Bernie Sanders staring down The Machine!

Just fucking stunning.

No one on Bernie's side said this would be a cakewalk. That was the other side. And they just learned it's not going to be a cakewalk for them either. This is a fight. A fight for the heart and soul of America and for a decent and desirable future for us all. This is Occupy Wall Street to the power of 300,000,000.

Not much of a win for one of the most famous and powerful people in the world, the entire Democratic establishment, the whole of the Main Stream corporate media and the mighty and fearsome billionaires’ Machine.

It’s more like the American people are breathing down Hillary's neck. Welcome to the revolution.

Bernie Sanders Just Changed the Democratic Party

At eleven-forty-five, Sanders addressed his supporters, who were cheering even more wildly than Clinton’s crowd had been. “Iowa, thank you,” he began, his voice hoarse. “Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state. We had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition, and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America. And, tonight, while the results are still not known, it looks like we are in a virtual tie.”

That history explains why Sanders emerged as the big winner of the night on the Democratic side. Not only has he pulled off a rags-to-riches story, he has done it on the basis of a message that is more radical than anything Presidential politics has seen in decades—a message that he repeats with such regularity and relentlessness that his stump speech has become familiar to many Americans.

As he looked ahead to carrying on the fight in New Hampshire, he used many of his favorite lines. “It is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.” “We do not represent the interests of the billionaire class, Wall Street, or corporate America. We don’t want their money.” “The American people are saying no to a rigged economy.” “We are going to create an economy that works for working families, not just the billionaire class.”

Don't let anyone fool you about what the Iowa results mean. They mean Bernie's political revolution is real, it's strong and that the American people are rising to stand together and fight back.

Finally!

We are coming for our democracy.

From don mikulecky

Things the Iowa result means that need serious consideration 

Bernie is making a revolution

People are still confused about the choice between politics as usual and a new system

The Iowa caucuses are flawed

democracy is an ideal that is hard to achieve in reality

Bernie is definitely “electable”

Democratic Socialism is beginning to be understood by more and more people

“Pragmatism” is in the eye of the beholder

The Democratic Party needs drastic reform

A lot of people want us to overlook the significance of Bernie fighting the Machine to a tie in Iowa. And doing so with the most radical ideas ever countenanced in a presidential campaign. We're only talking about income inequality, the Too Big to Fail banks, Wall Street thievery and the ravages of unregulated capitalism because of Bernie.

All the kings and their donkeys couldn't put capitalism back together again.

From slinkerwink

Hillary Clinton Thinks We're Stupid For Wanting Change

Just finished listening to Hillary Clinton on MSNBC with Chris Matthews. They were talking about how millennials don’t know how politics works, and that Bernie Sanders can’t get anything done in the White House. Clinton said this phrase, “We can't have ideologues hurling rhetoric,” when talking about how to get things done.  

She thinks we’re stupid. She thinks we’re stupid for wanting to change the status quo. She thinks it’s not worth it to call us to action, or to use her bully pulpit in the White House to push for big changes. Hillary Clinton is perfectly fine with the status quo.  Problem is millennials (and I’m counting myself among them) don’t want the status quo anymore. It’s untenable. We’re looking at lots of student debt, high interest rates on that debt, college being much more unaffordable these days, paying high premiums for insurance plans that have high deductibles, and it feels like the American dream is falling out of reach for us.  We’re being choked financially, and our wages are stagnant. No one in the Democratic Party other than Bernie Sanders is calling for the status quo to change, only tiny incrementalist changes that doesn’t excite us or get us out to vote. It’s the same old, same old. 

The issues that matter most to the American people are the very same issues Bernie has been touting and fighting for, for the last fifty years.

One thing that should be painfully obvious to the Clinton camp is that this fight is a long way from being over. Less obvious perhaps but just as true: even if they win the nomination, this fight still isn't over. The revolution is here to stay. We're not going anywhere. When they attack us it only makes us stronger. The only question is will they succeed in running out the clock on us and ratfucking our nation and the whole damned world while a runaway climate kills us all.

We cannot afford to lose to them. We will not.

It could have been the last inning. Now it is just the first

By Tom Rinaldo 

Iowa was supposed to be Bernie's last real gasp, but it turns out it was more like a breath of fresh air.

Snip

To say that the road ahead looks rough for Bernie now is to miss the obvious. The road ahead has always looked rough for Bernie. According to polls it sure as hell looked rough for Bernie a couple of months ago in Iowa too. People changed their minds in Iowa when the time came to actually pay attention to the race in that state, when people there actually started looking closely at all of the candidates. When they did they started to shift their preferences. For all the talk about how unusually White Iowa is relative to the overall Democratic constituency, people again overlook the obvious. White people aren't the only ones capable of changing their minds. 

Those on the HRC side, crowing about their 'victory' miss the obvious, as Tom Rinaldo says. Bernie wasn't supposed to even be a factor and here he is breathing down Hillary's neck and boldly taking on the establishment like the champion he is.

An elderly, democratic socialist Jew from a small rural state has come from out of nowhere, by virtue of his timely message and long heroic commitment to it, to threaten the entire godforsaken establishment. And hallelujah! It's an astonishing achievement for the little guys against the hideously powerful billionaire-backed Machine. Just fucking stunning. That's the headline. Just fucking stunning.

Bernie supporters have always understood what a battle we are in. For my money, we are the ones who understand just how grave our circumstances are and how great the stakes have become. We're the realists in this struggle.

