Caroline Beresford meets Vice President Joe Biden in 2015.
Caroline Beresford, New Zealand's second-ranked diplomat in Washington, doesn't think Bernie Sanders could become president in 2020 - even though he's the most popular politician in the United States.

THE DEPUTY head of mission at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC doesn't think Bernie Sanders, still the most popular politician in the United States, is capable of winning the 2020 U.S. presidential election. She has said as much on her Twitter account, although the tweets have since been deleted.

In response to The Hill news website which tweeted " A Sanders - Warren ticket could win big in 2020,' Caroline Beresford tweeted "No it couldn't. Please get your shit together or we will all die.'"

In other tweets, also deleted later, Beresford said Democrats had "learned nothing", and added: "If this is what they have against Trump we should be planning for the eight years."

Given that she has apparently been reprimanded for her comments, it is unlikely we will be hearing further from Beresford. But she's said enough already for us to know that it is she who is wildly out of touch with the American political reality. If she is suggesting that another sanitised and corporate Democratic presidential candidate can defeat Trump - when Hillary Clinton couldn't - it is Beresford that needs to get her shit together.

Donald Trump might be a walking and talking disaster but if Beresford thinks the Democrats just need to steer a centrist course to win, she is wrong. It'll take more than just turning up on time in 2020 in order to beat Trump.

While the corporate media obsesses with Trump, what it misses is that the country is still demanding real change. It is not so much that the country has moved to the left - it is waiting for the Democratic Party to catch up. Caroline Beresford, adrift in the rarified and cocooned world of the Washington cocktail circuit, has failed to notice that the desire for change was not quenched by the election of corporate charlatan Donald Trump.

Although Beresford has probably not noticed that American socialist parties are getting larger, she only had to stick her head out of her Embassy window to see demonstrations by, among others, Black Lives Matter, the #metoo movement and schoolchildren demanding an end to gun violence.

But she is right when she says that the Democrats have learnt nothing.

Last week sixteen Democratic senators voted for the 'Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act'. It sounds all terribly positive and progressive but the label is misleading and does  not represent what's inside the can. The act winds back regulations on 25 of the 32 largest banks in the country, removing a wide range of consumer protections while relaxing stress tests and other reporting requirements for a range of financial institutions that were developed in the aftermath of the 2008 crash.

Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democratic Party's more progressive senators and who Beresford doesn't like, didn't hold back in her criticisms of her Democratic colleagues who voted for the bill:

" When I saw a handful of my Democratic colleagues vote for it, it felt like a stab in the heart. Not for me, but for all the homeowners who were cheated and all the taxpayers who bailed out those banks. That is wrong...It is so hard to fight against all the money and all the lobbying. It is so hard to fight when we fight and lose. It’s worse when some of our teammates don’t even show up for the fight."

The only way that Donald Trump can win is that is if the Democratic Party does what Caroline Beresford thinks it should do and select another status quo, no change, pro-establishment, pro-elite candidate. Who knows? It could even be Hillary Clinton again.


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