So being as I’m bored let’s shoot some fish in a barrel and take the piss out of Tony Blair, who has come down from his throne in the heavens to tell Americans not to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Reminder: Tony Blair is a war criminal.
“When I hear the rhetoric around Bernie Sanders, who by the way is obviously a very capable guy, it’s eerily familiar to anyone who’s just watched the debacle unfold in the British Labour party and our election defeat in the UK which is essentially the worst in our 120-year history.”
Tony Blair
You yourself and your neoliberal lackeys tried to undermine Corbyn at every turn and then act like it’s all his fault that he lost. Your second referendum nonsense which you pushed Corbyn to adopt led to the catastrophic defeat, not the fact that say, renationalising the railways in unpopular (it is actually popular). The media also screeched that he was an anti-Semite 24/7 in a smear job and your neoliberal lackeys supported and fuelled.
Don’t get me wrong Corbyn did himself zero favours by giving into the neoliberals but you get the idea.
I just don’t think there’s an appetite for socialist revolution. There wasn’t in Britain, I’d be surprised if there was in the US. And so I think … if they go down that path it’s an enormous gamble.
I dunno, I think picking someone who can barely talk coherently to go against Trump might be a risk.
(Of course, there’s also Tulsi Gabbard, but she is sadly not going to win the nomination)
“Put it like this: you’re essentially saying, ‘Put aside the middle ground, we’re not really going to try to reach that, instead we’re going to up the turnout and that’s exactly the strategy of Corbyn’s Labour party in the UK and it failed, drastically.”
As opposed to nominating arch-moderate Hillary “Single payer will never come to pass” Clinton, which of course was a resounding success.
“First of all, my view of the populism is you’ve got to be very careful when you’re from the liberal or progressive side of politics, because if you’re not careful you tend to say that, ‘These people who are voting for Donald Trump or Brexit, they’re just irrational people, I don’t understand why they’re doing it and you’ve just got to hope this is a moment that passes.’
This argument is laughable. Why? Because it’s left wingers (okay, reasonable ones) who actually acknowledge that people who voted Trump or Brexit are not actually all hardcore thick racists. That argument is an argument made by THE LIBERAL ELITE LIKE YOURSELF, Tony.
The thing is you people want to say ‘oh the people who voted for populism have real grievances’ and then put forward a platform which is more of the same centrist neoliberal warmongering shite that we have had for 40 years which led to the grievances in the first place!
Blair also said he was “a passionate believer that if the left goes down the path of trying to fight a culture war with the right, it will lose comprehensively and it really should not do that.”
This argument makes zero sense in the context of discussing Sanders’ campaign because Sanders is 90% economic arguments. Some people in his camp might do the culture warrior stuff but that’s not really Sanders’ cup of tea and he really isn’t starting a culture war. It’s generally neoliberals that obsess over the culture warrior stuff to hide the fact that they support the same foreign policy and economic policy as the Republicans.
In other words piss off to the Hague Tony you absolute bellend.
Let’s have another look at the results of the Iowa caucus. For the sake of this argument I won’t be discussing the rigging/manipulation etc. claims. To be clear I have no faith that these results are actually accurate to what went on in the caucus but I am using the ‘results’ as a barometer of that the establishment may be thinking, more than what they actually mean in terms of the voters’ choice.
So as it stands Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are essentially basically tied, with Elizabeth Warren bringing up third place, and Joe Biden in fourth. What is significant about these results?
Well firstly, even given any manipulation, Sanders is a threat and very much NOT the candidate the establishment wants. They have to find someone that they can use to win (or ‘win’) the Democratic primary that is NOT Sanders.
Now the first thing that comes to mind is Pete Buttigieg, being as he won/’won’ this caucus. Now the establishment loves Buttigieg. If you look at it objectively it’s rather ridiculous that a small town mayor with 0 Washington experience and 0 foreign policy experience is even anywhere near close to being a viable candidate. However it seems that the CIA and all the other alphabet soup agencies love Buttigieg. which is one of the factors that has helped him become slightly viable.
There is however one problem for the establishment in backing Pete Buttigieg, and that is his lack of black support. In many states in America, getting at least some black support is necessary to win the state (not the case in the very white state of Iowa). Now, it’s possible that this ‘win’ for Buttigieg makes black voters more likely to choose him in future primaries, drawing away the support for Sanders (among a significant amount of younger Black & also Latino voters) and Biden (the choice of many older black voters). Or it may be possibly what the establishment hopes is the case (which doesn’t mean it will materialise).
Thus unless this happens or the Demoicratic establishment simply make up numbers rather than try to manipulate more subtly (lol) I still have to conclude that Buttigieg is not really viable.
One thing this primary does do is weaken the case for Biden, and to an extent as well Warren. Biden has been a reluctant establishment choice for a while. Many in the media establishment are not keen on a Biden candidacy, but recognise that up to this point he has had a solid base in the polls and thus is a reasonable choice to stop Sanders, the establishment’s key priority. The main problem for Biden has been how much of his support in the polls has been what Kyle Kulinski called ‘default support’ based on name recognition and being Obama’s VP rather than enthusiasm for his candidacy. Biden’s main argument has also been the rather elusive concept of ‘electability’ – the idea that he can beat Trump, and coming 4th in Iowa clearly weakens the case for Biden on that grounds. Even though Iowa was not Biden’s strongest state to begin with,
Warren’s position has been weakening for a while at this point, and in all honesty she is not really the establishment’s favourite candidate anyway. Sure they’d back her if it’s Warren v. Sanders, but even some of her weak liberal (in the American sense of the word) instincts, such as the wealth tax and bank regulation, are too much for them.
Which leaves Bloomberg as the main hypothetically viable candidate who isn’t Sanders. But Bloomberg has not entered the first four contests so we won’t see how much support/’support’ he has until later. But on thing is for sure: the establishment is very pleased he is there. If Buttigieg can’t get the black vote, or Biden’s position gets weaker and weaker, they have Bloomberg to turn to.
So, there has been a furore on Twitter among the liberal twitterati regarding the ‘endorsement’ (not actually a real ‘endorsement’) by Joe Rogan of Bernie Sanders.
According to the liberal twitterati, this is bad because Joe Rogan has some beliefs that they consider to be ‘cancelable’ and they were annoyed at Sanders highlighting this ‘endorsement’.
