Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old Democratic Socialist took America by storm this spring with many believing until the last minute that he was going to pull off the impossible to beat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party establishment and the mainstream media, but ultimately those hopes never materialized leaving the candidate’s progressive "revolution" in shambles in its wake.
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, it was revealed in the WikiLeaks document dump that Hillary’s campaign had teamed up improperly with the DNC and the mainstream media to spin false narratives about the Vermont Senator’s candidacy, but in the face of outrage by his most ardent supporters and with a face filled with grief Sanders did what was unthinkable – he endorsed Hillary.
The supposed candidate of the 99% joined arms with the Clinton machine which embodies the pro-Wall Street, corporate establishment despite differing opinions on international trade, wages, worker protections, college affordability and certainly foreign policy leaving many former "Berners" stumbling in a daze for a candidate that they could call their own.
The rationale provided by Bernie Sanders at the time is that America faced a binary decision between Donald Trump, who he has decried as a hateful demagogue, and Hillary Clinton with whom he had a number of impassioned debates and fierce differences.
On Sunday, that tone changes as Bernie Sanders appeared to turn against Hillary on NBC’s "Meet the Press" calling on her to "cease all operations, all contact with the Clinton Foundation" over perceptions that the former Secretary of State provided access to donors turning the State Department into a pay-to-play scheme.
He went one step further in the interview despite having hitched his wagon to the Democratic Party for the election cycle decrying the two-party system’s unrealistic 15-point polling threshold that keeps the American people in the dark about the multitude of other options for leadership besides the Democrats and Republicans.
Sanders said that the bar must be lowered to provide access to candidates who do not have the same access to the mainstream media or the support of the overbearing two-party political establishment.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein agree blasting the two-party media cartel as converse to ideas of democracy and narrowing the debate between two parties that all too often are the same.
"If you’re not in the presidential debate, there’s no way you’re going to win the presidency, given that the first presidential debate is estimated to garner more viewership than the Super Bowl," explained Libertarian Gary Johnson who has consistently polled near 10%. His Green Party counterpart Jill Stein has an even higher hill to climb registering at 2% to 4% nationally in recent polls.
