Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Indivisible Loyalty Pledge Is A Duopoly Protection Pledge

Bernie Sanders was the first to sign the pledge by the indivisible group, which is similar to his promise at the beginning of the 2016 election when asked by George Stephanopoulos. I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and still do, especially since he's far better on all the issues than any of the other candidates that the media is willing to cover, but this is a disappointment, especially since he didn't even mention Ranked Choice Voting.

The reason Trump was elected in the first place was because the media has been providing obsession coverage for candidates that cater to wealthy campaign donors for decades and they've rigged the economic system badly against the vast majority of the public. they've been studying how to manipulate voters for decades, and have become incredibly good at it enabling them to rig the economic system in favor of the wealthy, while convincing the working class that one demagogue after another will serve their best interest, only to betray them once in office.

After decades of this outrage against mainstream candidate reached epidemic levels, and they were ready to fall for another demagogue, who in this case turned out to be Trump, who isn't actually that good a liar, but they also rigged the primary for Hillary Clinton who's an even worse liar.

By providing obsession coverage for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, even though they had incredibly high negative poll ratings and they were both involved in epidemic levels of coverage they ensured that a large percentage of the public would hate who ever won, and that there would be justifiable causes to call for impeach either of them even before the election.

Now they're trying to do the same thing with Joe Biden, who has an incredibly bad record that most people would hate assuming they heard much of it. The following meme shows just how much more he is like Trump than the vast majority of the public, although Trump did oppose the TPP, but his trade policy is still rigged heavily in favor of the wealthy and they're working on other similar policies, but the rest of the examples are close if not exactly right.

When in campaign mode both Biden and Trump can be expected to support some of the same positions as Bernie Sanders, like the TPP, which Trump opposed during the campaign and even in office; however he's pushing many other trade policies that are just as bad, and only opposed it due to overwhelming public opposition. Outside of that this meme is accurate.

I went into Joe Biden's record much more in Joe Biden Really Was Taken Off The Trash Heap where I explained that Joe Biden's record is much worse than the mainstream media has been reporting recently; they're clearly relying on the short memories of most voters. they claim that Biden is well known which is certainly true, at least to a point, and that many of thees stories have already been reported, which is partly true. Many of these stories have been reported in a very low profile manner, others have only been reported on alternative media outlets while the propaganda making them seem good is repeated over and over again.

I updated this article with a long list of new stories about Biden's record after he joined the campaign that have been circulating on the internet, but mostly ignored, with a few exceptions in mainstream media, but many more of them will inevitable be reported long before the campaign is over. This is how I knew that when he said he wasn't "middle of the road" on climate change I knew that either he was lying, or only telling the truth because he was on the side of the oil companies, on the wrong side of "the road." When he said he that the crime bill didn't cause mass incarceration, that was another massive lie, although the mainstream media didn't even try to correct this.

He said that we should "Look at my record" which is what I already did, and it was how I knew so fast that he was telling incredibly obvious lies!

And when Giuliani claimed that he was going to Ukraine to "Meddle in an investigation" I knew that even though he was obviously doing it for partisan reasons there was a legitimate scandal there involving his son dealing with a Ukrainian oligarch and a corporation involved in epidemic levels of fraud losing $1.8 billion of aid money! But the media portrayed this scandal as if it was something Giuliani was stirring up for partisan reasons, giving some people the impression there was nothing to it.

There's much more where that came from for Biden, who's allegedly the front runner for now; and when most of the other corporate friendly democrats take their turn in the spotlight there'll be more similar stories that they mainstream media might not cover very well for them either.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand has been supporting the grassroots for decades and his positions have been consistent, and checking the record will only confirm this. He's the only one the mainstream media is willing to give a reasonable amount of coverage that supports the majority of the public. If there are any other high profile candidates that are reasonably good they're the ones the mistreatment media only gives a minimal amount of coverage to like Mike Gravel, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marianne Williamson, but there's little or no chance that any of them will ever get enough media coverage to become a top contender; the only reason Bernie managed to get enough coverage is probably because he's been so consistent for so long he developed a strong base that the media felt it couldn't ignore. and a close look at these candidates probably indicates they're not as good as Bernie anyway.

If there is a candidate that is as good as Bernie Sanders, it's one of the candidates the media doesn't cover at all, like Sanderson Beck who I went into in Censored Candidates For President By Mass Media where I explained that the media rigs the presidential election against the vast majority of hundreds of declared presidential candidates by simply refusing to cover them or letting people know where to look for information about them if they're sick of the establishment candidates the media gives obsession coverage for.

It's already clear that the media is trying to do the same thing that gave us trump in the first place they did last time where a leaked e-mail even said that the Democrats would like to see a "pied piper candidate" get nominated, thinking they could easily beat him; well they got what they wanted, and took it for granted thinking they didn't have to serve the interests of the public or campaign in the battleground states while catering overwhelmingly to Wall street which is how Trump got elected.

Biden is trying to do almost the same thin that Clinton did in a virtual repeat of the 2016 elections, but instead of signing another pledge, which didn't work last time, there's only one option that can easily beat Trump, and that's nominating Bernie Sanders. It shouldn't be that way, as much as I like Sanders we should have a good primary with several candidates serving the interests of the public to choose from but the media refused to cover candidates that weren't collecting massive amounts of money from wealthy people for decades, which is why we're in this mess in the first place.

There are several other ways to reform the electoral system, even if we can't get support from the mainstream media or dominant political parties that are clearly catering overwhelmingly to Wall Street. One of them is increasing reliance on alternative media, which many people at the grassroots are already doing, although we need to do this much more and we need to convince many people more interested in sports or celebrity worship to check with other more reliable sources.