To be clear, I don’t really care about Joe Rogan one way or another. I have never actually watched any episodes of his program. The only clip I really remember seeing from his show was the hilarious Bari Weiss clip where she called Gabbard an ‘Assad toady’. Nor do I endorse any particular opinion given by Joe Rogan.
The claim is that Rogan is transphobic. I don’t watch him so I don’t know if he is transphobic or not. Now the liberal establishment is basically trying to ‘cancel’ Sanders because of Joe Rogan’s views.
Sanders is clearly not responsible for what Joe Rogan says or what Rogan thinks of him personally. Now, you can prefer that Sanders did not flag up the ‘endorsement’ from Rogan if you personally object to Rogan. That’s okay. But what makes me laugh is the sheer hypocrisy of the establishment shaming Sanders for accepting this ‘endorsement’ when the establishment creams itself over actual endorsements from people who are far far morally worse than Rogan.
Any establishment candidate, for instance, would love an endorsement from Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. These are two people – as Secretary of State and President – are responsible for the destruction of Libya and the later devolution of that country into a failed state with slave markets.
What makes this situation even more ridiculous is that Joe Biden is now getting on his high horse about Trans rights:
Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.
Lets discuss the truth here for a second. Obama’s administration – of which Biden is so proud – is responsible for torturing a trans woman for revealing US war crimes. I find it hard to believe that he actually cares about trans people given this is the case. Trans people (along with every other minority group) are just a convenient stick with which he can try to beat Bernie Sanders (despite Biden himself’s own less-than glowing record on LGBT* rights).
Not to mention, is there any actual evidence that Sanders has ‘compromised’ on Trans issues given that he believes that Medicare for all includes healthcare related to gender reassignment?
It’s fine if you prefer that Sanders had not mentioned this ‘endorsement’ but the reaction from this establishment is, as usual, over the top nonsense that should be called out.
Independent US media, and in this case referring to those outlets that are specifically progressive, desire the introduction of the ‘Medicare for All’ system in the United States. This is one of the main focal points of outlets such as Secular Talk, The Humanist Report, Jamarl Thomas, etc. In some cases they will invoke the UK National Health Service as an example of what they desire in the US.
The reason why they mention the UK healthcare system is obvious. Founded in 1948 by the Clement Attlee Labour Government, it has overall been a stunning success and one of the best healthcare systems in the world. It is not surprising that American independent journalists are green with envy over the quality and free nature1 of Britain’s healthcare. The NHS is, of course, massively superior to the disaster that is the American healthcare system. However when independent media outlets refer to the NHS, they usually invoke it only as an example that America could copy without taking into account both the historical context of its founding and the recent changes within the NHS that have seen it become increasingly privatised2. This article will only focus on the British case, but there are analogues with other countries as the rise and decline of social democracy has parallels in all western countries.
Historical Context
The NHS was founded in 1948 by Clement Attlee’s Labour government. The roots of the post-1945 welfare state, in conventional narratives, refer specifically to the Beveridge Report of 1943 as being an important spur to its creation. We do have to ask the critical question as to why at this particular junction in time this policy was implemented.
The creation of the NHS did not just happen because there happened to be a Labour government in power. Labour also formed a government in 1929 under Ramsay MacDonald but that government did not try any major reforms to help the working class. As noted in Richard Seymour’s book Corbyn:
Such nugatory reforms as [the MacDonald government] did offer included improvements to housing and welfare provision, and some tax cuts paid for by a budget surplus – including cutting taxes on corporate profits.
Richard Seymour, Corbyn, Verso, p. 99.
These kinds of reforms are similar to those of the Liberal government of 1906, which introduced old age pensions and national insurance, but without being a radical or working class government.
So why did it happen?
The factor that gets most underestimated in the creation of the Western welfare state, is in my opinion, the existence of a socialist alternative in the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had led to the creation of a socialist government which was able to build systems that provided healthcare and education for its citizens. The Soviet Union had emerged from World War Two in very bad shape due to the devastating effects of the Nazi assault, but it had also gained tremendous prestige due to its role in smashing the fascist machine. While the capitalist system had endured the devastating effects of the great depression the Soviet Union’s industrial output was increasing and it was industrialising rapidly, one of the key factors in the Soviet victory over the fascists. Workers in the capitalist countries in the 1930s had had a terrible time due to high levels of unemployment. These factors had the potential to increase the attraction of the Soviet model – and if Western workers remained in the poor conditions they had been living in in the 1930’s there was always the possibility they might start listening to the ‘communist propaganda’.
A second factor was the fact that World War Two had been so incredibly destructive that the rebuilding of Western countries provided opportunities for growth. The world rate of profit was higher during the social democratic era than it would be later:
Image embedded from Michael Roberts blog thenextrecession.wordpress.com. If you are interested in capitalism and profitability over time this blog is an excellent source.
Here is a broader graph showing a longer period of history:
Also from the nextrecession.
As we can see the higher profitability alone cannot explain the introduction of a welfare state, since profitability was also high during other periods in history. But it did ensure that it was possible for the capitalist class to make some concessions to stave off a more radical approach.
It is also worth noting the areas in which the Attlee administration did not challenge the power structure. It did decolonise in some countries where it was necessary, but it tried to maintain empire in at least some countries. Britain – that was clearly losing any sort of ‘great power’ status that it maintained after WWI – also integrated into the imperialist US bloc of countries under Labour. This article discusses Labour’s foreign policy in the Attlee era:
In October 1944 Labour had supported British intervention against the popular forces of the Greek Communist resistance, ELAS, in favour of the pro-monarchist right wing Voulgaris government. […] The Greek action was designed to head off threats to Britain’s interests in the Middle East, since, in an early version of the domino theory, it was assumed that the fall of Greece would cut the empire in half and allow the USSR to fill the vacuum with consequences which would reverberate around the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. The imperialist requirements of oil, export markets and trade routes outweighed any consideration of the degree of popular support for the resistance which had rapidly established its control over the majority of Greek territory.
Adrian Budd, Nation and Empire Labour’s Foreign Policy 1945-51
The Greek situation is just one example among many that could be cited. The Malaysia policy is worth noting as is the fact that Britain took part in the Korean War. The refusal of the Labour Party under Attlee to reject imperialism ensured that Britain – even if enacting some reforms that were against the interests of some capitalists – did not at any point become a threat to the US world empire.
