Before Bernie Sanders, there was Upton Sinclair

[cali]

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On the national stage, the Sanders phenomenon seems new; the closest antecedent is the campaign that socialist author Upton Sinclair waged for governor of California in 1934. In the depths of the Depression, just one year after Franklin Roosevelt became president, Sinclair switched his party registration from Socialist to Democrat, a change unaccompanied, however, by shifts in his beliefs or ideology


In his short campaign book “I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty,” Sinclair laid out his plans to put the unemployed to work on a host of public projects. The manifesto spawned hundreds of End Poverty in California (EPIC) clubs. Six centrist Democrats and Sinclair all entered the Democratic primary for governor; to general astonishment, Sinclair won handily with just over 50% of the vote.

Until one month before the general election, Sinclair was widely believed to be leading the unpopular Republican incumbent, Gov. Frank Merriam, but a breath-taking campaign of falsifications by the state’s leading newspapers and movie studios helped give Merriam a come-from-behind victory. (MGM produced films depicting dangerous-looking characters, played by actors and extras, saying they were coming to California if Sinclair was elected; these films were then screened as “newsreels” in every movie theater in the state.)

Sinclair’s influence on California politics didn’t end with his defeat. On the contrary, his campaign revitalized what had been a moribund Democratic Party. Among the thousands of activists who’d flocked to his banner were a new crop of liberals who won election to the state legislature, among them Augustus Hawkins, the African American representative from South Los Angeles who carried much of the state’s landmark civil rights legislation while he served in the Assembly. Later he was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he authored important full employment legislation. Another Sinclairite, Jerry Voorhis, was a leading progressive U.S. Congressman for a decade until losing his seat in 1946 to a red-baiting campaign from Richard Nixon.


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http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0120-meyerson-upton-sinclair-bernie-sanders-20160120-story.html

[Skwmom]

1. People will leave the Democratic Party b/c the corporate control will be unbreakable.

That is one piece of propaganda b.s. It made Clinton talk about Wall Street. Talk is cheap.