 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and NewsClick, where we'll be talking about the State of the Democratic Party after the Super Tuesday primaries. Former Vice President Joe Biden has won, or is leading in at least 10 of the 14 states in which the primaries took place, billionaire Mike Bloomberg is withdrawn from the contest, and there's a lot of challenges ahead for insurgent candidate Bernie Sanders. To talk more about this, we have with us Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News, a new US-based media project, which is focused on reporting and highlighting the voices of the working class and the organizations and movements that work with them. Thank you Eugene for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Eugene, to begin with, the media reports in the immediate aftermath of Super Tuesday have portrayed this as a massive victory for Biden. And one of the reasons, of course, is that he seems to have won at least 10 states. Is that actually the case considering the very complicated nature of the delegate count of the Democratic Party? Well, you know, I think that's a good point. I mean, you know, when we look at what's happening right now, and I think people to understand who don't know this contest, it's not simply just the raw vote. And if you win the state, you get some sort of other thing. There's a number of delegates who technically determine the nominee at the convention. And so those all have to be parceled out vis-a-vis the various states. So Joe Biden was able to go into the lead because of the 10 states he won. But many of those states, which are smaller states, the delegates are a portion based on the size and population of the state, aren't really bringing that much to the table in that regard. And so we don't have the final count from California, which is, at the time we're talking still coming in, which is a big, big vote prize, as people, you know, might imagine it's a large state. But it looks like ultimately what will happen is that at this stage in the race going into next Tuesday and the next couple of races, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden will probably be, you know, somewhere within shouting distance of each other, probably somewhere between, you know, three and 20 delegates, maybe a little bit more, a little bit less, a far away from each other. So there's quite a bit left to play, a number of large states, significant states. So, you know, from the narrative, from the terms of momentum, I mean, you know, Biden winning states like Virginia and North Carolina that are considered swing states, I think it was a big win for him. It rejuvenated his campaign. It was really the result of an unbelievable, quite frankly, coalescing of, you know, quote, unquote, establishment figures who represent more of a status quo politics. So it was good for him in many ways, but I think in terms of the true state of play as you're speaking to, it's actually still a very close race. Right. So let's look a bit more at the establishment aspect you were talking about, because I think especially for people around the world, sometimes the very complicated nature of the party's politics can be a bit hard to decipher. So we have a candidate who's, say, Biden in this case, who's at best can be described as brittle. I mean, he's made a lot of for-pars. His record is riddled with inconsistencies. And every, like, there's this whole argument about how his campaign is working basically hard to ensure that he's not exposed. And you have a candidate who's been able to inspire a party, bring an entire new set of demographic groups into the party itself, and, you know, generally create a narrative about hope and building a new future. So how is it that the establishment chooses to side with the first candidate? Well, I think that it's really a commentary on the state of, you know, not to seem euphemistic, but ruling elites in the United States, the wealthy powerful interest. Maybe a good way to encapsulate that is upon Joe Biden's big Super Tuesday showing here health care stocks, pharmaceutical companies in particular, just surged. So it gives you a sense of the type of interest that are supporting him. One of his main advisors, Stuart Eisenstadt, is a weapons industry manufacturer. So, I mean, there's a number of individuals who have been coalescing behind Biden, at least 60 billionaires have donated to him, and that will undoubtedly grow as other candidates, Pete Buttigieg, who had a long list of billionaires himself, their bundlers come off the sidelines. And so I say all that just to say that this is not some mythical chimera, which is also something that's being talked about in the U.S. News. This is a big piece of Joe Biden's campaign. Now, there is no establishment. It's really just the working class people. Right, right, right. But it does exist. And I think what it shows is the past 40 years of neoliberal rule, unipolar world dominance that we've seen. I mean, really just the unbridled rule of wealthy and powerful interest over poor and working interests, which we've seen in soaring income inequality, increased precarious work, you know, stagnating wages going back, quite frankly, beyond the last 40 years, back to 1968. That these individuals do not want to give up any ground at all. They don't want to give an inch to any candidate. I mean, certainly what Bernie Sanders is proposing is it all that different from many other capitalist countries around the world, things that wouldn't be strange in, you know, Singapore, for instance, which last time I checked, no one is claiming is some socialist paradise. So it's not the policies themselves. But I think it's the fact that what Bernie Sanders represents and the movement behind him represents an insurgency against what the status quo represents in a general sense. And so it doesn't come about the politics just, well, could you have capitalism and national health insurance or free college or whatever it may be, that I don't think that's the level that this is being pitched at. I really think that it's just, well, we've been making a lot of money. We've been tremendously profitable. We haven't had to have any real tradeoffs from the point of view of bosses to workers. You look at the trillion-dollar transfer of wealth that Trump put in in terms of the tax cut right first thing he does in 2017. So why would we now, and if we concede to this person, Bernie Sanders, who's being powered by this very working class, very racially diverse, very young coalition, where will it stop? It's a slippery slope type of argument. And I