Maybe Bernie Can Win
by Bob "Better Late than Never" Burnett
I’m beginning to believe
Bernie Sanders can win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency.
Sunday night, January 17th, I
watched the Democratic presidential debates with my wife, a Hillary Clinton
supporter, and stepson, an Edward Snowden fan. After two hours – of a real
debate – they concluded Bernie Sanders had won. (That was the critical
consensus.)
Since Bernie announced his
candidacy, I’ve been torn. On the one hand, I’ve long admired Sanders. It’s
hard not to respect someone who was born the same year that I was and has paid
his dues as a liberal activist and politician. On the other hand, I feel it’s
time for a woman to be President and I like Hillary. And, given the slate of
truly dreadful candidates, any Democrat is preferable to whomever the GOP
eventually nominates.
For the past eight months I’ve
told anyone who asked me, “I believe Hillary will win the Democratic
nomination. But, Bernie’s candidacy serves a useful purpose: it will push
Hillary to the left.” Meanwhile, the contest exposed Clinton’s weaknesses and
demonstrated Sanders can harness the energy of the “activist” part of the
Democratic base.
On issues such as economic
justice, environmental sanity, and racial equality, there’s no doubt Hillary
has a liberal perspective and is miles apart from any Republican presidential
candidate. And, of course, on gender equity and reproductive justice, Clinton
is on a different planet than are Trump, Cruz, et al.
Nonetheless, my decision whom
to support for the Democratic nomination does not come down to policies or
gender or age (although in an ideal campaign I would prefer to support a
younger progressive woman); it’s refusing to be satisfied with the Democratic
Party “business as usual” process.
There’s two wings of the
Democracy Party: an activist wing filled with “do gooders” who, each day, slog
through the peace and justice trenches taking on issue after issue. And an
establishment wing composed of “people of privilege,” the Democratic portion of
“the one percent.”
The two wings co-exist, but
they have different access to the leaders of the Democratic Party. When Obama
was in San Francisco more than a year ago, Dems demonstrated against approval
of the Keystone XL pipeline; but wealthy activist Tom Steyer got to the
President when Steyer hosted a democratic fundraiser.
In 2016, Bernie represents the
activists and Hillary the establishment. On May 6th, when I saw Hillary in San
Francisco, she talked about the role of money in American politics, “fixing our
dysfunctional political system and getting unaccountable money out of it even
if that takes a constitutional amendment.” However, since then Hillary has run
as an establishment Democrat. Bernie Sanders has made money in politics his
central issue.
In the January
17th debate, Sanders pounded on this theme: “we have a corrupt campaign
finance system where millionaires and billionaires are spending extraordinary
amounts of money to buy elections.” When each candidate was asked what she or
he would do to bring the country together, Bernie replied, “The real issue is
that Congress is owned by big money and refuses to do what the American people
want them to do.”
When asked about his Wall
Street policy, Bernie Sanders responded:
The first difference [between
him and Clinton] is I don’t take money from big banks. I don’t get personal
speaking fees from Goldman Sachs… But here is the issue, Secretary [Clinton]
touched on it, can you really reform Wall Street when they are spending
millions and millions of dollars on campaign contributions and when they are
providing speaker fees to individuals? [$600,00 to Clinton in one year.]
In 2016, Hillary Clinton is
running the same campaign as Barack Obama in 2008. Obama was an establishment
Democrat, a person of privilege, running on progressive policies but not
addressing the issue of money in politics.
Clinton has three weaknesses:
First, she does not have a central campaign theme, a core message. (On Sunday
night she offered, “I want to be a president who takes care of the big problems
and the problems that are affecting the people of our country everyday.”)
Second, she’s identified as a
Washington insider. Likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has surged to the
lead of the Republican pack by running as an outsider. He’s effectively
channeled voters’ anger at Washington by positioning himself as a maverick who
doesn’t need to accept contributions from big money. If Clinton were the
Democratic nominee, Trump could attack her as part of the Washington
establishment and as someone beholden to big money.
Finally, a lot of voters don’t
like Hillary Clinton. The latest national
poll shows Sanders up 15 points in a head-to-head contest with Trump.
Clinton is up only 10 points.
Sanders does better against
Trump because he has better favorability
ratings. (Trump and Clinton are negative.)
Don’t misunderstand me. If
Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee then I will support her. But now that
I think Bernie Sanders has a chance to win the nomination, I’m going to push
him (even if he is an old white guy) because he’s got a winning message, strong
progressive values; and is most likely to ignite the Democratic activist base.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley
Quaker, activist, and writer. In other life he was a Silicon Valley
executive — co-founder of Cisco Systems
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