As Caitlin Johnstone has argued while discussing politics in the modern US context, anti-imperialism is a much more dangerous threat to capitalist hegemony than simply making a concession like universal healthcare:
The primary role US-led warmongering plays in maintaining existing power structures, which I first started to notice during the 2016 Democratic primaries, is on even clearer display during the 2020 Democratic primaries. You see candidates like Bernie Sanders being frowned upon by hardline centrists for promoting domestic policies which would hurt the profit margins of the oligarchs, but overall he’s being treated as a legitimate candidate and receiving reluctant coverage on mainstream media networks. Then you look at the treatment of a candidate like Tulsi Gabbard, who is campaigning on a major overhaul of US foreign policy, and she’s treated as a raving lunatic and a traitor.
Caitlin Johnstone
These factors meant that capitalist were more willing to accept somewhat radical concessions to the working class in order to stabilise the system.
Thatcher and Blair and Privatisation
As is well known, the 1980’s marked the beginning of the period of neoliberalism, sometimes in the UK also called ‘Thatcherism’. Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 and until she was forced out in 1990 managed to make drastic changes in the British economy that benefited capitalists and harmed workers. Thatcher attacked the unions and used brutality against the Miners’ Strike in 1984-5 – she was successful in drastically weakening union power. She instituted right to buy policies that allowed tenants to buy housing stock [which in reality has meant that more houses are no longer owned by the state but instead owned by landlords who charge ridiculous rents]. She did have a privatisation agenda.
However the real effect of privatization in the NHS happened under a Labour government – that of Tony Blair elected in 1997 [otherwise known as ‘New Labour’]. Blair had little faith in public servants and he introduced massive amounts of ‘private consultancy’ into government. David Craig (with Richard Brooks of Private Eye) wrote a damning book entitled ‘Plundering the Public Sector’, which outlines the colossal level of waste in private consulting under New Labour and how many consultancy projects have failed and created scandals for the government departments concerned. Private consultants tend to have a private sector based attitude to public services; this policy of relying on them also helped fuel privatisation and the introduction of market based mechanisms into the NHS.
We can also refer to Craig & Brooks’ book to get a clearer notion of exactly how the government has privatised parts of the NHS by stealth. The NHS has not been directly sold off in the same way as other privatised assets, such as being sold through floating shares (like Royal Mail for instance). I want to make clear that if a government directly tried to flog the NHS there would be uproar even from people in the population that classify themselves as right-wing. Instead the main mechanism of privatisation has been a mechanism called the Private Finance Initiative [hence PFI].
First announced by Tory chancellor Norman Lamott in his 1992 autumn statement […] the plan was for private companies rather than a cash-strapped public sector to pay for new schools, hospitals and other services. The companies would run them for up to fifty years, recouping their outlay through annual charges to the taxpayer. […] But the snag with PFI is that it costs private companies much more to borrow the money needed than it would the government, increasing the costs that are ultimately passed on to public services.
David Craig & Richard Brooks, Plundering the Public Sector, Constable and Robinson 2006, p. 133
Despite the fact that this was first floated under a Tory government, it was New Labour that really used this policy to privatise aspects of the NHS by stealth. This PFI method has been used to fund new hospitals in the UK.
By April 2000 [the government] had commissioned thirty-four privately financed hospital developments at a cost of £3.5bn. The six publicly funded developments it authorized in the same period will cost just £217m.
George Monbiot, Captive State, Pan 2000, p. 79.
The NHS has also outsourced much of its work to private companies. I am going to quote from Private Eye, a British publication that has covered the issue of privatisation in the NHS closely.
There is a clear underfunding and privatising trend in NHS and local authority services. Between April 2013 and April 2016, 45 percent of the community health services that were put out to tender went to non-NHS providers. Private operators now run GP and out-of-hours services, walk-in centres and minor injury units, district nursing, diabetes, musculoskeletal, audiology, dermatology, physiotherapy, podiatry, rheumatology, mental health and other chronic disease services, plus urgent care, plebotomy, anti-coagulation, sexual health, wheelchair services, prison healthcare, community hospitals, neuro-rehabilitation, frail and elderly care, health visiting, services for children with complex mental, physical and sensory learning difficulties, social care for adults and children, and end-of-life care.
M.D. Private Eye No. 1439 (10 March – 23 March 2017), p. 15.
These trends have happened despite the fact that privately funded healthcare is objectively worse for the taxpayer.
Why did this happen?
Again we have to ask the question of why this privatisation agenda began to emerge at this point in history. The 1970s in Britain saw economic problems and strikes, and the unions were blamed for the crises. This made people in Britain more willing to accept a right wing government. But the problems in the 1970s clearly go beyond Britain.
The profitability of capitalism had begun to slow down [as can be seen in the above graphs from Michael Roberts] and so it was necessary to remove concessions from the working class in order to increase profitability. The Soviet Union had also began to slow down in growth and stagnate somewhat (the mid 1970s -1985 in Russian is known as ‘zastoi’ [stagnation]) and the attraction of socialist models had decreased across the Western world in general. This is in part because of legitimate flaws in the Soviet socialist model, in part because of relentless anti-Soviet propaganda, and in part because of CIA/FBI etc undermining of Communist Parties in the US and Europe. We can add also the Deng Zhouping reforms in China which involved some degree of marketisation beginning in 1978. These trends bothe required and allowed a harsher capitalist regime which would weaken the position of workers in the developed countries.
Lessons to be Learned?
The main lessons from this historical analysis in my opinion amount to:
Concessions such as Medicare for all will only be given if there is a large amount of pressure on the state. The difficulty of introducing medicare for all at this juncture – as opposed to 1945 – is doubly compounded by the collapse of the USSR which had provided that pressure on the Western states from outside. This is why the NHS could be achieved simply through the election of a government – but this is a unique juncture and I do not believe the conditions can be repeated. Thus electing Bernie Sanders or another candidate that supports Medicare for all (e.g. Tulsi Gabbard) will not be enough to achieve the goal.
