Revolt Against Plutocracy

This time Bernie or Bust has a Plan B

Plutocracy defined: A country or society governed by the wealthy few and primarily for the wealthy few. “America, today, is much closer to a plutocracy than a democracy.” Join the revolt against corporate plutocrats: Pledge to vote for a progressive, third party candidate in 2020 if Senator Sanders is not the Democratic Party nominee or, if he should drop out for any reason, Representative Gabbard is not the Democratic Party nominee. Before taking the 2020 voter pledge, we implore everyone to keep reading down to the paragraph that begins “To the media” to fully understand Plan A, Plan B and the actual meaning of “or Bust” and “or Trash” the Democratic Party. This pledge, in a nutshell, commits us to vote for a real progressive candidate for President on November 3, 2020, but it is a little more nuanced than Bernie or Bust in 2016. There was no back-up plan four year ago if Sanders had dropped out for the race for any reason. Please continue reading just 13 more paragraphs down “To the media.”

This isn’t over: Listen carefully to Sanders message to his base of support. He wants the movement to take over his quest for the White House.

While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not. Please stay in this fight with me. pic.twitter.com/DYMDufgnBK

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 9, 2020

On Peaceful, Political Revolution: Sanders has openly called for one, proving he’s the only candidate who grasps the peaceful but forceful revolt needed to overthrow corporate plutocracy. To learn why a political revolution must be bigger–and longer lasting–than Bernie’s suspended presidential campaign, our book, Bernie or Bust: Pioneers of Electoral Revolt, explains why U.S. needed a revolution before Trump was elected and how to accomplish this within the confines of a two-party system using an innovative strategy. More importantly, when you’re done with it, share it with someone thinking about voting for another candidate besides Bernie. Let our book make the case for peaceful revolution for you if you want. #ShareThisBook

Bernie or Bust 2.0: (If you do not know your congressional district number, you can use your zip code to find it by clicking here.) A pledge to vote for a progressive, third party candidate in the general election of 2020 unless Senator Sanders is the Democrat Party nominee. Please keep reading.

Mission: While we intend to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, we also aim to sign up at least 1,000,000+ more American citizens pledged to vote for a progressive, third party candidate in the general election of 2020 through the primaries. Why?

Rationale: If Bernie is going to secure the Democratic nomination, leverage will be needed. 1,000,000+ voters pledged to vote for a third party candidate for President if Senator Sanders or Gabbard are not on the Democratic Party ticket will be a compelling argument for some primary voters. Call it arm twisting; call it “breaking eggs.” Call it compellence; we call it leverage on Democratic primary voters (the block in graphic to the right) and insurance against corrupted super delegates who may commit to an establishment candidate before one primary vote is cast. A leverage strategy is a new idea that enables a significant minority (the arm in graphic to the right) to help a candidate secure a party’s nomination (lifting the heavy load). We are convinced that if this strategy is not employed more effectively and broader than in 2016, there is little possibility the party elite will allow Senator Sanders to secure the nomination. #BernieOrBust is the lesser of a few problems another Democratic Party nominee would have against Trump.

The risk: Unlike Gore vs Bush vs Nader in 2000, Democratic primary voters will have the choice during the primaries to unite the broad, American liberal/progressive left behind Senator Sanders or risk re-electing Donald Trump. The Bernie or Bust 2.0 campaign puts the burden of Party unity on them. Q & A Three on the FAQ page above addresses the grave concern about continuing having the Executive Branch of government under control of the Republican half of the political duopoly.

Joe Biden will lose: It’s clear to many people that Joe Biden is suffering from some kind of cognitive decline. If in doubt, see “Stop Calling It a ‘Stutter:’ Dozens of Examples Show Biden’s Dementia Symptoms.”

#SheepNoMore remains valid, especially with Senator Sanders continuously announcing he’ll endorse the Party nominee. By doing so, he’s handing the nomination to an establishment candidate. The Party elites have nothing to worry about from Senator Sanders. Their ONLY concern now is the size of the Bernie or Bust movement and the number of Sanders-Trump swing voters that will not be herded into the “evil” of neo-liberal control and governance of a corporate-state “empire.” We are not Sandernistas.

Tactic: The total number of pledged voters, along with Senator Sanders inherent leverage supporters we call Sanders-Trump swing voters, is being conveyed to the media and Democratic Party voters, and they will choose to either refrain from dividing the liberal-progressive, American left in the general election or else Trump will be reelected. The pledge is also an important role serving to remind super delegates that if they rob Senator Sanders of the nomination, at least two and a half million voters will not support any other Democratic Party candidate than Bernie Sanders in the general election this year.

