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Glen Ford, executive editor and founder of BlackAgendaReport.com was back for this installment of The Ford Report in which he talked about the potential value to progressive movements should Trump and Sanders supporters break from their parties.
Story Transcript
JARED BALL, TRNN: Welcome, everyone, back to the Real News Network. I’m Jared Ball here in Baltimore. Joining us once again for his Ford Report is executive editor and founder of BlackAgendaReport.com, Glen Ford. Glen, welcome back to the Real News, and I understand you want to talk with us a little bit about Super Tuesday. GLEN FORD, EXEC. EDITOR, BLACK AGENDA REPORT: It’s going to be a Super Tuesday, Jared. I think that there is a real possibility, and I’m not going to make a prediction on this, but I think there’s a real possibility that both the Republican party and the Democratic party will fracture. That is, they will come apart at the seams at their national conventions in Cleveland and in Philadelphia this summer. And that, of course, would be historically magnificent. And when I say that, it’s not like saying a plague on both your houses, because really it’s only this duopoly system, that is only one house, it’s one party with two different names, and both of them are controlled by Wall Street. So a plague on Wall Street’s houses. Black voters, in particular, are not just captives of the Democratic party, they’re captives of this duopoly system, and that duopoly system is what keeps them in the Democratic party. It now appears that both wings of this rich man’s party are on the verge of a split. On Super Tuesday that will become a closer possibility, especially for the Republicans. Donald Trump could become unbeatable after these 12 states have their primaries on Tuesday. Significant segments of the Republican party are already saying that they cannot back the GOP if Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And others are talking about a brokered convention in Cleveland. And in a brokered convention, all of the delegates that Trump has not won would be, there would be an attempt to unify them behind some other candidate. And although that may or may not deny Trump the nomination, it certainly would infuriate his followers. And Trump’s followers, at present, constitute 49 percent of the Republican party. And that’s more than all of his primary opponents combined. They don’t add up to 49 percent of the party. Now, on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has almost no hope of winning the nomination in Philadelphia. And that’s largely because of the black vote, which went for Hillary Clinton 6-1 in South Carolina this past Saturday. We will probably see a similar kind of black support for Clinton in Arkansas and Georgia, in Tennessee, in Alabama, and in Virginia on Super Tuesday. But just because she is winning the delegates, and will almost certainly have enough to win the nomination in Philadelphia, does not mean that Hillary Clinton is the choice of the Democratic rank-and-file. A new Reuters poll has come out, and it shows Bernie Sanders 6 points ahead in popularity among Democrats. And two other polls show Sanders 2 points ahead of Hillary Clinton. So young-ish white Democrats clearly favor Bernie Sanders. And if they believe that Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee is abusing their candidate, if they feel insulted by the party, then they are liable to bolt. And they are liable to bolt from the party in a loud and disruptive fashion in Philadelphia this summer. If both Donald Trump’s followers and Bernie Sanders’ followers wind up breaking with their parties, or in Trump’s case we might see the party breaking from him, we could be on the road to having a three or even four-party system, which is much healthier and much more like the systems, the electoral systems, in most of the industrial world. But whichever way it goes, either way, this is going to be a good year for Jill Stein and the Green party. Because when Sanders loses, the Greens profit. BALL: Glen, I hear you say that. I’m wondering how accurate that is. I mean, you touched on it a little bit in the sense that the problem for the–the issue for the Republicans is that the Republican establishment wants to get rid of Trump. Even former CIA director saying the CIA would basically stop listening to him were he to be elected president. But with the Democrats, the Democratic–it’s the establishment that wants Hillary, that doesn’t want Sanders. So I’m wondering, it sounds like from the Democratic side it would require more of a push from below to create this division that you think would be beneficial fro the rest of us, as opposed to a top-down dissolution, so to speak, of the convention as we would see with the Republicans. And I’m just wondering if that is likely. I mean, wouldn’t, wouldn’t Bernie Sanders supporters, despite the claims of some, just end up going back to the Democratic party? You don’t see that as a concern? FORD: Well, it depends on whether they feel really, really insulted by the party. A lot of it depends on how Bernie Sanders comports himself. Now, of course, he’s been a Democrat in reality all the time. He has ranking as a Democrat. That’s how he gets seniority and committee chairmanships and such. But he’s 74 years old. He didn’t know he was going to be this popular. People do get carried away. There is–carried away on a mission. There is the human factor. I don’t know. I’m not going to predict how Bernie Sanders would react if there were pressures from his supporters to pressure the party in ways that could break it. We’ll see. BALL: Well, I love the Fanonian analysis here, that as long as it breaks up it’s good for the rest of us. Glen, we thank you very much for joining us here at the Real News again for the Ford Report. FORD: Thank you. BALL: And thank you all for joining us, as well, wherever you are. And again, I’m Jared Ball here in Baltimore, saying for all involved, as Fred Hampton used to say, to you we say peace if you’re willing to fight for it. So peace, everybody, and we’ll catch you in the whirlwind.
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