Trends such as neoliberalism are common in all countries of the west even in those that US independent media often tends to examine rather uncritically. Universal healthcare systems in other countries have been undermined by these changes – they just started off in a better position than the US system to begin with, so the effects of the underfunding and privatisation of the NHS are not as severe as the disastrous healthcare in the US case.
I say this not to discourage US commentators and activists from fighting for Medicare for all, but to simply highlight the difficulty of achieving it and to point in the direction of a strategy that would be required. This difficulty goes beyond merely the corruption of the Democratic Party and money in politics, and the lobbying power of the health insurance companies – the main two obstacles often highlighted by independent commentators such as Kyle Kulinski -though those things are certainly legitimate obstacles as well.
footnotes
As a footnote it should be added that people in England and Wales do have to pay prescription costs and there are also dental costs (though you don’t have to pay if you are on certain benefits and there are no prescription costs for over-60s). Not everything in the UK healthcare system is free but you are not going to bankrupted by cancer treatment like you are in the US. There are also issues around the costs of social care (if you have Alzheimer’s etc) though that is an issue for another day and for someone with more expertise.
2. This also applies as well to the Scandinavian countries, who tend to be idolised by US commentators. This video should be referenced in the case of Finland, though I am not very knowledgeable on these Scandinavian systems so Scandinavian sources should be sought for those who desire further information.
Now I happened to see an article on the Guardian, and this article happened to have a promising title. “Pete Buttigieg is the darling of the donor class. The debate was a reminder why” blares the title. In fact, rather than being a good article that exposes Buttigieg, it ends up being a good example to expose the tactics of the mainstream media and so called ‘left’ media and how they actually support the establishment through their articles. So let’s dive in!
The first two paragraphs are actually an attack on Biden, not Buttigieg. Awful as Biden is, he’s not the focus here so I’m going to skip it. The article leads away from Biden by stating that Buttigieg is beginning to surge in the early state polls. (Polls themselves can be manufactured etc, and Buttigieg is himself a manufactured media creation. But that’s too much of a digression here).
[M]any observers, including me, predicted that Buttigieg would face similar scrutiny [to Warren] this time around. But he did not: the other contenders pulled their punches and for most of the debate made only oblique references to his inexperience and dismal poll performance among the crucial demographic bloc of black voters.
Now, it was a trend noted by many commentators that there were in fact, very few attacks on Buttigieg during this debate. But this statement is inherently inaccurate, as anyone who actually watched the debate footage will know, he was attacked by Tulsi Gabbard for his ridiculous idea that the US should consider sending troops into Mexico. Gabbard also directly referenced Buttigieg’s lack of experience in national security in her attack. But the media doesn’t want you to know about Tulsi Gabbard, because her positions on ending regime change war are hated by the establishment, so they don’t mention her at all.
[I]t is hard not to suspect that the other candidates were more comfortable attacking the progressive and outspoken Warren, a woman who has defined the terms of the ideological debate in the primary thus far and shifted the party decidedly to the left, than they were attacking the soft-spoken male polyglot from South Bend.
I wouldn’t call Warren outspoken at all. And yes, the reason that Warren has been subject to more attacks is because she is more progressive than the establishment would like (even though she’s not that progressive). Nothing to do with her being a woman at all. Sanders has faced far more attacks in the media than Warren because he is stronger on Medicare for all, etc. than Warren. Also Sanders got attacked in several of the debates on his Medicare for all policy. Just because he made the attackers look like complete idiots (see: Tim Ryan) doesn’t change the fact that he was attacked. Also, its far more *Sanders* that has driven the discussion to the left, not Warren.
I would suspect that candidates didn’t attack Buttigieg as much because they agree with Buttigieg ideologically (the safe explanation) or because he is a deep state plant (the ‘conspiratorial’ explanation). Also some of the candidates (Sanders, Yang) don’t attack people in general.
The article then criticises Buttigieg for 0 substance and being overly coached (true), and that attacks progressives with spurious arguments (also true). There is one thing of note here.
that free college proposals like Warren’s
Notice who isn’t mentioned here. Bernie Sanders, who has more claim to these kinds of policies than Warren.
But the base was not neglected by everyone on stage. In one of the night’s biggest applause lines from the Atlanta audience, Kamala Harris emphasized the importance of black women to the Democratic electoral strategy, and lamented that these voters have been largely ignored.
Trying to set up Kamala Harris as a foil to Buttigieg is a ridiculous case to make. They don’t have any major disagreements on policy substance as a far as I can tell. While its true that Buttigieg is doing terribly with black voters and recently faked endorsements from black people to make himself look more popular, there is no evidence that Harris – despite the fact she is a black woman herself – will do anything but continue to lock up poor black people. After all that’s what Harris did as a prosecutor. Putting a black, female face on that doesn’t change anything.
But the statement from Harris was also a moral reminder to Democrats to remember, acknowledge and work for black women
Harris isn’t a moral authority on anything. See her career as a prosecutor for more information.
It was one of a few moments of moral reckoning over race and gender injustice on the stage. In a moment enabled by the uncommonly deft and conscientious intervention of the evenings’ four moderators, Warren brought the humanitarian crisis at the border into vivid relief. Klobuchar and Harris made appeals to women [etc…]
There was another woman on the stage, her name is Tulsi Gabbard, you have ignored her again. Again they don’t want to make Gabbard seem credible so they continue to erase her from existence.
I have already made a post detailing the issue of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and Sanders’ decision to vote for that bombing. I will not rehash that here; rather you are directed to the post on Sanders’ decision. In this post, I am looking to examine Sanders’ foreign policy stances in the 2020 election race and why at least some of them are problematic.
I wish to make two points before I begin this post. This post is intended as a criticism of flaws that I see in Sanders’ foreign policy statements and policy. It is not meant as a full examination of every policy stance taken by Sanders. I am not saying that every stance taken by Sanders is bad. The second point is that I am not telling you you shouldn’t vote for Sanders (or any other candidate) in the Democratic Primary race. That’s your decision. I am trying to give information about negatives in his stance which may be overlooked by other outlets who support Sanders or by the mainstream media which is likely to be critical of aspects of Sanders’ foreign policy for the wrong reasons (e.g. he made some criticisms of Israel).