#BernieOrBust is a foregone conclusion in the current election cycle, but only because Joe Biden is such a weak and demented candidate. Senator Sanders has enough leverage in place to convey with polling that #OnlyBernieBeatsTrump. We encourage the 1.5 million Bernie or Trump voters who, without the need for any Bernie or Bust voters, caused Hillary Clinton to lose the 2016 election, to join the progressive revolution. Take the pledge. Polling continues to show Senator Sanders with the greatest potential to hold the Democratic Party united vs Trump because enough of Bernie’s supporters will not vote Blue to ensure the President’s re-election. Democrats can choose to unite behind Bernie Sanders or they will lose again with an establishment, “centrist” nominee.

Please join the tens of thousands of citizens to date by employing BOTH of these two, simple steps. (If you do not know your congressional district number, use your zip code to find it here.)

1) Take the voter pledge (click HERE) and then help out on social media by using #WePledgedSo. “If Bernie doesn’t defeat Biden, Trump will. #WePledgedSo” or #BernieOrBust2020 #WePledgedSo) and vitally important, this will NOT become influential enough unless you also, please…

2) Build the buzz: Commit yourself to quickly finding at least just two more people to take the Bernie or Bust 2.0 pledge. Please prioritize and use your email to ask people you know, friends, neighbors, relatives (but no one from work), etc. to take the Bernie or Bust pledge before OR while asking friends, followers and allies in social media and follow up until you know two people have taken the pledge. If every pledge-signer recruits just two more citizens who recruit two more every day, we’ll have over 1,000,000 pledge-takers in less than a month. The chart below shows how quickly a leverage strategy can become a movement even the corporate media will have a hard time ignoring. (They will not cover this as a story in order to keep voters from finding out about this voter pledge strategy. This works by getting Sanders nominated through this recruitment process. People will say, “no, they won’t take the pledge;” but they need to hear more and more people asking them, “Will you help Sanders by taking the BernieOrBust 2.0 pledge?” That communication is how this strategy circumvents corporate media. We are demanding people give progressives a chance to run the government once again. The market/corporate neo-liberals, the conservatives and the libertarians do not have a governing philosophy compatible with climate preservation. The nation, the world needs an all out mobilization for survival to slow, stop and reverse the mass extinction under way, and only progressive politicians have the governing philosophy to use government to solve problems.

Some people are unwilling to scare voters into uniting behind a popular Senator and candidate for the White House. So what? Just keep asking people on social media until your second pledge confirmation is conveyed back to you. That’s all you need to do to make this grassroots pressure effective: take the pledge and recruit two more citizens. (We will send pledge-takers a reminder email with suggestions for Facebook or Twitter messaging to make it easy as possible.)

It may seem as if there is plenty of time for pledge-takers to find just two people to take the Bernie or Bust 2.0 pledge, but our experience tells us the chart on the right does not convey how this works in practice. Even with the contacts available with social media, this took much longer in practice during Bernie or Bust 1.0. In fact, Bernie or Bust didn’t need a million pledges; it just needed to become a buzz.

Please take a few minutes this week to get this off your “things to do” list today, tomorrow, as soon as possible. That’s all you need to do to make this grassroots pressure effective: pledge and recruit two citizens. The closer to a million pledged voters you build this into a movement, the more certain Democrats will fear us and unite behind Bernie. This amount of leverage requires use of this simple “power of two” depicted here:==>>

Be the media: If you understand the importance of using grassroots, revolutionary tactics to help shape major-party, primary campaign outcomes, please do more. Click the SHARE buttons below. Do as much as you want to do to help Senator Sanders become the next President of the United States. In other words, from time to time when you have time, be the media. Share this URL around the Internet: citizensagainstplutocracy.org.

Thank you!

What was Plan B? The contest for President in 2020 was more complicated than it was in 2016. Then, Senator Sanders was the only real progressive running in the primaries. This time, while Representative Tulsi Gabbard is not as progressive as Bernie is, she’s also not a neo-liberal either. However, after endorsing the people’s enemy, VP Joe Biden, she may as well be a neo-liberal. She is dead to us.

