A sign that the progressive cause is moving out of the wilderness and starting to rattle The Powers That Be is that the messaging apparatus is starting to attempt to demonize Sanders as a hopeless cause. That means he’s moved from the “first they ignore you” phase in Gandhi’s classic trajectory of activism to somewhere between the “then they ridicule you, then they fight you” phases.

We’ll use a particularly noxious article from Slate, flagged by reader Jeff W, called, No, He Can’t – Bernie Sanders is an inspirational candidate, but his theory of change doesn’t have a chance. Jeff W thought it warranted an NC version of “Where’s Waldo?” as in “How many errors can readers spot in this article?”

Mind you, what is important about pieces like this is not that they go after Sanders per se. The headline conveys the much bigger message: Change based on popular will won’t happen, so all of you voters should just stop trying.

Now this is a ratcheting up of anti-democratic messaging when we are seeing major cracks in the institutional ice in the US and other countries that had moved strongly in the neoliberal direction. Jeremy Corbyn’s trouncing of the Blairites has had the elites in the UK frothing at the mouth. The magnitude of Justin Trudeau’s win in Canada caught pundits by surprise. And in the US, Bernie Sanders was written off by the chattering classes from the very start of his campaign. Yet with virtually no media buys, the Democratic party turning away Sanders backers at the local level, until recently, a press blackout on his campaign, Sanders polls at somewhere between 25% ad 35% of Democratic voters, and nearly met Clintons’ fundraising level last quarter at far lower cost, meaning he almost certainly raised more money on a net basis.

I encourage readers to shred the details of the Slate article, but let me go after its thesis, which regular readers, and anyone with any political savvy, will recognize as bunk. As Jeff W summarized it: “Bernie Sanders will fail because Barack Obama failed”

This is utterly ludicrous because Obama did not fail. He was always a neoliberal, pro-status quo candidate who artfully presented himself when campaigning as being well to the left of where he actually sat.