THREAD: There has been a lot of criticism levied against @BernieSanders recently following his comment about "working within the context of what Biden wants" as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. This thread will explore why this really isn't all that surprising.

Over the last 20+ years, Bernie has endorsed every establishment Democrat running for President: Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Hillary, and most recently, Biden. These candidates and what they represent largely contradict much of what Bernie says he stands for.
Chris Hedges theorized in 2015: "...All that energy and all of that money goes back into the Democratic party. [Bernie] functions as a sheepdog to corral progressives, left-leaning progressives, back into the embrace of the Democratic establishment."

https://t.co/5wXGxTuVrf
Bernie's foreign policy positions are also telling. While he *did* vote against the US invasion of Iraq, he still voted to fund it once underway, & also backed the US bombing of Kosovo, US sanctions against Iran & Libya, & the Iraqi Liberation Act of '98.

https://t.co/O0AoqiY7TS
Bernie called closing the torturous gulag at Guantanamo a "complicated issue" and supported a proposal in 2009 to "prohibit funding to transfer, release, or incarcerate detainees detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to or within the United States."

https://t.co/4p64SgeD1x
In 2011, Bernie co-sponsored S. Res. 85, which urged the UN Security Council to take action to "protect civilians" in Libya, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory.

https://t.co/ecM2pcNu3g
In 2014, he supported US sanctions against Russia.
That same year, Bernie didn't object to having his name included - by unanimous consent - in S.498, which backed Israel's brutal military assault against Gaza.

As a result, he was berated by supporters at a town hall meeting in Vermont.

https://t.co/zOQmi35kZM
In 2015, he supported US airstrikes in Iraq & Syria.

https://t.co/7KyZkeBWk0
Following the death of neocon John McCain in 2018, Bernie referred to him as an "American hero, a man of decency and honor and a friend of mine."
Bernie's recent endorsement of Joe Biden is the most telling. Biden is a corporate-owned warmonger who voted for the US invasion of Iraq, opposes M4A, & opposes a Green New Deal. Yet Bernie endorsed him - as he has endorsed every establishment Dem over the last two decades.
Bernie's various support for US acts of aggression, combined with 20+ years of endorsements for pro-war establishment Dems, is ultimately why his pledge to work "within the context of what Biden wants" as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee really isn't all that surprising.

More from Biden

Sitting down to work for the first day of the Biden presidency is a surreal feeling.

So much happened yesterday. I'm going to collect my threads here on yesterday's big immigration news.

First, we got key details of Biden's big immigration


Once Biden had officially taken office, we got the first major action. As part of a standard transition process, the Biden White House froze all regulations which Trump had been trying to finalize at the last hour. I did a thread on what we


Last night we started getting more changes. One of the first was an order telling CBP to stop putting people into the so-called "Migrant Protection Protocols," a cruel program that's left thousands in a dangerous limbo. But there's still more to do!


After that, we began getting the text of immigration executive orders. The first one put onto the White House's website was the order ending the Muslim Ban/Africa Ban and ordering the State Department to come up with a plan for reconsidering


The next immigration executive order put on the White House's website revoked a Trump executive order from January 26, 2017 which made all undocumented immigrants a priority for deportation and directed a DHS-wide review of immigration
"Ban" is a verb meaning to "officially or legally prohibit" something. If the Biden administration is not approving new fracking permits, how is that not "officially or legally prohibiting" new fracking permits?


The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.

But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.

If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.

So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.

In other words, he lied.

You May Also Like