Let’s begin by saying that some more left-leaning outlets and writers have been very attracted to Sanders’ foreign policy and have written articles praising his approach. For example, Meagan Day, in her article in Jacobin – a democratic socialist publication, discusses Sanders’ foreign policy speech ‘Building a Global Democratic movement to counter Authoritarianism’. Though this article mainly discusses what the speech says, it also seems approving of Sanders’ approach in this speech.
Let’s examine these Sanders speeches and other comments made by Sanders on foreign policy, and see if they are as progressive as claimed or if they contain serious flaws in the conception of the world.
Russia
In these speeches Sanders specifically focuses upon Russia as an enemy and Russian as a country that has attacked Western democracy. In the context of discussing the rise of authoritarianism around the world, Sanders says this:
We saw this anti-democratic effort take place in the 2016 election right here in the United States, where we now know that the Russian government was engaged in a massive effort to undermine one of our greatest strengths: The integrity of our elections, and our faith in our own democracy.
I found it incredible, by the way, that when the President of the United States spoke before the United Nations on Monday, he did not even mention that outrage.
Well, I will. Today I say to Mr. Putin: we will not allow you to undermine American democracy or democracies around the world. In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe, including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win.
Bernie Sanders
Even in September 2017, when this speech was made, there was no evidence for Russiagate. The promotion of Russiagate, and with it the increase in hysteria around Russia, makes any sort of sensible foreign policy towards Russia far more difficult to achieve, as any politician that makes moves that seek to deescalate tensions will be vilified by the media as a Putin puppet. Sanders is clearly uncritically here peddling an establishment narrative with no evidence.
His statement on Russia is also problematic for the reference to “work[ing] in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe”. What precisely does this mean? In reality, such statements have implied what Sanders claims to condemn: the support of regime change in the name of ‘democracy’.
North Korea
Sanders’ policy speeches have also made problematic references to the situation in the DPRK.
Let’s understand: North Korea is ruled by one of the worst regimes in the world. For many years, its leadership has sacrificed the well-being of its own people in order to develop nuclear weapons and missile programs in order to protect the Kim family’s regime. Their continued development of nuclear weapons and missile capability is a growing threat to the US and our allies. Despite past efforts they have repeatedly shown their determination to move forward with these programs in defiance of virtually unanimous international opposition and condemnation.
This is an extremely problematic statement. Firstly the leadership of the DPRK has sought to develop nuclear weapons, not so much to “protect its regime” as to protect the country from a possible US invasion. Given the US overthrow of multiple leaders around the world – including one who agreed to give up a nuclear program to increase his friendship with the West Muammar Gaddafi – the pursuit of Nuclear weapons by North Korea is rational policy making on behalf of their government. This whole argument is upside down and echoes neoconservative talking points: North Korea is this monomanical regime what is pursuing nuclear weapons so they are the threat to us, rather than the reality, which is that the DPRK is seeking to defend itself from Western imperialism.
As we did with Iran, if North Korea continues to refuse to negotiate seriously, we should look for ways to tighten international sanctions. This will involve working closely with other countries, particularly China, on whom North Korea relies for some 80 percent of its trade. But we should also continue to make clear that this is a shared problem, not to be solved by any one country alone but by the international community working together.
Bernie Sanders
Sanders first hand wrings about how Kim is making his people suffer by the pursuit of nuclear weapons but then talks of the need to sanction North Korea without any sort of discussion or consideration of the effect that that may have on civilians.
Syria
We rightly condemn Russian and Iranian support for Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter in Syria.
Bernie Sanders
There is not much material in the two Sanders speeches about Syria. But even this one remark is revealing. What is ‘Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter in Syria’? Presumably this refers to claims that Assad (through his army) is butchering his own people. In general, while no side can have entirely clean hands during a war such as that in Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s leadership and his military, the Syrian Arab Army, have been focusing on liberating Syria from the terrorist threat of groups like Al-Nusra and ISIS. The crime in Syria was to begin this proxy war and to support those terrorists fueling this war, which is a crime of the Western leadership, their proxies in the region, and the terrorists themselves, not of Bashar al-Assad, who is only responding to those who want to destroy his country.
Sanders has also brought one Robert Malley onto his foreign policy team. Malley served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council as “Special Assistant to President Obama & Senior Adviser to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign” from February 2014 to January 2017. Under his watch, the U.S led operations which saw the near-total destruction of the historic cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
Alex Rubenstein Mint Press News
I would suggest reading this article for more detail.
Bernie Sanders has a problematic foreign policy as can be seen from his two policy speeches linked above, when we examine what Sanders actually supports regarding Russia, North Korea and Syria. Nor are these the only areas where Sanders has made problematic statements, for example he has made factually inaccurate statements about Venezuela. Anyone expecting Sanders to really shake up the foreign policy in Washington is most likely mistaken.
The Democratic primary candidates’ stance on the possible extradition and trial of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and publisher of former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning’s leaks about US war crimes, is an important one for many voters. The stances of the US presidential candidates – including those from other political parties – have been laid out by Taylor Hudak in her blog ‘Action 4 Assange’. This link compiles all the known information about the candidates’ position on the issue.
It goes without saying that the ‘Corporate Democrat’ candidates generally have terrible positions regarding Assange. If you are an Assange supporter, voting for someone who says “I’m troubled by that” referring to the communation of Manning’s sentence (Buttigieg) or says the situation is “closer to [Assange] being a high-tech terrorist than the pentagon papers” (Biden) is obviously out of the question. The only Democratic candidate to clearly come out for Assange is Gabbard, stating that: “Charging Assange under the Espionage Act will have a serious chilling effect on our most fundamental rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Every American, certainly every journalist, must strongly condemn this anti-Democratic act by the Trump Administration.” [All quotes taken from the above Taylor Hudak article].
If you would like to watch Taylor Hudak discuss the candidates’ position on this issue you can watch this video with the Political Vigilante Graham Elwood:
But what about Bernie Sanders? After all, Sanders is considered by a lot of people to be the most progressive candidate in the race. You would think it would be possible that he would have a strong stance on Julian Assange. So one independent journalist decided to find out whether it was the case by asking Sanders about Assange.
