Bernie Sanders (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Bernie Sanders says he is “prepared to run for president of the
United States.” That’s not a formal announcement. A lot can change
between now and 2016, and the populist senator from Vermont bristles at
the whole notion of a permanent campaign. But Sanders has begun talking
with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected
locations such as Alabama and entertaining the process questions that
this most issue-focused member of the Senate has traditionally avoided.
In some senses, Sanders is the unlikeliest of prospects: an
independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has never
joined the party, a democratic socialist in a country where many
politicians fear the label “liberal,” an outspoken critic of the
economic, environmental and social status quo who rips “the ruling
class” and calls out the Koch brothers by name. Yet, he has served as
the mayor of his state’s largest city, beaten a Republican incumbent for
the US House, won and held a historically Republican Senate seat and
served longer as an independent member of Congress than anyone else. And
he says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a
“political revolution.”
In his first extended conversation about presidential politics, Sanders discussed with
The Nation
the economic and environmental concerns that have led him to consider a
2016 run; the difficult question of whether to run as a Democrat or an
independent; his frustration with the narrow messaging of prominent
Democrats, including Hillary Clinton; and his sense that political and
media elites are missing the signs that America is headed toward a
critical juncture where electoral expectations could be exploded.
John Nichols: Are you going to run for president in 2016?
Bernie Sanders:
I don’t wake up every morning, as some people here in Washington do and
say, “You know, I really have to be president of the United States. I
was born to be president of the United States.” What I do wake up every
morning feeling is that this country faces more serious problems than at
any time since the Great Depression, and there is a horrendous lack of
serious political discourse or ideas out there that can address these
crises, and that somebody has got to represent the working-class and the
middle-class of this country in standing up to the big-money interests
who have so much power over the economic and political life of this
country. So I am prepared to run for president of the United States. I
don’t believe that I am the only person out there who can fight this
fight, but I am certainly prepared to look seriously at that race.
When you say you are “prepared to
run,” that can be read in two ways. One is to say you have the
credentials, the prominence, the following to seek the office. The other
is to say that you are making preparations for a run. How do you parse
that?
If the question is, am I actively right now organizing and raising
money and so forth for a campaign for president, I am not doing that. On
the other hand, am I talking to people around the country? Yes, I am.
Will I be doing some traveling around the country? Yes, I will be. But I
think it’s premature to be talking about (the specifics of) a campaign
when we still have a 2014 congressional race in front of us.
I want to push back at some of what
you are saying. Political insiders define presidential politics, and
they are already hard at work, in both major parties and in the broader
sense, to erect barriers to insurgent, dissident, populist campaigns.
Don’t progressives who come at the process slowly run the risk of
finding that everything has been locked up by the time they get serious
about running?
Obviously, if I run, both in terms of the positions that I’ll be
advocating, and the process itself, it will have to be a very
unconventional campaign. I hear what you are saying, and I think there
is truth in what you are saying. But, on the other hand, I think there
is profound disgust among the American people for the conventional
political process and the never-ending campaigns. If I run, my job is to
help bring together the kind of coalition that can win—that can
transform politics. We’ve got to bring together trade unionists and
working families, our minority communities, environmentalists, young
people, the women’s community, the gay community, seniors, veterans, the
people who in fact are the vast majority of the American population.
We’ve got to create a progressive agenda and rally people around that
agenda.
I think we’ve got a message that can resonate, that people want to
hear, that people need to hear. Time is very important. But I don’t
think it makes sense—or that it is necessary—to start a campaign this
early.
If and when you do start a
full-fledged campaign, and if you want to run against conventional
politics, how far do you go? Do you go to the point of running as an
independent? That’s a great challenge to conventional politics, but it
is also one where we have seen some honorable, some capable people
stumble.
That’s an excellent question, and I haven’t reached a conclusion on
that yet. Clearly, there are things to be said on both sides of that
important question. Number one: there is today more and more alienation
from the Republican and Democratic parties than we have seen in the
modern history of this country. In fact, most people now consider
themselves to be “independent,” whatever that may mean. And the number
of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans is at a historically
low point. In that sense, running outside the two-party system can be a
positive politically.
On the other hand, given the nature of the political system, given
the nature of media in America, it would be much more difficult to get
adequate coverage from the mainstream media running outside of the
two-party system. It would certainly be very hard if not impossible to
get into debates. It would require building an entire political
infrastructure outside of the two-party system: to get on the ballot, to
do all the things that would be required for a serious campaign.
The question that you asked is extremely important, it requires a
whole lot of discussion. It’s one that I have not answered yet.
Unspoken in your answer is the fact
that you have a great discomfort with the Democratic Party as it has
operated in recent decades.
