Written by John Furlan
Sanders’ Legacy: Appeal for Working-Middle Class Unity, Hopefully Progressives Learned that Lesson
Sanders tried to unify working and middle-class people against the so-called 1%. Hopefully the unity part of his message will be his legacy, along eventually with Medicare for All (MFA).
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By focusing on the 1%, Sanders opened himself up to the label of angry, divisive “class warrior.” To which “billionaire” Warren Buffett in 2006 would say: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” They’ve been winning even much bigger ever since.
So Sanders was perhaps an historically necessary antidote to the poison of rampant unjust inequality. That’s what he appealed to: “Economic justice. Social justice. Racial justice. Environmental justice.” His was just as much a moral appeal as an economic program, and neither was “socialist,” Sanders was an old-fashioned FDR-LBJ New Deal/Great Society liberal.
“Sanders was perhaps an historically necessary antidote to the poison of rampant unjust inequality.”
Regarding Sanders’ disdain for all “billionaires,” per se, as a class, there are good and bad ways to gain great wealth, even within an unjust system. I posted six articles supporting Sanders because of his unifying appeal, as I described in the following four paragraphs from my February 24 post, I hope that unifying appeal remains his legacy, along with MFA, bold emphasis added here:
“I suggest Sanders should use Medicare for ALL, since he emphasizes uniting ALL Americans together, minus the 1%. To me, that’s the greatest strength and appeal of both Sanders and MLK, and their greatest threat to the age-old “divide and conquer” of elites. It’s not Medicare for Women, Medicare for African-Americans, Medicare for Latinos, Medicare for LGBTQ, etc., etc. It’s Medicare for ALL.
I.e, Sanders is not Democratic “identity politics” as usual, which has dominated left politics for so long. As “culture wars” have dominated the right, both combined have divided and polarized the American population for the past forty years, often seemingly deliberately.
In sharp contrast, Sanders says “brothers and sisters” in his speeches, a throwback phrase from an earlier era of Democratic unity, of solidarity, in American labor unions and the American civil rights movement of MLK, not Nordic “democratic socialism.”
The phrase “brothers and sisters” also harkens back to an era of Democratic landslide victories by FDR in 1932 and 1936 and LBJ in 1964. The right will do anything to try to prevent a new Democratic coalition of similar power from ever coalescing again, after Reagan destroyed it in the 1980 and 1984 elections. Sanders is trying to put the coalition back together again, with much different size pieces, the U.S. has dramatically changed since Reagan’s time.”
I went on to say in that article, posted eight days before Super Tuesday on March 3:
“The big problem, as I see it, besides the glaringly obvious one of Sanders giving Trump a pinata stick to beat him with by labeling himself a “democratic socialist” (not a valid comparison, the U.S. is an extremely diverse global superpower of 329 million, Denmark is a much more homogeneous small country of 5.8 million peace-loving Danes) who’s calling for a “revolution,” is that while his fervent supporters may think they want that, much of the country may not be ready for it.”
Sanders should have been willing to show more flexibility on Medicare for All, his signature issue, which I strongly support, but current Medicare has a supplemental private insurance option. And he should have more aggressively addressed the “pay for” red herring. But I doubt that’s why he lost.
It Was Amazing that Sanders Actually Got as Far as He Did
Rather, the Democratic Party is controlled by the Obama/Clinton Wall Street/corporate/media elites, with a base of well-off socially liberal urban and suburban white voters and socially conservative urban African-American voters.
“Sanders fate was definitively sealed when he lost Michigan”
Progressive left voters make up far less than a majority of the Democratic base. The odds were greatly stacked against a progressive candidate, most especially in a year where “electability” against Trump was the primary concern of most non-progressive voters.
Given that, a progressive candidate had any slim chance of winning the nomination IF and only IF, IFF,
- the moderate/centrist vote remained divided among many candidates, AND,
- the progressive candidates, Sanders and Warren, could have worked out an early agreement for one to drop out.
