Published by Common Dreams, February 13, 2020
This could represent the beginning of a real healing of America's tragic history of race and class.
If they were smart, the Democratic Party would support
Bernie Sanders as their nominee. But of
course, they won’t, if there’s any way they can prevent his nomination.
Not surprisingly, Sanders’ PAC-supported or big money opponents,
Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Michael Bloomberg, have belittled his candidacy. But the Party’s old guard –Hillary Clinton,
John Kerry, Barney Frank— have also publicly attacked and/or worked against
Sanders. Barack Obama
has intimated that he would try to prevent a Sanders nomination.
Even worse, the liberal corporate media
have repeatedly dismissed, attacked, and underreported Sanders and his
campaign. New York Times opinion writers –Paul Krugman, Timothy Egan, Frank
Bruni, Bret Stephens, and David Brooks— have virtually lined up to dismiss the
Sanders campaign; ‘he can’t win,’ ‘he’s like Trump only his opposite,’ are
common refrains. Washington Post
columnists follow suit, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews
went off the rails implying Sanders’ rather tame version of democratic socialism could lead to public
executions.
Similarly, the well-endowed Democratic PAC, the Democratic
Majority for Israel, funded attack
ads on Sanders in Iowa, while the corporate Partnership for
America’s Health Care Future has mobilized
to “change the conversation around Medicare for All” to protect the for-profit
healthcare industry. And, of course, the
powerful right-wing attack machine, from Charles Koch’s organization to the Federalist¸ have been mobilizing
propaganda attacks on Sanders.
There will be a great deal more of this in the coming
months, as these interests try to bury Bernie Sanders’ truly populist message.
Let’s look at their arguments: “Sanders can’t beat
Trump” and “Bernie is too far left.”
The latest Quinnipiac national poll (pre-New
Hampshire) has Sanderse 8 percentage points ahead of Trump, shortly after Trump’s
post-impeachment bump, and Sanders’ campaign will vividly bring out the
enormous contradictions in the Trump administration.
But more fundamentally, are any of the centrist Democratic
candidates likely to beat Trump with their ‘more of the same’ arguments?
The New York Times’
conservative columnist David Brooks revealed data
showing that tens of thousands of voters in the key swing-to-Trump states of
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin voted for Sanders in the primary and
Trump in the election –in sufficient numbers to cost the Democrats the election.
However, Brooks draws a dubious conclusion from the
data, suggesting Bernie voters will sit out the election if a different
Democrat is nominated. Voters who voted
for Sanders in those primaries but Trump in the general election are not Sanders’
fervid young supporters, but in all likelihood largely alienated white working
class or rural Americans, fed up with a Democratic Party that long ago deserted
them.
In short, the data don’t suggest abandonment of
Democratic nominees as much as they suggest the potential for Sanders, alone
among Democratic candidates, to pull working class and rural votes away from
Trump.
A second way that Sanders expands the potential
Democratic voter base is the fact that hundreds of thousands of diverse young
people have been inspired by his sharp critique of corporate-dominated inequality,
his advocacy of the Green New Deal, and generally his vision of a more
democratic future.
Among other things, these young people see in Sanders
someone who recognizes the profound economic, social and ecological problems
which will plague their future lives. They
bring enormous energy and enthusiasm to a Sanders candidacy.
They and others, recognize the authenticity of Sanders’
politics; he has consistently fought
for the concerns he raises. As political
writer Robert Scheer has observed,
Bernie “actually believes in the grassroots. He actually believes that an ordinary person
in Vermont can make intelligent decisions about the human condition, and about
justice and freedom… [one] reason Bernie Sanders can survive the rhetorical
assaults [against him]….”
On the one hand, Sanders’ candidacy inspires political
activism among the young and those with long-held social justice
grievances. On the other hand, he speaks
authentically to long disenchanted working class whites and rural
Americans. As Scheer put it, “I think
what makes Bernie Sanders authentic is his respect for the ordinary person.” It’s no accident that he easily won
the Vermont primary in every
town in the state, so widely is he respected by constituents
who have come to know him.
Sanders is not “too far left” for these voters; his
essentially New Deal-type programs are too far left for Democrats like Bill
Clinton who moved the Party into the corporate center some 40 years ago.
The real hope represented by Bernie Sanders’ campaign
is that he can pull together these sharply separated populations –in the
process shifting the focus to the elite forces whose propaganda has kept them
apart.
This could represent the beginning of a real healing of America’s tragic history
around race and class. It could also
represent what the political scientists like to call a “realignment” of
American politics, one which promises far more democracy than the sad
democratic façade we live under.