To the media: Do your job. This is a revolution! Cover it as one. RAP is comprised of electoral militants demanding progressive candidates as the Democratic Party nominee. The climate emergency will not be addressed by conservatives, neo-liberals or libertarians. The Executive Branch of the U.S. government has been neo-liberal since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson for Democrats and the Nixon-Ford White House for the Republicans. It largely remains so under President Trump. (See chapter 10 of Bernie or Bust to evaluate for yourself.) Many articles were written about Bernie or Bust 2016, but rarely were the organizers quoted or even interviewed before publication.

Mainstream media didn’t cover Bernie or Bust until March of 2016 after Washington Times covered a new strategy and slogan in one: Bernie or Bust! The corporate media outside of Fox doesn’t want the public to find out about this strategy, but it only works when it becomes well-known by the rank and file primary voters. Unfortunately, the “progressive” media never covered #BernieOrBust2020. Therefore, primary voters supported Joe Biden under the MSM-created illusion that he was the most electable. That is completely false.

Why Senator Sanders? While we do not agree with every vote Bernie has taken as a member of Congress and we abhorred his prolonged silence (consent) about the arrest of Julian Assange, we believe that he’s the progressive candidate who is both opposed to plutocracy as well as the “best bet” for defeating Trump in 2020.

Revolt Beyond Bernie: We seek political power for the sane majority, who are opposed to government of, by and for the wealthy. Bernie Sanders is not responsible for what we do but, we can help him fight battles–especially against the DNC– like few others can.

A Historic Candidate: Bernie Sanders would be the first Jewish American President, the first socialist American President, the first American President elected on a platform calling for a political revolution and at 78, the oldest elected American President. 78 is the new 60! Sanders’ form of democratic socialism is “100% American.”

Bernie will win the general election: “Every single Democrat needs to come to terms with the fact that the most sensible plan for getting rid of Donald Trump is to unify behind a Bernie Sanders candidacy.” ~Nathan J. Robinson

Sheepdog for the establishment? The knock on Senator Sanders from some on the left is that his role was and will continue to be to corral progressives, like a sheep dog, “to herd and be herded like sheep back into the Democratic fold….” If next year’s primaries follow the path of the primaries of 2016, that will again be the case for Sanders; but to us, that prospect is unacceptable. Bernie or Bust 2.0 is the antidote for herding progressives like sheep. Any-Blue-will-do sheeple will not take this pledge; revolutionaries will be more inclined take it.

Bernie or bust remains a demand on Democrats who want to defeat Donald Trump. Accept this populist demand for one of two specific, progressive candidates or lose in November. Even Joe Biden will become (barely) acceptable if he accepts the Plan B demand and names Rep. Gabbard as his running mate.

If this pledge is too militant or scary for you, please seek medical assistance to locate and reinstall your spine. Bernie’s candidacy remains a grassroots revolution. In 2020, that revolution is “green” for those of his supporters awoken and alarmed about what most climate scientists are reporting about what their models are predicting for the Earth’s atmosphere.

Frequently Asked Questions: Click the FAQ page above.

A Facebook-rooted Revolution. We first launched this strategy from our Facebook page in 2015. We had no experience organizing a national strategy and no idea that the Clinton campaign funded and therefore controlled the Democratic National Committee. Now we have a list of newsletter subscribers of over 53,000 Busters, experience under our belt, a book that explains both the need for revolution in the United States before Trump’s election and how this electoral, leverage strategy functions and one round of voting at the Democratic National Convention that does not include the superdelegates. We hope to be offering bumper stickers, buttons and logo stickers in the coming months.

Bernie Sanders may be the best, last chance of turning this country away from climate-destructive, corporate plutocracy and toward a democratic republic working with other countries to save the Earth. More important, this may be the last chance to capture the globally, top-state power needed to avoid continued climate disruption and collapse of civilization if not extinction of the human race millions of years sooner than expected in our cruel, hot/cold universe.

Notice how Politico framed Biden’s first day fundraising? The establishment media will build establishment candidates. Biden “crushes it” even though he raised just under 7% more than Sanders did on his first day. Biden will have the financial edge, and he’s more experienced than Bernie is running for President. There’s little reason to believe Sanders will be treated any more fairly than he was in 2016. #BernieOrBust2020 is leverage from a movement of voters committed to progress and from that governing philosophy, climate preservation and long-term, human development. #BernieOrBust2020 is a commitment to human survival by politically defeating the neo-liberals long enough to save the world from eco-collapse.