An independent journalist called Dack Rouleau decided to ask Bernie Sanders his opinion on Assange at a rally. This isn’t the first time Rouleau has asked candidates about their stance on Assange. He has asked multiple candidates to state their views, and was as far as I know the first person to get Andrew Yang on the record regarding his position on Assange (I’ve already discussed Yang’s position on Assange, it’s bad). This individual deserves a lot of credit for doing this work of getting candidates on the record about Assange.
Previously, Bernie Sanders had merely alluded to the Assange case:
Bernie Sanders: “It is not up to the president to determine who is or is not a journalist. The actions of the Trump administration represent a disturbing attack on the First Amendment, and threaten to undermine the important work that investigative reporters conduct every day.”
Screenshot of Sanders Tweet vaguely referring to Assange
Anyway, here is the video of Bernie Sanders being asked about Assange:
I will leave you to judge for yourself to what extent you consider the statements made by Sanders to be suffiecent. Personally, i take the position that only Gabbard’s position is sufficient of the Democratic candidates as it is the only position that has clearly referenced Assange and stated a clear desire to drop all charges against Assange.
I’ve just finished watching the Democratic Debate round three on Youtube as I write this, and oh my, that debate was really bad.
To begin with, here are the candidates that made the debate stage.
Former Vice President Joe Biden;
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker;
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg;
Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro;
California Senator Kamala Harris;
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar;
Former Texas House Representative Beto O’Rourke;
Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders;
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren;
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
Here’s why it was a really uninteresting debate that is unlikely to change anything as regards to the make up of the race.
Opening Statements:
The opening statements by most of the candidates were just pointless. The statements by O’Rourke, Castro, Klobuchar, Booker and Buttigieg were all pretty much the same thing about bringing the country together because of Trump and because of the other problems that exist in America. They did have slightly different emphasis – Klobuchar making sure to bring up her credentials as a ‘moderate’ and Castro using phrases like ‘bold vision’, but it was all very similar politician speak with no substance.
Harris – while having basically the same sort of message in her statement – used the opportunity to address Donald Trump directly. This is the kind of thing that the liberal media comes over, but it is basically irrelevant and gimmicky.
Even Biden’s statement was slightly better then the above mentioned 6 statements because he at least brought up policy by mentioning investing in curing disease and climate change.
Sanders brought up the kinds of things that you would expect him to bring up in terms of taking on oligarchs, and Warren brought up how paths to the middle class are being shut off.
Yang of course had the most off the wall statement of the night, claiming that he would give 10 American families his ‘Freedom Dividend’ [$1000 a month, Yang’s conception of Universal Basic Income], and to apply on his website. In general his framing was about people as owners and shareholders in society and this is a theme that he would echo later on. This statement by Yang got a large reaction from the crowd – so I’m guessing there were several Yang supporters in the audience. Personally I didn’t like it – it feels too much like a gimmick.
The Debate
Healthcare
Sanders is obviously on strong ground on this topic, and in all debate clips that I have seen on this Sanders always does a good job in outlining why Medicate for All makes sense, which is not surprising given that this issue is Sanders’ signature policy.
However, this discussion was clearly less interesting to watch than the same exchanges that took place during the first debate. I think the reason for this is actually that some of the more obnoxious candidates were not in this debate. It’s fun to watch Sanders metaphorically slap around someone who is as much as a dipshit as John Delaney or Tim Ryan. It’s honestly not as entertaining when he’s against Klobuchar or something.
Biden tried to attack Sanders and Warren on how to pay for Medicare for All. Sanders brought up eliminating co-pays, deductibles and Warren brought up that Medicare for All is cheaper for working people in their pocket. Biden tried to answer this by saying something to the effect of ‘Well my bill is $1000 dollars out of pocket max’ as if that somehow makes his bill better than Sanders’ where the cost is zero.
Klobuchar tried to get herself one of those viral moments by saying ‘I read the bill’ [in response to Sanders’ exchange with Ryan in the last debate where Sanders – clearly off the cuff – had a viral moment where he responded ‘I wrote the damn bill’ to some idiotic blather by Tim Ryan]. Needless to say, it wasn’t effective.
The only other thing of note here is that Castro attempted to distinguish himself by going after Joe Biden. In particular, he attacked Biden because his plan leaves some people uninsured and Castro wants a public option for everyone [but not medicare for all]. He also said that he was following the legacy of Obama and not Biden.
Race
Neither Sanders nor Warren was called upon in this section, despite the fact that they are two of the top three candidates in the race.
This section of the debate was not that interesting because there was no actual debate or challenges from one candidate to another.
However, the moderators in this section did challenge Harris and Klobuchar to defend their records which was the most interesting part of this section. I was surprised given that the moderators challenged these two candidates, that they didn’t also challenge Buttigieg on racial issues in South Bend.
Guns
There was a discussion between Biden and Harris about the constitutional authority for the president to issue executive orders banning assault weapons. Honestly it seems to me that Harris lost this exchange. She was asked a question about constitutional authority but she didn’t actually answer it, where upon Biden said ‘talk to constitutional scholars’.
The other section of interest here was Beto o’Rourke attempting to make himself look really good with the liberal base by calling for banning certain guns and going into a section where he was like ‘yes we are going to take your assault weapons’. Beto was obviously really impressed with this, well, because it’s Beto, what do you expect?
The first thing to note here is that Biden just outright lied about Obama not separating families and using cages at the border. This is just flat untrue;
Castro also used the opportunity to go after Biden again on this issue. Castro clearly tried to distinguish himself by doing this;
Beto O’Rourke also tried to distinguish himself by being as pro-immigration and pro-naturalisation for immigrants as possible.
China
All candidates agree that Trump’s tariffs are bad because he has no strategy;
Sanders did what you would expect him to do, which is attack trade deals;
There was a bunch of hawkish rhetoric on China and how China is bad because American ‘intellectual property’;
Only mention of Putin of the night by Booker!
Afghanistan
This is the part of the night where Biden starts to get even more incoherent and starts rambling on and on even more. I don’t even know the half of what he said and I can’t be bothered to watch it again because it was so boring.
Sanders then challenged Biden on the Iraq war and stated that he had always opposed that conflict and didn’t believe Bush and Cheney from the start. I mean this is a fair point and attack by Sanders.
Venezuela
This part of the debate was such bullshit. The moderator literally asked Sanders the ‘but muh Venezuela’ question. I didn’t even think the mainstream media would be quite so hacky as to ask Sanders this bullshit talking point that comes straight out of the bowels of right wing Youtube.