Yes. It goes without saying. Since I’ve been in Congress, I have been
a member of the Democratic caucus as an independent. [Senate majority
leader] Harry Reid, especially, has been extremely kind to me and has
treated me with enormous respect. I am now chairman of the Veterans
Committee. But there is no question that the Democratic Party in general
remains far too dependent on big-money interests, that it is not
fighting vigorously for working-class families, and that there are some
members of the Democratic Party whose views are not terribly different
from some of the Republicans. That’s absolutely the case. But the
dilemma is that, if you run outside of the Democratic Party, then what
you’re doing—and you have to think hard about this—you’re not just
running a race for president, you’re really running to build an entire
political movement. In doing that, you would be taking votes away from
the Democratic candidate and making it easier for some right-wing
Republican to get elected—the [Ralph] Nader dilemma
You’re not really saying whether you could run as a Democrat?
I want to hear what progressives have to say about that. The more
radical approach would be to run as an independent, and essentially when
you’re doing that you’re not just running for president of the United
States, you’re running to build a new political movement in
America—which presumably would lead to other candidates running outside
of the Democratic Party, essentially starting a third party. That idea
has been talked about in this country for decades and decades and
decades, from Eugene Debs forward—without much success. And I say that
as the longest serving independent in the history of the United States
Congress. In Vermont, I think we have had more success than in any other
state in the country in terms of progressive third-party politics.
During my tenure as mayor of Burlington, I defeated Democrats and
Republicans and helped start a third-party movement. Today, there is a
statewide progressive party which now has three people in the state
Senate, out of 30, and a number of representatives in the state
Legislature. But that process has taken 30 years. So it is not easy.
If you look back to Nader’s candidacy [in 2000], the hope of Nader
was not just that he might be elected president but that he would create
a strong third party. Nader was a very strong candidate, very smart,
very articulate. But the strong third-party did not emerge. The fact is
that is very difficult to do.
You plan to travel, to spend time
with activists in the Democratic Party and outside the Democratic Party.
Will you look to them for direction?
Yes. The bolder, more radical approach is obviously running outside
of the two-party system. Do people believe at this particular point that
there is the capability of starting a third-party movement? Or is that
an idea that is simply not realistic at this particular moment in
history? On the other hand, do people believe that operating in
framework of the Democratic Party, getting involved in primaries
state-by-state, building organization capability, rallying people, that
for the moment at least that this is the better approach? Those are the
options that I think progressives around the country are going to have
to wrestle with. And that’s certainly something that I will be listening
to.
You have always been identified as a
democratic socialist. Polling suggests that Americans are not so
bothered by the term, but it seems to me that our media has a really
hard time with it. Is that a factor in your thinking about a
presidential race?
No, that’s not a factor at all. In Vermont, people understand exactly
what I mean by the word. They don’t believe that democratic socialism
is akin to North Korea communism. They understand that when I talk about
democratic socialism, what I’m saying is that I do not want to see the
United States significantly dominated by a handful of billionaire
families controlling the economic and political life of the country.
That I do believe that in a democratic, civilized society, all people
are entitled to health care as a right, all people are entitled to
quality education as a right, all people are entitled to decent jobs and
a decent income, and that we need a government which represents
ordinary Americans and not just the wealthy and the powerful.
The people in Vermont know exactly when I mean, which is why I won my
last election with 71 percent of the vote and carried some of the most
conservative towns in the state. If I ran for president, and articulated
a vision that speaks to working people, I am confident that voters in
every part of this country would understand that.
The truth is that, very sadly, the corporate media ignores some of
the huge accomplishments that have taken place in countries like
Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. These countries, which have a long
history of democratic socialist or
labor
governments, have excellent and universal health care systems,
excellent educational systems and they have gone a long way toward
eliminating poverty and creating a far more egalitarian society than we
have. I think that there are economic and social models out there that
we can learn a heck of a lot from, and that’s something I would be
talking about.
What you seem to be saying is that,
as a presidential candidate, you would try to make the very difficult
combination of not just being a personality that people would like, or
at least want to vote for, but also educate people about what is
possible.
My whole life in politics has been not just with passing legislation
or being a good mayor or senator, but to educate people. That is why we
have hundreds of thousands of people on my Senate email list, and why I
send an email to all Vermonters every other week. It is why I have held
hundreds of town meetings in Vermont, in virtually every town in the
state.
If you ask me now what one of the major accomplishments of my
political life is, it is that I helped double the voter turnout in
Burlington, Vermont. I did that because people who had given up on the
political process understood that I was fighting for working families,
that we were paying attention to low and moderate-income neighborhoods
rather than just downtown or the big-money interests. In fact, I went to
war with virtually every part of the ruling class in Burlington during
my years as mayor. People understood that; they said, “You know what?
Bernie is standing with us. We’re going to stand with him.” The result
is that large numbers of people who previously had not participated in
the political process got involved. And that’s what we have to do for
the whole country.
I think one of the great tragedies that we face today politically,
above and beyond the simple economic reality of the collapse of the
middle-class, more people living in poverty, growing gap between the
rich and poor, the high cost of education—all those objective, painful
realities in American society—the more significant reality from a
political perspective is that most people have given up on the political
process. They understand the political deck is stacked against them.
