It has been said that there is only one political party in the United States, the Corporate Party. The right wing of that party is called “The Republican Party,” and the left wing is called “The Democratic Party.”
The purpose of the Corporate Party is basically the same as was the purpose of the political class in ancient Rome, to serve the interests of the rich and to pacify the rest with bread and circuses.
In America, where the rich require of its political servants an ever increasing share of the national wealth, the task of pacifying the people has become specialized, with the Republicans providing ever more bizarre and diverting circuses while it falls to the Democrats to share out the diminishing stores of bread.
Enter the likes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. They demand high standards of health, education and welfare such as are enjoyed by the citizens of other prosperous countries, and real solutions to problems threatening life and liberty, such as climate change and extreme inequality.
The Democratic Party established is agitated by their success at the polls. Prominent spokespeople such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry make public their worry that Sanders, especially, is a threat to the Democratic Party and seek to discredit him.
He is indeed a threat to the Democratic Party. He and the other serious challengers to the status quo threaten to steal it away from the corporations and make it an instrument of democracy.
Jim Perkins
Leverett