Bernie Sanders speaking in 2011. (AP/Rich Pedroncelli)
Bernie
Sanders is not burning with presidential ambition. He doubts that he
would consider bidding for the nation’s top job if another prominent
progressive was gearing up for a 2016 run that would provide a
seriously-forcused and seriously competitive populist alternative to
politics as usual.
But if the fundamental issues that are of concern to the great mass
of Americans—“the collapse of the middle class, growing wealth and
income
inequality, growth in poverty, global warming”—are not being discussed by the 2016 candidates,
Sanders says, “Well, then maybe I have to do it.”
This calculation brings
the independent senator from Vermont
a step closer to presidential politics than he has ever been before.
With a larger social-media following than most members of Congress, a
regular presence on left-leaning television and talk radio programs—
syndicated radio host Bill Press greeted the Sanders speculation with a Tuesday morning “Go, Bernie, Go!” cheer—and a new “
Progressive Voters of America” political action committee, Sanders has many of the elements of an insurgent candidacy in place.
But the senator is still a long way from running.
In interviews over the past several days, Sanders has
argued with increasing force that the times demand that there be a progressive contender in 2016.
“Under normal times, it’s fine, if you have a moderate Democrat running, a moderate Republican running,”
the senator told his hometown paper, the
Burlington Free Press.
“These are not normal times. The United States right now is in the
middle of a severe crisis and you have to call it what it is.”
So, says Sanders, there must be a progressive alternative to the
conservative Republican politics of austerity and the centrist
Democratic politics of compromise with the conservatives.
“[The] major issues of this country that impact millions of people cannot continue to be swept under the rug,”
Sanders told Politico on Monday.
“And if nobody else is talking about it, well, then maybe I have to do
it. But I do not believe that I am the only person that is capable of
doing this.”
The independent senator has
high praise
for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has recently been
talked up by some progressives as a prospective primary challenger to
the front-runner for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Unlike Clinton, Warren has a
reputation for taking on Wall Street, big banks and corporate CEOs, and
Sanders hails the Massachusetts senator as a “
real progressive.” But Warren says she is
not running.
So what happens if Warren stands down? And what if other liberal and populist presidential prospects, such as
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and
former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, fail to gain traction?
Then, says Sanders, he’d consider a run.
That sounds casual. But it isn’t. Sanders has stipulations regarding a candidacy.
Though he is a proud independent, he would not run as a November “
spoiler” who might take away just enough votes to throw the presidential election to a right-wing Republican.
And he has little taste for “
educational”
campaigns that seek to raise issues—either on an independent line or in
a Democratic primary dominated by a Clinton juggernaut—but do not
seriously compete for power.
If Sanders were to run—and that remains a very big “if”—he says he would do so with a strategy for winning.
That strategy, whether the senator were to mount a presidential bid
as an independent or as a Democrat, would not be built around insider
ties or connections; Clinton already has much of the party establishment
locked down. And it certainly would not rely on raising the most money,
explains the sponsor of
a constitutional amendment to overturn the US Supreme Court’s
Citizens United ruling and get big money out of politics.
When we spoke recently about the challenges facing progressive candidates,
Sanders said what most politicians will not:
“This small handful of multi-billionaires control the economics of
this country. They determine whether jobs stay in the United States or
whether they go to China. They determine how much we’re going to BE
paying for a gallon of gas. They determine whether we’re going to
transform our economic system away from fossil fuel. Economically, they
clearly have an enormous amount of power. And, now, especially with
Citizens United, these very same people are now investing in politics.
That’s what oligarchy is. Oligarchy is when a small number of people
control the economic and political life of the country—certainly
including the media—and we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form
of society.”
Sanders actually likes the prospects of taking on the oligarchs,
saying: “And I think you can bring people together to say: Look, we may
have our disagreements, but we don’t want billionaires deciding who the
next governor is going to be, the next senator, the next president of
the United States. As someone who believes in that type of grassroots
organizing, I think it’s a great opportunity.”
So any presidential run by Sanders would rely on small contributions
and grassroots support. But the core of the strategy would be that
challenge to oligarchy, with its focus on values and ideas that have
been too long dismissed by prominent presidential contenders and the
media that covers them.
In effect, say Sanders, he would run only if he thought that he could
fill the great void in the American political discourse, and in so
doing inspire voters to reject old orthodoxies in favor of a new
populist politics that would have as its core theme economic justice.
When we spoke about what is missing from American politics, Sanders
told me
that the president America needs would begin the discussion, as
Franklin Roosevelt did, by calling out the plutocrats and their
political and media minions.
Imagine, explains Sanders, if Americans had a president who said to
them: “I am going to stand with you. And I am going to take these guys
on. And I understand that they’re going to be throwing thirty-second ads
at me every minute. They’re going to do everything they can to
undermine my agenda. But I believe that if we stand together, we can
defeat them.”
The senator
explained the concept that would, necessarily, underpin a presidential bid:
“If you had a President who said: ‘Nobody in America is going to make
less than $12 or $14 an hour,’ what do you think that would do? If you
had a President who said: ‘You know what, everybody in this country is
going to get free primary health care within a year,’ what do you think
that would do? If you had a President say, ‘Every kid in this country is
going to go to college regardless of their income,’ what do you think
that would do? If you had a President say, ‘I stand here today and
guarantee you that we are not going to cut a nickel in Social Security;
in fact we’re going to improve the Social Security program,’ what do you
think that would do? If you had a president who said, ‘Global warming
is the great planetary crisis of our time, I’m going to create millions
jobs as we transform our energy system. I know the oil companies don’t
like it. I know the coal companies don’t like it. But that is what this
planet needs: we’re going to lead the world in that direction. We’re
going to transform the energy system across this planet—and create
millions of jobs while we do that.’ If you had a President say that,
what kind of excitement would you generate from young people all over
this world?”
Whether Sanders runs or not, the prospect of such a
speak-truth-to-power presidency is an appealing one. And the senator
from Vermont is right: Americans do not just deserve such an option. In
these times, they need the serious progressive alternative that they
have for too long been denied.
© 2013 The Nation
No comments:
Post a Comment