Sanders’ answer, at least the bit where he talked about Venezuela, was also bullshit. As was Castro’s. It’s all ‘Maduro bad dictator’ etc while ignoring the negative effects of US sanctions and attempted regime change coups.
Climate change
The moderators segued into this topic by asking Booker about his vegan diet which I thought was bizarre. Maybe they were trying to bait Booker into being a pushy vegan – he didn’t take the bait.
Education
Yang was challenged by the moderator on support for charter schools which I didn’t actually know Yang supported (hint: charter schools are bad, we call them ‘Academies’ in the UK, they’re bad). He didn’t really answer the question, some of the other stuff he said was fine but it didn’t answer the question;
Everyone agreed on paying teachers more;
Sanders used the opportunity to promote universal college;
Biden served up some more incoherent nonsense. People were saying on Twitter afterwards that what Biden was saying involved some bizarre racism about how black parents are bad and need to be told how to parent by social workers. Honestly I missed this at the time because he just sounds so incoherent I don’t even follow his conversation. But yeah, what Biden said here is pretty, uh, sketchy
Closing Questions on Professional Setbacks
Know what candidates will say e.g Buttigieg is likely to talk about being gay and Harris about race related issues so it’s not very interesting. There’s also nothing to really criticise about the answers – I’m not going to attack Biden for going through the loss of his wife and daughter for example because I’m not an asshole;
Protesters started yelling something before Biden was speaking. I have no idea what they were saying. Humanist Report didn’t either.
Reflections on the Debate
Didn’t really give much insight into candidates;
It was interesting that Yang, though framing his whole campaign and opening statement around the ‘Freedom Dividend’ didn’t mention it for the rest of the debate. Though, Yang may benefit from this debate if everyone applies for his 1000 a month, by getting the mother of all email lists. I will say in Yang’s favour that he did at least mention some original ideas which might boost interest in him;
The exclusion of Tulsi Gabbard, while being bullshit, also made the debate way less interesting. There was this no candidate with anything strong to say on foreign policy or offering a foreign policy vision;
It would also have made for a better debate if Gabbard’s position on Democratic candidates appealing to ‘open borders’ [Dave Rubin interview] could have been contrasted with Beto o’Rourke, for instance;
Williamson also would have improved the debate. Unlike, say, Klobuchar, Williamson at least makes some interesting points at times;
Biden needs to drop out for gods sake;
No clear standout candidate from the debate IMHO, I don’t really know who ‘won’. I mean, who lost was probably Biden because he became more and more incoherent as the night went on, and Klobuchar because she’s just so boring.-I would also add Harris, She blathered on pointlessly almost as much as Biden. I think the other candidates were all okay in their performance but no-one stood out.
I’m not even going to consider watching the next one unless Gabbard is in it.
In general, I’ve always felt that Sanders is a candidate with a weak record on the issue of foreign policy, and I have believed so ever since he came to prominence in the 2016 primary race. My fear with Sanders has always been that he would be – at best, assuming (wrongly) that the capitalist state and corporations would not block his agenda at every turn – a sort of American Attlee: some degree of positive reforms domestically [Attlee introduced the NHS and modern welfare state into the UK] combined with a continuance of the broad swathes of American empire abroad. I believe this not just because of his relative ignoring of foreign policy in his campaigning, but also because of certain votes that Sanders has cast in the past, in particular, his vote for the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Author Michael Parenti talks about Bernie Sanders and that he broke with Sanders over the issue of war in Yugoslavia.
There was some coverage of this vote of Sanders’ in independent media when he ran for president the first time around, but I think that we need a reminder of the events that went on in 1999 to assess Sanders’ vote.
Firstly, we need to assess the background to the situation that led to the bombing of Yugoslavia. It’s impossible to go into a full history here, but in short – Yugoslavia was a multiethnic socialist / market socialist state where there was socialisation of the economy and worker controlled enterprises. The state ran into difficulties in the 1980s and in the 1990s began to break up into small states. A group called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) also wanted to break away from what remained of Yugoslavia after the early 1990s conflict. There was conflict between them and the Yugoslav authorities.
The first thing to examine is the basics of the Western narrative that was being spun around the events in Yugoslavia. The Western narrative was one of NATO humanitarian intervention to present a genocide against the Kosovar Albanians by the Yugoslav authorities. This article published in the foreign policy journal Survival, which appears to be an undergraduate level introduction to the bombing, includes this text from the UK and Foreign Commonwealth Office stating the criteria when they consider “humanitarian intervention” to be necessary and justified.
taken from Adam Roberts, NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’ over Kosovo, Survival, Vol 41, No. 3, Autumn 1999, p. 106.
Here is a video statement of how Bernie Sanders justified his vote for bombing Yugoslavia, which was made at the time. Sanders plays into the narrative promoted by the west, that there was mass genocide in Kosovo and that we have to do something about it. He quotes someone who compares the situation in Kosovo to the Holocaust. Here is an excerpt, with a video embed for those who want the full statement and context:
For those friends of mine whose sincerity is not in question, who say they detest war, they are as appalled as I am about the bombing of civilian areas in Belgrade. [If you want to stop the war] then I ask you to think about what happens to the 800,000 men, women and children who have been pushed out of their homes. What do you do with a war criminal who […] organised rape as a weapon of war […] what do you do to a butcher who has lined up people and shot them. […] What do you think happens next?
Bernie Sanders in a video statement embedded below
There was much criticism of Bernie Sanders at the time for supporting the bombing of Yugoslavia. As Michael Parenti said in the video above, he broke with Bernie Sanders over the issue of the Yugoslavia bombing and did not send him any contributions after that vote was taken. He was far from the only critic.
I believe that every individual must have some limit to what acts of military violence they are willing to participate in or support, regardless of either personal welfare or claims that it will lead to a greater good. Any individual who does not possess such a limit is vulnerable to committing or condoning abhorrent acts without even stopping to think about it.
Jeremy Brecher in his resignation letter to Bernie Sanders.
His reasons for resigning over this action were that the NATO bombing was not humanitarian in intent and that it had virtually no chance of improving the situation for the Kosovar Albanians.
