Obama bashed Bernie supporters in a commencement speech:
You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that’s never been the source of our progress. That’s how we cheat ourselves of progress.
Wow, that’s harsh. But now we all know for certain whose side he’s on.
Clarissa's Blog 
Harsh, but very true, in my opinion.
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Was there ever any doubt whose side he was on?
I don’t agree, of course — you wouldn’t have the weekend or the 8 hour day without the Haymarket martyrs, etc., etc. — but his views have always been clear as have hers.
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That’s a bit of an American-centrist interpretation, isn’t it? 🙂
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What is so america-centrist about saying that americans wouldn’t have 8 hour workdays and the idea of the weekend without the haymarket martyrs?
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I had the 8-hour workday long before moving to this continent and without any input from comrades from Utah. Or was it Oklahoma, I forget? And I maintain that the existence of the Soviet Union had a far greater impact on making the basic workers’ rights attractive to capitalist countries than pretty much anything else.
100 million people were sacrificed to the goal of keeping the USSR in existence. At the very least, the memory of the victims should be honored by remembering why all of it happened in the first place.
And the same goes for feminism, by the way. Our Soviet feminism was earlier and stronger than anything in the West, yet nobody ever mentions us as if we didn’t exist. It’s as if anything not done in English were worthless.
Yes, it’s a sore point.
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Remembering the sacrifices by, and victims of, the USSR is vitally important. No argument on that. And Americans—left and right—are usually blinded by ignorance of history and excesses of ideology when anything Russian or Soviet comes up for discussion.
But in fact, the Haymarket affair (aka Haymarket riot/bombing/tragedy) of 1886, in Chicago, is one of the key moments in international labor history. It is a cornerstone in the struggle for the 8-hour day, and one of, if not the major inspiration for world-wide May 1st celebrations of workers and worker solidarity. The Wikipedia article offers a pretty decent summary of the event and its international aftermath (sorry, but I don’t know how to embed the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair)
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Yes and also:
8 hour day campaign was started in 18th century, I believe; Haymarket was in 1880s; yes actual 8 hour day did not become normal here until after USSR started existing and yes, many worker benefits were put in here because of fear of Communism. That just adds to my point: US got 8 hour day not because a rich or powerful man decided to be nice and negotiate, but because there were people agitating and sacrificing, here and also abroad.
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No — Haymarket martyrs & 8 hour day are a synecdoche or an example, out of many possible ones. You don’t get the Johnson signing the CRA without King marching, but King could only be nonviolent because he was also armed, and he was actually radical but looked less scary than those to his left. Obama’s “you have to negotiate and never struggle” is schoolmarmish.
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I’d vote Obama a 3rd time if I could.
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It has now become the favorite hobby of the democratic party to squash every last bit of enthusiasm and raw energy out of young liberals.
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Get into local politics. Run for office. There’s a lot to be done. If you don’t like the parties,run as an independent.
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I agree. Local politics is crucial.
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