think that's why they've coalesced around Biden. I don't think he's necessarily even their preferred candidate, which is why there are so many candidates so deep into the race. But I think at the end of the day, the fear of essentially the party establishment being overthrown and it being replaced with something that maybe isn't that radical, but at least is a political unknown and certainly has no sympathy for the same neoliberal interest is a big problem for them. I think it's a big fear and on a personal level, even from the point of view of the campaign establishments, you know, there's a huge, I lived in Washington, DC for 15 years, an unbelievable amount of money that is wrapped up in these campaigns. I mean, you see Michael Blaine spent $500 million. So, you know, not only do you have this sort of establishment donor class, but you also have the people who do the media buying, like there's an intermediary, EV stations and the campaigns. You have the people who are working as the consultants on the ads and the digital rollout campaigns and the voter turnout and all of that. And they also have a direct material interest. So, you have this coalescence of the sort of actual party apparatus, you know, the steel girders, combining with the donor class around both the set of ideas and a new potential, you know, political reality on the grounds. It's very dangerous establishment figures. So, one of the aspects that's being pointed out and this connects to your question as well. Is it along with the democratic establishment, certain traditional democratic vote bases, also turned out for Biden, basically the coalition that Hillary Clinton sort of supposedly stitched together in 2016 is kind of continuing with Biden. And I think you yourself pointed out that a lot of players working in the back row on, say in the back end, so to speak, including perhaps even Barack Obama. So, the question for Bernie here right now and his organization is in terms of what are the challenges, especially in terms of bringing out some of the sections that haven't really come out in such numbers so far, but people thought would be the backbone of his campaign, so to speak. So, what are the challenges on the ground for the organization there? Bernie's organization, that is. No, of course. I think the biggest challenge for Bernie's organization is to really bridge the turnout gap, if you will, on the one hand, in terms of the populations he's saying he needs to excite in terms of younger voters, working class voters, young working class voters, who typically don't vote as much, but also even amongst those populations that vote very durably to really the electability argument. I mean, one of the most remarkable things when we look at Super Tuesday is you look at some of the exit polling of individuals coming out after they vote and some of what we're seeing. It's one by Biden, Alabama, obviously majority black voters, allegedly a conservative democratic electorate, 51% said that they thought that there should be no private insurance at all, just government health insurance. South Carolina, similar state, 53% of people said that they think the U.S. economic system needs a complete and total overhaul. And Texas, which is sort of narrowly won by Biden, 57% of people saying they had a positive view of socialism. So, you can see here that a lot of people, even people who are voting for Joe Biden, aren't necessarily hostile to Bernie's ideas, but I think many of them feel, well, can we win with this and better to win rather than lose because they're sort of the devil you know rather than the devil you don't. Anything to avoid for more years of Trump, that argument, yeah. Exactly. And I think that it's an interesting concept because I think when you look especially and say the black community, you know, you have, and you look at the older subset of the black community that really is making up Biden's support. Bernie's winning the majority of black folks under the age of 40, but they're not turning out in the numbers to make a difference, but be that as it may, either you think that the sort of age group has seen the betrayal of the civil rights movement, the turn towards the liberal economics and the destruction of black inner city neighborhoods, the sort of false promise of, you know, more black elected officials, and I think there's a certain amount of both caution and cynicism that results from that, where people aren't necessarily saying, Tennessee, 73% of people think all colleges should be free. Joe Biden does not support that, but I think people who are looking at Bernie and saying, I like it, but can it get over the, and he has to find a way to bridge that gap to make people think, you know, and the two things are complementary is that he is trying to convince people, well, the only way to get people who don't normally vote is to, you know, talk about transformative change, and that's what we're saying, but then other people who do normally vote who he needs to vote for him to create sort of the sense that he can win are saying, well, you can never win. So he's in a bit of a double bind here in terms of speaking to almost two totally, not two totally different populations, but two populations that almost have two totally different relationships to the election, one that's urgent caution because they feel like, you know, we don't need four more years of Trump, and another who may not vote, who's on the fence, who's saying both parties are basically corrupt, we need transformative change, and it's hard for him to speak to those two constituencies, and I think that's his biggest challenge moving forward. Right, and on a connected note, on the other hand, could you also talk a bit about the kind of, say, movements that have been built, are being built around this campaign? I mean, one part is, of course, the presidential campaign itself, but there are also a lot of other agendas which are being pushed forward and actually are gaining in popularity. I mean, you talked about healthcare, you talked about education, so could you talk a bit about the kind of inputs that, or the kind of perspectives that movements are having on this campaign? No, absolutely, and you know, it's been an issue that I think has been embraced by a lot of movements, but in a sort of critical support kind of way. I mean, Bernie is getting a lot of support, but we're even seeing, you know, for instance, from some immigration rights groups, when they were queried about the Bernie campaign taking a little bit of a step back on the issue of criminalizing border cross, or excuse me, on deporting