corp-servile pols at every level of play.
But either
way, suggested or self-generated, B&L fusion seems called for now and
highly auspicious. Just hope all who see some sense in this help them hurry the
hell up.
###
By W. David Kubiak
W. David
Kubiak is a Project Censored award-winning activist-journalist, an avid
exponent of Big Body Theory, #bigbanerecognition & Immunocytizenship and winner of the 2000 NH Dem VP Primary on an anti-megacorp platform.
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