IFF those two things BOTH happened, then perhaps the one progressive left in the race, certainly no later than before Super Tuesday on March 3, preferably earlier, may have been able to “steal” the nomination, since Biden is such an uninspiring candidate.
But neither happened.
The moderates and DNC rapidly united behind Biden in the four days between the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries. And Warren would not drop out until March 5, two days after the latter, well after it mattered, and even then she didn’t endorse Sanders.
Sanders fate was definitively sealed when he lost Michigan a week after Super Tuesday on March 10, because it showed Biden’s edge with white working class voters too, in addition to African-Americans, suburban females and older voters in his earlier primary wins.
“the Democratic Party is controlled by the Obama/Clinton Wall Street/corporate/media elites”
I’m not “blaming” Warren. She stayed in too long, because she believed she would have been a highly competent chief executive, her April 8 NYT op-ed made that case again. But to most voters, who usually vote with their gut, not their brains, Warren was too long on plans, too short on charisma.
She failed to be an inspiring political leader outside of the D.C. Beltway-NYC-Boston “Acela corridor” of well-educated elites that identify with her and despise Trump. And there is still a bias against women, which Clinton didn’t help with her abysmal campaign.
Sanders Campaign Was Done In By the Very Constituencies His Most Fervent Progressive Supporters Have Been Trying to Court.
Sanders basic politics and style came from a much earlier era, the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, he attended MLK’s historic “I had a dream speech” in 1963, than that of his fervent young progressive supporters, who have been steeped in “identity politics” their entire political lives. They grew up on #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.
So it was highly ironic that the Sanders campaign was done in when Biden swept the African-American vote in the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries, especially in southern states Biden has zero chance of winning against Trump, along with the female vote in the suburbs of Virginia and elsewhere.
Furthering the irony, Biden won with massive support from the very political constituencies that Sanders’ progressive supporters were always placing such a high priority on, African-Americans and women.
Sanders was supported by younger members of both groups, but not enough to matter, as the huge surge of young voters that Sanders was counting on never materialized, and Biden dominated with older voters. Sanders also got strong support from idealistic young professionals, like teachers and doctors, but again not big enough to matter.
“Sanders Campaign Was Done In By the Very Constituencies His Most Fervent Progressive Supporters Have Been Trying to Court”
Yet from what I can see progressives, especially the more radical ones, never seemed to even notice the huge irony I just noted. I hope they do someday, and don’t go back to their “identity politics” as usual.
But I doubt it.
Both the left and right will probably go back to business as usual, especially in the run up to the November election, especially Trump and the far right media.
Even progressives who may have noticed the irony of how Sanders lost may be like old-fashioned Marxists, who for decades would bemoan the supposedly “false consciousness” of the working class they were so ardently trying to court.
They were only to be rejected time and time again.
“Workers of the world unite!” has only very rarely happened anywhere. And the GOP plays on that with their “culture wars,” e.g.white “Reagan Democrats” voted against their supposed “class interest,” which Trump strongly appealed to on trade and immigration.
So, long ago the “progressive” middle-class left turned away from Clinton’s working class “deplorables,” and threw all their energy into movements that ultimately became #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Sanders supporters more on the left would emphasize “multi-racial,” not simply THE, working class.
Then along comes Sanders, sounding like something out a time warp from the early 1960s. The Sanders of today would have been right at home in the more liberal anti-war wing of the Democratic party in the late 1960s.
It’s just that the entire political spectrum of BOTH parties has shifted so far to the right since then that Sanders for most of his political career was an independent outside the Democratic Party.
You can’t turn back the clock.
Thanks very much, Senator Sanders. You can be assured of your legacy, especially Medicare for All someday, provided your progressive supporters learn the lessons of your campaign, emphasize working-middle class unity, and do not revert back to “identity politics” as usual. Good luck.
Make America and World Awesome, MAWA.
This article was adapted from a post on Medium 10 April 2020.
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