people who were convicted of felonies here in the United States, we're saying, well, you know, look, we wish they wouldn't have taken a step back on that policy, but we're not promoting Bernie Sanders because he's our savior. We're promoting because we think he creates the best ground for struggle and that we have to fight. And I think the Bernie Sanders campaign in and of itself is really, to some degree, a reflection of what we've seen since the Occupy movement in 2011-2012, the movement of Black Lives, the upsurge in the climate justice movement here, the emergence of, you know, what for America is a mass strike wave over the past, you know, 2018 and 2019 alone. The, those two years combined, the most strikes of any two year period in 35 years, most of them driven by strikes of 20,000 workers or more, which in the U.S. are very large strikes. And so we were seeing all of these sort of threads, you know, not necessarily every element of these movements, but significant pieces of it coming together as a big part of what's happening with Bernie's base and using the campaign as almost an echo chamber to reach millions of more people. And so then it becomes sort of a feedback loop because you have organizations that are engaged in the elections, of course, but are also engaged in, you know, more sort of durable political organizing that only views elections as one tactic that are able to also, this is an outreach tool and really is a messaging tool to sort of put the idea that I think a lot of people have that many of these issues from income inequality to police brutality to whatever it may be or deeply interconnected and a political campaign pitched as it is as a struggle for power, like what should we do about these problems is also a great way to crystallize this message. And so I think that there are a lot of movements that not only contributed to why Bernie is even able to succeed at this level, but that are then at least attempting to create feedback loops through the campaign, amplify the message, crystallize the message. And I would say that since 2016, we've seen pretty consistently, you know, socialism in particular, which is, you know, anti-communism is the official religion of this country, become much less of a verboten word. And that is explicitly, whatever you think about the content of Bernie Sanders' politics, because he is out here saying, I'm a socialist and if people are going to demonize me, that's on them. And I think that ultimately that has meant even to people who may be considered more radical than him, a big uptick in interest. So not just social movements, but ideological movements have been growing. So the Sanders campaign is kind of like a node for so many of these different trends that have been bubbling up in society in an oppositional way. So and to finally look at the state of the, possibly the state of the future of the party itself. So we had a very critical moment because like you said, all these movements, the campaign, Bernie's campaign has emerged as a node for all these movements. And for many of these movements, the key question will be how much or how much will the establishment go to stop them? I mean, what, to what extent are they willing to go, I mean, to basically stop what is a very popular and very insurgent movement. So do you see that this is also, as also this being some kind of a step for a further, say progress towards political mobilization of another sort as well, because the Democratic Party itself obviously has huge limitations as an organization which can affect any kind of change. I do absolutely. I mean, you know, the Democrats and Republicans have, you know, one big difference, right? Like Republicans, people always talk about how they're divided. A lot of Republicans don't support Trump. And then at the end of the day, they all vote for Trump because at the end of the day, they're all right-wing capitalists. And so they all have the same conservative social values. So the further right go, you may think it's annoying because it turns off people who are a little more centrist, a little more liberal, you want to vote for your candidate, but you actually agree with the position. I think from the point of view of the Democrats, the challenge is you have a number of people who want to essentially maintain the status quo, maybe some tweaks, but don't want to speak to some of the broader systemic structural issues that result in these inequalities that we see in all elements of our life. Exploitation, oppression. I mean, the fact that, you know, the average American couldn't find $400 in an emergency situation. I mean, those kind of statistics, you know, wants to speak to that to some degree, but doesn't really want to speak to the deeper element of it. So the further you move in the direction of resolving those problems, taking serious action on climate change, looking seriously at racism in this country, understanding, you know, the role and the power of corporations and capital and pushing forward the rights of workers, the more you actually, you diverge from the interests of the people who pay the bills in the Democrat Party. Exactly. So something can't hold there. And I think what we're seeing right now is there are millions, literally millions of people who want to see the types of changes that Bernie Sanders is bringing. Joe Biden would be like a 180-degree, almost a slap in the face to those people. I don't see how that doesn't result in at least, if it's not a complete split in the Democrats or a collapse of the Democrats, a significant splintering that starts to create new political realities or the other way around. I mean, if Bernie Sanders was to win, I think very seriously, you would see a number of quote-on-quote establishment Democrats very quickly move either to support Trump or to try to pull together some sort of independent third-party effort with, you know, perhaps some billionaire, emerging who could pay for the whole thing. And so either way, I feel like, you know, the center can't hold here and that the questions that are being asked by sort of this insurgent Bernie Sanders movement are not small questions of policy, but fundamental questions of orientation of a society and how we run more on profit-centered principles and more on people-centered principles. And I think you can't, you can only really straddle those two things for but so long before you got to make a choice. Thank you, Eugene. My pleasure. Thank you. That's all we have for today. We'll be covering the U.S. primaries and the election season in the coming months. Keep watching NewsClick.