When Iran Took Americans Hostage, Bernie Backed Iran’s Defenders
By: Ronald Radosh ,The Daily Beast
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Bernie Sanders, a top competitor in the Democratic primaries, has attacked Joe Biden for bringing “just a lot of baggage” into the race. But if past views are a major consideration, consider the baggage that Sanders drags into the campaign.
Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran’s long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became the overwhelming political crisis for President Jimmy Carter. It lasted 444 days.
Virtually all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents—united in support of the hostages and the international call for their freedom. One prominent political figure on the 2020 stage, then almost completely unknown, stood apart by joining a Marxist-Leninist party that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy, but also justified the hostage taking by insisting the hostages were all likely CIA agents. Who was that person? It was Bernie Sanders.
Sanders would like the public to believe, as an AP story put it, that “democratic socialism [is] the economic philosophy that has guided his political career.” But that has not always been the case. In 1977, he left the tiny left-wing Liberty Union Party of Vermont that he’d co-founded, and in 1980 instead aligned himself with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the self-proclaimed Trotskyist revolutionary party, became its presidential elector in Vermont, and campaigned for its candidates and platform that defended the Iranian hostage seizure.
Of course, Sanders had a right to his beliefs. But he has not been fully transparent about what those beliefs, connections, and loyalties have been over the years. Sanders says that he has been consistently and firmly dedicated to democratic socialism. His record, however, reveals a very different story around the time of the Iranian hostage crisis.
But Democratic voters today concerned above all with defeating Donald Trump and the electability of their prospective presidential candidate need to know the whole of Sanders’ history. He has not always been the democratic socialist he claims to be. Sanders could have supported the Socialist Party, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, or Social-Democrats U.S.A., the three leading democratic socialist organizations existing in 1980. He rejected them. Instead he embraced a Marxist-Leninist communist sect that proclaimed its solidarity with Iran.
Far from denouncing the acts, Sanders stood with those who applauded the hostage taking.
If Sanders were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, all this will come pouring out in Trump ads on television and social media. Voters will see TV clips of the American hostages, blindfolded and abused, alongside Sanders as the Trotskyist elector supporting the Iranian kidnappers. Rest assured, Trump will make absolutely sure that it is Sanders’ own past that will bury him and perhaps the Democratic Party.
Full article here .
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Single white person or Simple white person?
The answer to your question can easily be found in the seeded article:
Ergo, he was a quack in 1980, still a quack in 2016 and he's still a quack that will not win the Democratic nomination in 2020.
So, you had an opinion and knew the answer before you asked me the question in comment 1.1 . Interesting.
We all have opinions...
Indeed we all do. I acknowledged yours in comment 1.1.3 .
Not a single thing relevant to the title or Bernie's delusions of some day being POTUS.
I will never vote for Bernie Sanders. Who cares if trump is voted in again. Independents and democrats need to focus on taking back the senate from the trump republicans.
Why?
Bernie lives on "Independent Isle" in the sea of some socialist make believe utopia
and the DNC was/is crazy to allow him to run as a Dem.
The DNC has to let Bernie run as a Dem or lose the left wing socialist of their party if he runs as a independent. The Dems candidate would most certainly lose if this was allowed to happen.
Bernie was the odd socialist horse in the 2016 race, but the Democratic Party's 2020 candidates have swung so far to the socialist radical left that he's just one of the crowd with their "free stuff" but no reasonable way to pay for it.
Reasonable. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
That would be the reason the dems took him in!
Never more so than if Bernie wins and takes control of the democratic party!
The DNC is trying to screw Sanders again:
"DES MOINES, Iowa — A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention.
In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.
“I do believe we should re-open the rules. I hear it from others as well,” one DNC member said in a text message last week to William Owen, a DNC member from Tennessee who does not support re-opening the rules.
Owen, who declined to identify the member, said the member added in a text that “It would be hard though. We could force a meeting or on the floor.”
Even proponents of the change acknowledge it is all but certain not to gain enough support to move past these initial conversations. But the talks reveal the extent of angst that many establishment Democrats are feeling on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.