The most powerful person in the world with all of the resources of the billionaires' Machine barely edged us out in Iowa. The trend favors the insurgents.

To the establishment and the supporters of the system and the status quo: We are coming for our democracy and we are breathing down your necks. Welcome to the revolution.

Of course we’re in a fight. Of course it ain’t easy. Of course we must win.

You don’t get to challenge the entire entrenched power structure and have it be a cake walk.  If Bernie actually wins the White House the road will still look rough… possibly even rougher.

Snapple

We are the only ones who see clearly. Our opponents lack vision. Their defense of the system, the establishment, runaway capitalism and the oligarchy is evidence of a shocking lack of understanding and imagination. They are clueless about the unforgiving future that bears down upon us even as we speak. They would fiddle while Rome burns, trying to keep the plates a spinning while the climate wipes us out.

This is going to be a fight like no other in our history. It's the people against the Machine. The 99% against the 1%. Those for whom contentious debates are too much to contemplate need to get out of the fucking way. This is going to be a fight and we relish it. This is going to be the fight we should have had a long fucking time ago. We've no time for the faint-hearted, the wrong-headed or the half-assed. We're coming for our democracy and the knuckle-dragging assholes who've been holding us back need to get out of the fucking way.

From FredTedTucker

Bernie Sanders is winning and now it's obvious

What we’re seeing with Bernie Sanders, I think, is a candidate who is so authentic he can stroll into the Iowa caucuses openly talking about how he is not active in organized religion and still be a contender.

He can be a Jew who grew up in Brooklyn and walks for civil rights and stands up for women and unions and veterans because he’s lived it under the public eye.

He’s the one who’s telling us to turn our attention to our infrastructure and put our attention on productive jobs.

He has experience and is dealing with the contrast between rural and urban environments when it comes to gun policy and other issues.

So why do you care if he can’t deliver on everything he’s campaigning for? What if he does? What if we break up the banks and thousands of kids can go to college for free but we can’t get healthcare for everyone?

Bernie has already changed American politics for the better. And the best is yet to come.

Robert Reich: Bernie is our only hope for real political change If the goal is to end big money's chokehold on our democracy, then the choice this election is no choice at all

I’m seeing a wave of new Berniecrats. Our own Angela Marx, www.angie4congress.com, Tim Canova, the guy taking on Debbie Wasserman Schultz and another taking on Pelosi, Jesse Smith in Alabama and new names popping up all over the nation every day. I expect and hope to see that wave become a tsunami.

Note: If you are aware of other Berniecrats, please send me what info you have on them. We need to get behind these people. They are the future.

Many people are demanding to know how Bernie is going to achieve his lofty and radical goals in the face of a hostile, do-nothing Congress. The answer is those rat-bastards have got to go!

How do you magically do that, people want to know.

The answer is hiding in plain sight. Nearly half of eligible voters never vote. Non-voters are sometimes characterized as low-information types, but let's consider why else people might not be voting.

Perhaps they don't feel represented – people are more discerning than we may think. It's hard to get the victims of a scam to voluntarily participate.

The political class aren't doing anything for us. They're just holding us at bay. Obama characterized his job as standing between the bankers and the pitchforks. This has become the game. Change nothing, hold the rabble at bay.

I've long believed, despite the evidence to the contrary, that the American people are smarter than the political class thinks. This race should go a long way toward settling that issue. Either we're smart enough to seize this rare, historic opportunity to stand up for ourselves and change things or we are not. We'll see.

Bernie's plan hinges on the American people finally rising up in their own best interest. If they do, anything is possible. If not, we're back at square one to stagnate and devolve as the empire crashes down around us and the best interests of the American people continue to not matter one little bit. American royalty will party in decadent luxury inside their greedhead bubble while the rest of us suck wind and die.

The next president will powerfully affect the nation's and the world's approach to dealing with Climate Change and the many other existential challenges of our time – for better or worse. So it's not hyperbole to say this is for all the marbles. Vote for the 99%, climate sanity, truth and justice or kiss it all goodbye. The greedheads are insane and mean to drive us off the fossil fuel cliff...or any other cliff they can find. Only lemmings would follow 'leaders' like that.

What Bernie Sanders Has Already Won Win or lose, the Vermont senator will stand as a historic figure in the Democratic Party.

Sanders is already a historic candidate—the first socialist in a century to build a genuine mass movement in American party politics.

The astonishing uphill progress of the Berniecrat revolution is opening up new possibilities in an otherwise staid and ossified political system caught in the web of it's own corruption, deceit and double-dealing. There are huge opportunities opening up for real progressives (for a damned change). This is the grassroots part of the revolution. By the time Bernie takes office we’ll be the biggest mass movement this country has ever seen. I’ll be writing about it all along the way. It’s gonna be YUUUUGE! The rise of the Berniecrats! It’s a new day in America.

Yes we fucking can! Grass Roots for Sanders 2016  x

Tonight is Sanders victory no matter what outcome. A democratic socialist independent just faced Dem party machine head on – & didn't flinch

— Justin Wedes (@justinwedes) February 2, 2016 x

@BernieSanders supporters showed up tonight in Iowa & sent a message: "Bernie, we got u bc u got us." #FeelTheBernpic.twitter.com/C0dwYQfq3W

— Justin Bamberg (@JustinBamberg) February 2, 2016 It's time for some sanity and humanity in America. No we can't! Nothing is possible so don't even try