There’s a perfect example of what I find so frustrating about Bernie Sanders in an interview he did with the Guardian. First, Sanders hits on one of the themes I’ve been harping on for a bout a decade now.
“It is no great secret that the Republican party is winning more and more support from working people,” Sanders said. “It’s not because the Republican party has anything to say to them. It’s because in too many ways the Democratic party has turned its back on the working class.”
There are fresh signs that the the Democrats’ weakness with working class voters are no longer restricted to the white working class, as Trump actually improved his performance with blacks and Latinos in the 2020 election. This is a predictable function of the upwardly mobile reorientation of the party’s focus. Along with this, we see a predictable rise in fascism and decline in consensus for democratic norms, as fascism is what results when the working class turns to the right.
But Sanders is making this point for a different reason. He wants the Biden administration and Chuck Schumer’s U.S. Senate to have votes on the popular progressive ideas, including some stalled parts of the Build Back Better bill.
In an interview with the Guardian, Sanders called on Joe Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to push to hold votes on individual bills that would be a boon to working families, citing extending the child tax credit, cutting prescription drug prices and raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15.
Such votes would be good policy and good politics, the Vermont senator insisted, saying they would show the Democrats battling for the working class while highlighting Republican opposition to hugely popular policies.
This is full-loaf politics. It’s take-your-ball-and-go-home politics. The idea is that you’ll win support not by delivering something, even if it’s short of what was promised, but by showing people you are fighting even if it results in nothing. I don’t think that’s how people think about politics and political parties.
And I don’t think Sanders is on target here, either:
But his comments appear to reflect a growing discontent and concern with the Biden administration’s direction. “I think it’s absolutely important that we do a major course correction,” Sanders continued. “It’s important that we have the guts to take on the very powerful corporate interests that have an unbelievably powerful hold on the economy of this country.”
The individual bills that Sanders favors might not attract the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, and a defeat on them could embarrass the Democrats. But Sanders, chairman of the Senate budget committee and one of the nation’s most prominent progressive voices, said, “People can understand that you sometimes don’t have the votes. But they can’t understand why we haven’t brought up important legislation that 70 or 80% of the American people support.”
What Sanders is saying is that people can understand that you don’t have the votes to do something but they cannot understand why we haven’t had failed votes. But if there’s any truth to the fact that there are millions of people wondering why Schumer hasn’t put popular legislation up for a vote it’s precisely because they don’t understand the Senate rules.
Maybe it’s worth something to be able to say that Senator So-and-So voted against extending the child tax credit or hiking the minimum wage, but that’s mainly so you can hit them for it in a television commercial. The fine points of the ad don’t matter much. Is the ad going to be so much better because it says there was a vote rather than just that the Republicans blocked it? Frankly, a lot of the most effective political ads aren’t even factual or based on concrete events.
I’m not opposed to having purely political votes that can be useful in the next campaign, but that’s not what working people need or want. They need Biden and the Democrats to make laws that will improve their lives and revitalize their communities, and there’s a very narrow window to make that happen. As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders should be focused figuring out what can pass through the Senate rather than messaging about what cannot.
The working class isn’t going to respond to more failure or excuses, especially since they’re headed to the right as a default.
Sanders told us during his presidential campaigns that he’d create a groundswell of public support for his polices–a “revolution”–that would sweep away obstacles like the filibuster or Joe Manchin. That was horseshit magical thinking then, and it’s horseshit magical thinking now to think fascism can be stopped with a bunch of demonstrations that Democrats don’t have enough votes.
You are right that if Bernie were going to be strategic in his politics, he failed but…
shouldn’t Bernie Sanders simply be who he is? Isn’t that baked into our political dynamic that he’s going to say these things? Bernie is not a prophet but he (and leaders like Rev Barber) do play roles very similar to that in our society. Other people play strategic roles. Maybe those people need to be better at what they are doing – factoring in that Bernie is going to be Bernie and that progressive activists are going to agitate for justice. Maybe this direction we are hurtling towards has little to do with Bernie and fundamentally is about Democrats over decades failing to deliver to their constituencies.
I don’t know enough about politics beyond local activism and maybe political leaders can’t afford to be non-strategic but the above are my comments in response.
