Where is THE LEFT in the USA?

I've been saying for years, to anyone who'll listen, that "there's no proper political Left in the USA". In 2015/6 at election time, Bernie Sanders' campaign proved that there is plenty of support for more left-leaning policies, more pro-working class policies, more support for the ordinary people of this vast country. We all know what happened...don't we? Media in general denied him the space given to ...well just about everyone else involved in that General Election.

Ted Rall has a very good piece up at Counterpunch this weekend, it highlights one major reason why the Left in the USA remains largely hidden, year after year:
The Left Will Never Thrive Without a Well-Funded Left Media Organization

A few snips:

On Sunday, October 23rd “About 1,500 women and allied men marched on the Pentagon on Sunday to demand an end to perpetual war and the funding of education, health care and other social needs instead,” reported Joe Lauria of the progressive website Consortium News.

Mainstream/corporate journalistic outlets memory-holed the event with a total media blackout.

One commenter on Facebook bemoaned national priorities: what does it say that so few attended the Women’s March on the Pentagon? More than 200,000 people crowded the Washington Mall for comedian Jon Stewart’s inane 2010 “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” a piss-take parody of protest, literally and by the definition of its organizers an apolitical march for nothing!

Cindy Sheehan, an activist who made national news by protesting her son’s death in the Iraq War at George W. Bush’s Texas ranch, responded on Facebook that people should show up rather than sit at home criticizing those who did on their computers.

......................Our real problem is that there isn’t a real, bona-fide Left journalism outlet in the United States.

One that’s smart, i.e., well-managed. Not in the derpy leaderless consensus style that destroyed the Occupy movement, but top-down by brilliant Machiavellian can’t-be-bought leftist schemers who know how to motivate and build an organization.

One that’s well-funded. Not by some control-freak billionaire who can petulantly renege on his big promises after he loses interest or gets corrupted, but by generous ongoing crowdsourcing that guarantees editorial independence to an uncompromisingly left-wing team of editors with big budgets to hire kickass investigative reporters, back out-of-the-box journalists, humorists and editorialists. Give me $50 million a year (wonder if the person who won the $1.6 billion MegaMillions lottery is progressive?) and I could build and run an operation that could change the world. It’s not impossible: Bernie Sanders raised $100 million from small donors in one year..........

In the 1960s the corporate mainstream media allowed antiwar, pro-civil rights and other anti-establishment journalists and pundits to disseminate their views on TV (Cronkite criticizing the Vietnam War), on the opinion pages of major newspapers and in bestselling books. And they covered protests.

No more. The Left has been ruthlessly purged.

Not one single opinion writer or staff columnist or cartoonist employed by an American newspaper is a real, bonafide leftist—not a single one even supported Bernie Sanders (whose politics are basically McGovern in 1972 and was supported by half of Democrats) during the 2016 primaries.
Not one single TV or major radio talk show host is a real, bonafide leftist. None supported Bernie.
The same goes for “liberal” outlets like The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, etc.
It’s censorship. It’s systemic. It’s killing the Left.

(Highlighting is mine.)

Do go read the full piece at Counterpunch. But...what can we ordinary people do about this problem? We can spread the word wherever we can, in conversations on social media, blogs, real-life chit chats and debates. Shine a light on the problem - that's what we can do at present, as well as supporting people such as Ted Rall who are able to shine a brighter light, with a much longer beam than our own.