Sanders Might Not Stand a Chance, The Progressive Movement Still Does
Originally published on March 30, 2020 at https://www.maristcircle.com
Just one month ago, Bernie Sanders was poised to have a big night on Super Tuesday and solidify his claim as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. All of a sudden, candidates started dropping like flies and united around Joe Biden. With the moderate lane cleared and endorsements rolling in for Biden, Super Tuesday and the next several states got behind the candidate they saw as having the best chance of taking on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Progressives around the country were ready to take control of the Democratic Party in a similar fashion to how Trump seized power, but were blindsided by the party elites and voters that fell in line with the more “practical” choice. Where did it all go wrong and what did the Sanders campaign miss?
For starters, progressives had a false sense of Bernie’s voter base. Much of his support in the 2016 election was revealed as anti-Hillary votes, not pro-Bernie or pro-progessive. This became evident early in the 2020 primary as his support in Iowa and New Hampshire shrunk significantly, but the consensus from the Left was that as the crowded field of candidates dwindled, progressive or otherwise, Sanders’ support would be reestablished and be too large for any one or two candidates to overcome. Although Sanders cleaned up with the young and Latinx voters, his support from rural and suburban America completely vanished. Those voters who had vehemently opposed Hillary Clinton in 2016, had no problem with Barack Obama’s former Vice President, Joe Biden, whose policies and neoliberal ideology are practically identical.
When South Carolina delivered the make-or-break win for the Biden campaign, everything else fell perfectly into place. While Sanders was running his issues-based campaign with the promise of a political revolution, voters took the hint from mainstream media and the Democratic Party, that Trump was the one true threat to their way of life, and Biden was the only candidate that would deliver a sense of decency and normalcy to the White House. Biden is now seen as the unifier by bringing everyone into his campaign from the likes of Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, to Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Unlike Biden, Sanders failed to secure and sometimes even seek endorsements from crucial political figures.
It was easy for the media to paint Sanders as a disruptor and communist/authoritarian sympathizer in the same vein as Trump because Sanders stubbornly stuck to the revolutionary socialist label. When he expressed his desire to take on “the whole damn establishment” he was projecting himself as the opposite of a unifier.
Sanders failed to prosecute the case against Biden in a meaningful way. When the party and media gave voters the permission to rally behind Biden, Sanders expressed his friendship and willingness to campaign for him, and his belief that Biden could defeat Trump in November. He went after Biden for his support of the Iraq War, the 1994 Crime Bill and Wall Street bailouts, but for many voters, the past is the past, and it’s time to look forward to a future without Trump as president.
These issues of the past matter and were evident in the generational divide of voters. Millenial and Gen Z voters rightly saw Biden as part of the system that gave us Trump. Our generation expected older voters to see that and wanted them to realize we could become a generation of Americans worse off than our parents. Many of us are burdened with issues that are bigger than us on an individual level: student loan debt, shaky job markets, the affordable housing crisis, no guarantee for affordable healthcare or a living wage, and the looming threat of climate change. That’s why we saw Sanders as the only option for substantive change.
We have witnessed Biden’s contempt for our generation when he told a crowd, “The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no, I have no empathy for it.” We understood his role in leading us into a horrific and illegal war, his commitment to modern day mass incarceration, his late change of heart in LGBTQ and reproductive justice, his tepid support for Social Security, and his enduring commitment to neoliberal economic policies that have contributed to the worst wealth inequality in American history. None of this was enough for older voters to even flinch. Will the latest and most serious sexual assault allegation from former staffer in Biden’s Senate office, Tara Reade, land with the Democrats that called for Justice Kavanaugh’s head on a spike, or invoked the “I believe women” call to action when Sen. Warren suggested Sanders was a sexist? The double standards and hypocrisy are endless when the weight of political power tips the scale in your favor.
With all that being said, where was the young vote that was supposed to come out in historic numbers to deliver Sanders his political revolution? Although voter turnout was largely up from 2016 numbers, most of this came from suburban voters who decided to sit it out in 2016 while the young vote stayed at its usual low numbers. Even though every primary state so far has shown that the majority of Democratic voters support Medicare for All, Sanders was seen as too much of a risk to put up against Trump. The media blackout of overwhelming support from the Latinx community and independent voters for Sanders failed to show his ability to win not only in Rust Belt states, but states like Arizona and Texas, which could change the electoral map forever.
While Sanders made a case for policies similar to those of the happiest countries in the world like Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, according to Forbes, the media and his opponents were able to gaslight voters by bringing up the likes of Venezuela and Cuba. Instead, the campaign should have compared Sanders and his policies to the visions and legacies of the most popular Democrat in US history, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the leader of the Civil Rights movement, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sanders talked of political revolution as something never before seen in American politics, when it should be regarded as the American tradition of the fight for economic and social justice. Many of Sanders’ policy proposals have become mainstream and supported by a majority of Americans such as healthcare for all, a living minimum wage, jobs and housing guarantee, anti-war stance, a comprehensive response to climate change, taxing the wealthy and corporations, strengthening unions, and expanding social security. So it makes sense that the Wall Street Journal recently reported that many of Biden’s most prominent surrogates have urged him to adopt more of Sanders’ policy platforms, including Rep. Clyburn who said Biden “should incorporate as much of the efforts being proposed by Bernie Sanders as he can.”
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity for many of the proposals that Sanders has championed have become more evident. As Congress once again bails out corporations and puts trillions into a Wall Street stimulus package, their argument against the affordability of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal do not hold up. At the same time, as millions of Americans begin to file for unemployment, healthcare coverage for many of these workers will be lost. Heartbreaking stories surrounding healthcare during this pandemic are already being reported: people being treated in the hospital for the virus and leaving with outrageous bills, others dying by avoiding hospitals and medical bills altogether and some being denied help due to their lack of coverage. This comes at a time when Sander’s proposal of $2 thousand per month to every U.S. household for the remainder of this crisis has been executed by our friends in the North, while the Senate in the richest country in the history of the world fights about giving a portion of Americans a one time $1,200 check and a living wage for the unemployed.
It is evident that while the Sanders campaign may soon come to an end, the progressive movement is still strong and could emerge from this historic pandemic and financial crisis even stronger. Sanders will not seek another run at presidency, but his recent viral and fiery speech on the Senate floor that helped protect unemployment provisions in the Coronavirus stimulus package, show that he and the movement are not going anywhere. But at some point, like any functioning movement, the torch must be passed to younger, bolder visionaries.
For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad of young, progressive women of color have shown that they know how to navigate the political establishment playbook while speaking truth to power. They understand the intersectionality at the heart of social and economic justice, while using their platforms to secure political wins. Never would you get Ted Cruz to agree with Sanders on social media like he has with AOC on more than one occasion. Ocasio-Cortez in particular has become a mainstream media darling by being able to play into the Democrats’ “woke” identity politics that epitomized the Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris campaigns. At the same time, she stuck with her unwavering policy objectives by endorsing who many white feminists saw as “just another old white man”.
At this point, it may not seem possible to elect a true progressive president, but as the Overton window continues to shift and is exacerbated by crises like the one we are in the midst of, we might see that moment after all. Organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats are growing by the day, Congress is beginning to look more like the United States, anti-establishment candidates and alternative media outlets are picking up steam, voters are waking up to casual corruption built into our system, and racial, economic, and age demographics are shifting at a rapid pace in this country. Regardless of how we feel about what we’re facing right now as a nation, hope will always persist, the call for justice will always be heard and love will always trump hate.