Sanders is surging and Joe Biden has maintained his lead nationally, but at least three other candidates are widely seen as viable. The cluster raises the specter of a convention requiring a second ballot.
If Sanders wins the Iowa caucuses on Monday and continues to gain momentum, it is possible he could arrive at the convention with the most delegates — but without enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. It is also possible that he and Elizabeth Warren, a fellow progressive, could arrive at the convention in second and third place, but with more delegates combined than the frontrunner.
If, on the second ballot, superdelegates were to throw their support to someone else, tipping the scales, many moderate Democrats fear the upheaval that would cause could weaken the eventual nominee.
Conversations about a potential rules change picked up as Sanders ascended in the primary, but they have not gained traction to this point within the DNC.
“There’s talk about somehow trying to change this rule at this convention — just casual conversation, and I have participated in it some,” said Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman from South Carolina who opposed the DNC’s decision in 2018 to strip superdelegates of much of their power in the presidential nominating process. “But I want to be clear that I would not be a party to any effort to do that in the 2020 convention … It’s bad sportsmanship.”
yahoo.com/news/dnc-members-discuss-rules-change-223141983.html?.tsrc=jtc_news_index
Even Hillary chimed in and attacked Bernie ... again.
And now Tlaib is hitting Hillary back!
I saw that! Tlaib endorses Bernie, publicly boos Hillary and laughs about it, but then has to walk it back. These people have a habit of shooting off their mouths and then making excuses.
All they can do is smear others and play political tricks
Who cares? Seems to be a hang up of the current Presidents supporters, no one else's.
Actually, many open-minded Americans on all sides of politics don't want to see the DNC/Clinton/Bloomberg pull another stunt against Bernie Sanders like they did in 2016. The DNC seems to want to change the rules again so Bloomberg can get on the stage. It's not that Bloomberg actually has a chance to win the presidency, but it's all about keeping Biden as the front-runner and final candidate. Ask yourself this ... why didn't they do that for Steyer? He, too, has millions of $$$ to offer the DNC.
You obviously "care", because you've made several comments on my seed. I've appreciated your comments, SP.
and who really cares? Certainly you aren't going to be his Don Quixote are you? LMAO!
Anyone who cares about fair play. I'm sure Sanders supporters care.
Certainly you aren't going to be his Don Quixote are you?
Actually, I'm serving higher interests.
PS: To all you Sanders supporters:
If they do it to him again - there is one sweet payback - Turn right around and vote for Trump!
Four years ago all the far rightwingers on that other site were extraordinarily concerned that Bernie was not being treated fairly by the Democratic Party. Hmmmm...
Then it turned out that most of the stuff crafted to divide Democrats which we were beginning spoon fed came straight out of Vlad Putin's troll farm the Internet Research Agency.
Try this:
"While the WikiLeaks database is searchable, Heavy.com has compiled a comprehensive list of some other intriguing emails about the DNC’s treatment of Sanders, including committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz writing that it’s “silly” to speculate about Sanders ever being president and Kaplan referring to him as obnoxious ."
That doesn't change what I wrote a bit...
..
It puts what you wrote into proper context. The DNC e-mails were real (regardless of who leaked them!) and they implicated DNC staffers as favoring Clinton, instead of being the fair arbitors of a primary election. For those who don't recall, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the DNC Committee Chairwoman and she was so arrogant that she refused to tender her resignation despite the damning revelations. It took a phone call from then president Obama to get her to finally resign and where did she go after that? ...Right over to being the honorary chair of the Clinton campaign's "50 State Program!"
Pretty sad isn't it, people feel that it's okay to break the rules just to get their way. And the left gets offended when they are labeled as childish.
Bernie sanders views are bad for America, but if the left is so far out there that that is who they elect to run against President Trump then their base has spoken. Now if the political elites of the Democrat party pick the candidate then that is not the will of the people.
While Bernie was "held hostage" due to the Senate "impeachment trial", he sent AOC out as his campaign spokesperson and representative.