Another major reform which can help reduce control of the two dominant parties is Ranked Choice Voting, also know as Instant Runoff Voting, which was passed into law thorough a ballot initiative in Maine after an enormous grassroots effort which the majority of the country still hasn't heard of, thanks to the media which only briefly covered it after the election, and on the rare occasions they do mention it they try to misrepresent it. there are additional efforts to pass more Ranked Choice Voting in several other states including Massachusetts, Utah and a dozen other states, although it'll take more research through the grassroots to find out which ones are making progress since the political establishment doesn't like this idea because they can't force us to accept the lesser of two evils, which is their most effective tactic to suppress alternative parties like the Green Party or the Libertarians.

Ranked Choice Voting enables people to pick their first choice, second choice, etc. with only the top choice counting; but if no one gets a majority then the least popular candidate is automatically eliminated, with each person who choose that candidate automatically going to their second choice. For example if it were in place in 2016 people could have chosen Jill Stein as their first choice, Hillary Clinton as second etc. and if Jill Stein didn't win it would automatically go to Hillary Clinton, assuming she actually got the nomination, which I doubt she would have. It wouldn't have been a guarantee and Trump might have still won, but they couldn't argue that he won because Jill Stein "stole" Hillary Clinton's votes.

This was never a good argument in the first place, since Hillary Clinton never earned her votes, relying on behind the scenes actions to rig the primaries for her; if anyone was stealing votes it was Hillary Clinton, not Jill Stein. there are some details that need to be worked out and see how it works in practice, but it's far better than our current system. The political establishment is trying to make it seem as if this is to complicated, so even though there might be some problems we have to be careful not to let them sabotage it or misrepresent it, enabling them to keep using the lesser of two evils argument, while fixing the legitimate problems that might exist.

If Indivisible is concerned about beating Trump you would think they might want to draw attention to this, since the promise extracted from Bernie Sanders by George Stephanopoulos in 2015 when he first announced his run for the presidency. When he lost, as a result of epidemic levels of cheating and a massive advantage in the coverage for Hillary Clinton by trying to make seems like the presumptive nominee months if not years before the debates even began let alone any votes cast, many of the best informed people supported Jill Stein, although it didn't turn out to be a large percentage, others either stayed home or voted for Donald Trump.

Not only will this ensure that Trump can't get elected with less than fifty percent of the vote but people will worry less about losing to an incredibly corrupt candidate and vote for the best person in the primaries, since unpopular candidates like Hillary Clinton will be far less likely to win the primaries with this system.

Why didn't they even discuss this?

Because the Indivisible group was never a grassroots organization at all, instead it's AstroTurf, attracting enough people at the grassroots to make it look like a grassroots effort but the leadership coming up with the ideas have ties to the political establishment; it was started by former congressional staffers from the Democratic Party who recruited people willing to support their views and trained them to adopt their ideas.

I went into this more in Indivisible Protest: Overdue Reform or Democratic Trojan Horse? when they first arose after Trump got elected. these congressional staffers had ties to the same political establishment that helped rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton hoping to go up against a "pied piper candidate" they thought would be easy to beat. they helped enable a Trump victory in the first place, and many of them are likely to rise within the political establishment serving Wall street interests once they do their part to defend the duopoly system.

Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would have been willing to serve the best interests of Wall Street, and now instead of winning both ways they want to win both ways with either Biden or Trump, or if his campaign falls apart they would be happy with Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, or any other other candidates catering to Wall Street!

Regardless of how we got here or what additional reforms have to be put in place there's little or no doubt that Bernie is far better on the issues, and far more likely to defeat Trump than Joe Biden or any other establishment candidate that has a reasonable chance of winning the primaries.

If they rig it for Joe Biden again he won't be much if any better than Trump, although he may do a better job pretending to be better, so there's little reason to worry about which candidates wins the general election and more reason to try to break up the duopoly, perhaps by supporting the Green Party or some other alternative party!

Bernie Sanders has been consistent for decades when it comes to support for the working class, Single Payer, standing up to corporate corruption, defending minorities and voting rights, protecting the environment, and much more!

However, his support for this pledge is disappointing and it's not the first time; he endorsed Hillary Clinton instead of speaking out against the rigged primaries in 2016, and tried to defend the Democratic Party, helping to cover up that corruption, instead of exposing it. He hasn't spoken up about Ranked Choice voting, nor has he demanded that all grassroots candidates like Sanderson Beck or many other local candidates running for other offices get a reasonable chance to get some media coverage so the political establishment.

It's difficult to argue that he's the lesser evil on most issues, but clearly there are some issues that the grassroots will have to push him to improve. And, we'll also have to do more to elect progressive candidates at local levels so he can get more help from Congress and state governments implementing reform.

Furthermore, it's clear that a lot of establishment pundits prefer to have Trump as the enemy to make themselves look like the lesser evil, than to have Bernie Sanders as their own nominee; so there's little chance that they'll keep this pledge, assuming they make it at all, I noticed that at this time Biden still hasn't taken the pledge!

After looking at Joe Biden's record and seeing how bad it is, my best guess is it's virtually guaranteed that he'll drop hard in the polls long before the primaries begin, and it'll be difficult for the Wall Street supporters to rally behind one candidate that can beat Bernie, especially without obvious smear tactics, virtually guaranteeing that they'll have to either let him win the primary, and easily beat Trump; or they'll rig the nominations in an even more obvious manner than in 2016, virtually guaranteeing that Trump wins, showing their real priorities!

There will be people refusing to take this pledge or breaking it, the only difference is whether it's to oppose the duopoly or to defend it; opposing the duopoly can help bring about the reforms we need; defending the duopoly will virtually guarantee that we'll never get needed reforms, or if we get a few they'll be able to roll them back as they have in the past!