A number of people also occupied Bernie Sanders’ office in response. There was a statement that was released at the time which discusses the reason for the occupation of Sanders’ office, though it does not say too much about the war in Yugoslavia in itself. It claims that:
Bernie became an imperialist to get elected in 1990.
Will Miller, “Why We Are Occupying Bernie Sanders’ Burlington office”
They also state that Sanders’ staff member had them arrested:
At 6:30 PM, one half hour after closing time, Philip Fiermonte of Bernie’s staff had 15 of us arrested for trespass. Sanders refused a conference call with those in the occupation, which was carried out nonviolently and with no disruption to his staff.
Will Miller, “Why We Are Occupying Bernie Sanders’ Burlington office”
To assess Sanders’ support for the bombing, we must assess whether the fundamental claim – the claim that the bombing is being carried out to benefit the Kosovar Albanians and prevent genocidal violence by the Serbian side – can be true. Firstly, there has been much questioning among anti-war and leftist sources about the actual facts on the ground regarding genocide of the Kosovo Albanians. This is what Noam Chomsky argued regarding the situation in Kosovo:
What was the genocide in Kosovo? We know from the Western documentation what it was. In the year prior to the bombing, according to Western sources about two thousand people were killed, the killings were distributed, a lot of them were coming in fact according to British government, which was the most hawkish element of the Alliance, up until January 1999 a majority of killings came from the KLA guerillas who were coming in as they said, you know, to try to incite a harsh Serbian response, which they got, in order to appeal to Western humanitarians to bomb.
In the interests of balance, will the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledge that one of the reasons for the tremendous suffering and bloodshed in Kosovo in the recent past has been the armed separatist rebellion in the country, and that that is a two-sided, not a one-sided, fight?
George Galloway in Parliament, from Hansard
There is also a ton of evidence that the bombing did not have a humanitarian effect:
Serbian infrastructure was targeted. This included things such as roads, bridges and industry;
Many historical sites were ruined;
The Chinese Embassy was bombed;
Depleted Uranium was used. Depleted Uranium is a chemical weapon that poisons the country with radioactive materials, which lead to high rates of cancer;
Cluster bombs were also used which are extremely dangerous to civilians;
There was the destruction of oil refineries and petrochemical plants which is terrible for the environment;
A Serb television station was bombed;
Many Kosovo Albanians – those who were allegedly the ones being helped by the bombing – had to flee their homes because of the bombs, not because of Serbian violence.
In 1945, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was built around six socialist republics and two autonomous provinces in Serbia. The right to self-determination of all nations was guaranteed. The state provided education, employment, healthcare and housing, and most importantly, ethnic tensions ran at an all time low as nationalism was stamped out in favour of ‘brotherhood and unity’ between nations.
Shay Lafontaine
As the article explained, the Yugoslavian economy was infiltrated through the use of IMF loans which lead to massive levels of debt in Yugoslavia (a similar thing happened in Poland in the 1970s). But Yugoslavia and Milosevic had refused to become fully integrated into the neoliberal capitalist machine:
The NATO powers (namely the U.S) had facilitated Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power as president of Serbia in 1989 to further open up the Yugoslav markets, but the Milosevic leadership and the Yugoslav people refused to completely dismantle Yugoslav socialism in Serbia – as late as 1999, as much as 75% of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s (FRY)[25] basic industry remained publicly owned.
Shay Lafontaine
Countries that refuse to go along with the profit making ambitions of US corporations have been punished time and time again – both before the Yugoslavia bombing (for example, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran) and afterwards (for example Iraq, Libya, Syria). Bernie Sanders’ vote for the bombing of Yugoslavia thus exists within this imperialist matrix of supporting corporate power and profit – which is anathema to the stated goals of Sanders as a self-avowed ‘democratic socialist’.
There has been a large amount of controversy surrounding the issue of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two US congresswomen of colour and of the Islamic faith who have been known for their criticisms of the situation in Israel.
Israel’s denial of entry to Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar is a sign of weakness, and beneath the dignity of the great State of Israel. The President’s statements about the Congresswomen are a sign of ignorance and disrespect, and beneath the dignity of the Office of the President.
Statement from Rashida Tlaib about why she feels a ‘humanitarian’ non political visit to Israel is not acceptable.
The US relationship with Israel will not be changing because of this incident. Trump will continue to back Israel and Netanyahu no matter what. However, I doubt even if the Democrats got into power in 2020, they would make significant changes.
Nancy Pelosi wants to feign outrage over the issue because as I said, it may harm Trump politically, but she has been previously known for dismissing ‘The Squad’ – Omar and Tlaib as well as Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – four young women of colour who are more left-leaning Democrats – as essentially politically irrelevant. Bernie Sanders did suggest that if Israel wants to bar US congresswomen, it should also stop accepting funding from the US:
I Apologize for linking TYT/Emma Vigeland, but Sanders’ comment is the first ten seconds or so, so you don’t actually have to listen to TYT thankfully.
Of course, Bernie Sanders has a less than perfect record on the issue of Israel himself, as does every American politician. This article praises Sanders for some of his stances relating to Israel, but also acknowledges the flaws of his position. Sanders has historically voted to fund Israel even while making some criticism of the way Israel used that aid. Unless there is a legitimate threat to stop this aid to Israel, they will continue as they are, no matter how many negative statements are made about their apartheid state by Sanders or anyone else. No Democratic presidential candidate has a good position on Israel as far as I have seen: they range from atrocious (someone like Buttigieg) to pretty terrible (Sanders). Of course, all the mainstream Democrats like Israel. In fact, this incident will probably make them end up seeming more anti-Israel than they actually are because they can get in some criticism of Israel that they believe may give them support among young people – without actually in any way challenging the nature of the apartheid regime in Israel.
This situation does represent a larger trend of more progressive Democrats in the party being more sceptical and critical of Israel. Polls have demonstrated that there is less support for Israel than there has been in the past among these voters. Younger people are also more likely to sympathise with the Palestinians than other age groups, which reflects in the fact that Omar and Tlaib are two of the younger people in Congress. Despite this, views in America as a while towards Israel remain positive. Despite this incident essentially leading to some bad PR for Israel, things are unlikely to change until there is a critical mass of people who oppose funding of Israel and support the boycott of the apartheid state.
Phochsian 