They think there is no particular reason for them to come out and
vote—and they don’t.
So much of what [media-coverage of] politics is about today is
personality politics. It’s gossip: Chris Christie’s weight or Hillary’s
latest hairdo. But the real issue is how do you bring tens of millions
of working-class and middle-class people together around an agenda that
works for them? How do we make politics relevant to their lives? That’s
going to involve some very, very radical thinking. At the end of the
day, it’s not just going to be decisions from Washington. It really
means empowering, in a variety of ways, ordinary people in the political
process. To me, when you talk about the need for a political
revolution, it is not just single-payer health care, it’s not just
aggressive action on
climate change,
it’s not just creating the millions of jobs that we need, it is
literally empowering people to take control over their lives. That’s
clearly a lot harder to do than it is to talk about, but that’s what the
political revolution is about.
One of the things that I find most disturbing—in fact, beyond
comprehension—is that the Democrats now lose by a significant number the
votes of white working-class people. How can that be? When you have a
Republican Party that wants to destroy Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid, ect., ect., why are so many people voting against their own
economic interests? It happens because the Democrats have not been
strong in making it clear which side they are on, not been strong in
taking on Wall Street and corporate America, which is what Roosevelt did
in the 1930s.
So, to me, what politics is about is not just coming up with ideas
and a legislative program here in Washington—you need to do those
things—but it’s about figuring out how you involve people in the
political process, how you empower them. It ain’t easy, but that is, in
fact, what has to be done. The bad news is that people like the Koch
brothers can spend huge sums of money to create groups like the
Tea Party.
The good news is that, once people understand the right-wing extremist
ideology of the Koch brothers, they are not going to go along with their
policies. In terms of fundamental economic issues: job creation, a high
minimum wage, progressive taxation, affordable college education—the
vast majority of people are on our side.
One of the goals that I would have, politically, as a candidate for
president of the United States is to reach out to the working-class
element of the Tea Party and explain to them exactly who is funding
their organization—and explain to them that, on virtually every issue,
the Koch brothers and the other funders of the Tea Party are way out of
step with what ordinary people want and need.
You have made it very clear that you
have no taste for personality politics. But a part of why you are
thinking of running for president has to be a sense that the prospective
Democratic candidates are unlikely to do that or to do that
effectively.
Yes.
Is it your sense that Hillary Clinton, the clear front-runner at this point, is unlikely to do that?
Look, I am not here to be attacking Hillary Clinton. I have known
Hillary Clinton for a number of years; I knew her when she was First
Lady a little bit, got to know her a little bit better when she was in
the Senate. I like Hillary; she is very, very intelligent; she focuses
on issues. But I think, sad to say, that the Clinton type of politics is
not the politics certainly that I’m talking about. We are living in the
moment in American history where the problems facing the country, even
if you do not include climate change, are more severe than at any time
since the Great Depression. And if you throw in climate change, they are
more severe.
So the same old same old [Clinton administration Secretary of the
Treasury] Robert Rubin type of economics, or centrist politics, or
continued dependence on big money, or unfettered free-trade, that is not
what this country needs ideologically. That is not the type of policy
that we need. And it is certainly not going to be the politics that
galvanizes the tens of millions of people today who are thoroughly
alienated and disgusted with the status quo. People are hurting, and it
is important for leadership now to explain to them why they are hurting
and how we can grow the middle class and reverse the economic decline of
so many people. And I don’t think that is the politics of Senator
Clinton or the Democratic establishment…. People want to hear an
alternative set of policies that says to the American people: with all
of this technology, with all of this productivity, the truth of the
matter is that the average person in this country should be living
better than ever before—not significantly worse economically than was
the case thirty years ago. That’s what we need. That’s what I want to
talk about… I think that the class message, that in this great country,
especially with all kinds of new technology and increased productivity,
that we can in fact provide a decent standard for all people, I think
that resonates in fifty states in America. I think what people are
looking for is leadership that is prepared to take on the big money
interests (to deliver that message). That’s not what we’re seeing, by
and large, from most Democrats.
Are they missing something?
I think so. My experience and my political instinct tells me that a
lot of the discussions about 2016 are minimizing the profound disgust
that people are having now with the status quo—and they’re desperate for
a message that addresses that disgust. If I run, I’m not going to be
raising hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I think I have the
capability of raising a lot of money and that’s important, but that at
the end of the day is not going to be what’s most important. What’s most
important is this idea of a political revolution—rallying the working
families of this country around a vision that speaks to their needs.
People need to understand that, if we are prepared to stand up to Wall
Street and the big-money interests, we can create a nation that works
for all Americans, and not just the handful of billionaires.
John Nichols is the author, with Robert W. McChesney, of
Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying
America (Nation Books), for which Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an
introduction.