Well, I think there is something to be said for holding a series of votes once we get through with the voting bills and BBB, assuming Manchin and Sinema aren’t permanent blockades. Everything else, at least we can get the Republicans on record. Then every Democratic campaign has something to run on, not just what was accomplished, but what can be accomplished if you elect more Democrats. Look, the extremist, obstructionist Republicans are against this and this and this.
Build Back Better is necessary to help Americans, but insufficient in saving the Republic.
Voting Rights legislation is necessary to help Americans, but insufficient in saving the Republic.
Helping Americans in the long-term requires doing more than offering piecemeal legislation that while crucial now and next week, isn’t enough for next year or the next decade.
Is Sanders saying we should shelf BBB and Voting Rights legislation to instead, what, make the minimum wage $100.00/hour? No.
There are a dozen things Democrats could be doing to help Americans in the short term. But Sanders is thinking long-term, and part of that long-term thinking is about whether or not there is going to be a country worth “saving” if we aren’t telegraphing loud and fucking clear to Americans the stark contrasts between Democrats and Republicans.
There are a dozen different Reddit subs you can read populated by young people who are obviously “liberal” but look at what is being offered and just shrug and say fuck it, it’s going to crumble, let it. Not because Sanders is some idiot who creates impossible expectations, but because they see the Leader of the House Democrats who hilariously makes millions of dollars with inside trading knowledge saying that her access to inside trading shouldn’t be prohibited. Meanwhile these young people watch their rent increase (not their mortgage, RENT) as the planet drowns and burns and blows away around them. Either capture them with the Democratic Party, or get ready to fucking hunker down and hide when Tom Cotton tells them how they’ll all be homeowners with no student loan debt and legally able to smoke weed…the minute some relatively smart Republican utters those three concepts together in a speech, fascism will be all but inevitable.
If the fucking Democratic Party is simply going to be the slightly nicer wing of the CapitalismUntilWeAllDie™ Party, then you know what is going to happen? We’re going to get fucked good and hard by Capitalism, until you guessed it, we all fucking die. The fascists are OK with it, as they’ve already made clear that they’re perfectly fine identifying as a Death Cult.
Biden and Harris need to call Manchin and Sinema up, tell them to fucking vote with the party, or GET THE FUCK OUT.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if we’re just going to shrug our shoulders as this country dies, let’s at least let the Republicans take all the responsibility for it. As is, Manchin and Sinema are making the murder of the Republic BIPARTISAN.
/rant
Bernie Sanders imagines that repeated public failures would rally working class voters to support the agenda of a socialist. Look how impotent we are, join us! We can’t do anything for you people, but look at all we’ve done for the various minorities and interest groups you don’t like.
This isn’t just magical thinking, it’s political idiocy.
The Republicans were masters of the show vote. But it works best if the Senate or presidency is in the hands of the other party.
We are talking about a 50-50 Senate in which a radical, obstructionist Republican party can use Senate procedures to prevent even having an open debate, let alone actually voting one way or the other on important issues that come to the floor.
I think we have to get the order right. First is voting rights. Fail that and the rest falls with it, since you have ceded power to the republican right. It may just be that Manchin and Sinema will block it but then they are likely to block everything.
Wanker of the day? The only person who out wankered Sanders in the decade is Trump. Never mind this nonsense. He is being the same gadfly he always presents – he ignores the racial elephant in the room, he dispenses stupid political advice and he advocates stupid political tactics.
But he is in the running for wanker of the decade because he was the first to introduce the idea that an American election could be – was! – rigged. Many of his supporters to this day believe he was cheated in the 2016 primaries. Remember his refusal to acknowledge that he lost? Remember his efforts to get the primary results overturned by superdelegates? His supporters in Nevada using physical intimidation trying to change caucus results? Clinton beat Sanders more soundly than Biden beat Trump and there is zero evidence that the 2016 primaries were rigged in any way, shape or form.
Trump of course picked up on all of that as a key campaign theme. Even though Sanders knew in June of 2016 that the Russians were helping Trump and targeting his supporters with anti-Clinton propaganda, he said nothing about it through the primaries or the general election campaign. Given that, and his tepid support of Clinton, one could easily think that he – like many of his supporters – thought helping Trump win would help him and his revolution more than a Clinton victory would. He was probably right for once.
Sanders is a populist and populism is inherently dangerous. He is on the wrong side of the fight for democracy.