The left has an audience to
engage among those Sanders supporters who want to continue seeking a
"political revolution" in all the struggles in every corner of
society.
July 28, 2016
THE DEMOCRATIC National
Convention has been a multi-day process of party leaders imposing
"unity" behind Hillary Clinton on the disgruntled delegates
representing millions of people who voted for Bernie Sanders--with Sanders
himself pitching in to help.
For party leaders, Operation
#YouAllBetterBeWithHer has been a success in the most important ways. They
could rely on Sanders urging supporters to ignore his one-year-plus worth of
criticisms of Clinton as the chief emblem of a corrupt political system. On
Tuesday night, after the roll call of delegates, Sanders made the motion for
the convention to unanimously accept Clinton's nomination.
The Clinton campaign felt
confident enough by Wednesday to tempt the outrage of liberals by wheeling
out a Republican to make the case for a Democratic president: New York
City's billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
But the
tears, bitterness and acts of rebellion of many Sanders supporters--both
inside the convention and outside on the streets of Philadelphia--are an
indication that there are numbers of people trying to figure out how to keep
journeying toward a "political revolution" now that their candidate
has jumped ship.
The question now, to
paraphrase the poet Langston Hughes, is: What happens to the dreams of those
millions of people now that they have been deferred--most plainly of all by the
candidate who gave expression to their hopes for an alternative to a rotten, rigged
status quo?
Will the Bern dry up and
become another
example of a failed effort to transform the Democratic Party into a vehicle
to achieve social change?
Or will some numbers of people
energized by Sanders' left-wing message and inspired to act on that message be
drawn into a resistance outside the Democratic Party--perhaps first
by voting for Jill Stein, the left-wing independent candidate for
president, but in any event joining the many struggles against injustice and
inequality, before, during and after the election?
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WHEN SANDERS officially
endorsed Clinton at the start of July, party leaders assumed, with the typical
arrogance of America's political elite, that Sanders would simply deliver his
supporters--representing more than 13 million primary voters, about 43 percent
of the total--into the embrace of the Clinton campaign and its corporate
backers.
But Sanders supporters,
including the delegates chosen in the primaries to go to the Philadelphia
convention, didn't fall in line quietly.
The Clinton campaign made some
attempts at wooing the Sanders backers, but for each such gesture, there were
at least as many outright insults toward progressives. Like the
choice of neoliberal, hawkish Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to be Clinton's running
mate, which disappointed people far beyond the so-called "Bernie or
Bust" crowd who had hoped a liberal like Elizabeth Warren would be the
pick.
Even more galling were the
leaked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC)--revealed by
the muckraking organization WikiLeaks--that confirmed long-held suspicions:
that the Democratic leadership, from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on
down, were actively helping the Clinton campaign to gain an advantage in the
primaries.
When Wasserman Schultz was
forced to step down because of the controversy, Clinton outrageously hired her
as the "honorary chair" of her general election campaign. It's a
largely symbolic role, but Clinton's action underscored her contempt for the
outrage of Sanders supporters about the blatant favoritism.
So rather than welcoming
Sanders supporters as they accustomed themselves to a nominee they had opposed
and took consolation in what Sanders had claimed was "the most progressive
platform in the party's history," the Philadelphia convention opened with
a significant minority of delegates--not to mention non-delegates and protesters--feeling
freshly wounded and reminded of everything they dislike about Clinton.
Thus, the overwhelming sound
inside the Wells Fargo Center on the first day of the convention was booing.
Boos of U.S. Rep. Elijah
Cummings that were nearly drowned out by chants against the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Boos of Sen. Al Franken and comedian Sarah Silverman when they
praised Clinton--and Silverman's scolding rebuke that the "Bernie or Bust
people" were being "ridiculous" didn't exactly quiet the crowd.
Even
Sanders was booed earlier in the day when he addressed a private gathering
of supporters, telling them, "We have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we
have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine."
Sanders wasn't booed when he
gave the highlighted convention speech on Monday night, but he didn't get the
response he might have expected. As he tried to claim that Clinton was on the
same side as him on issues he spent the past year blasting her about--from
getting money out of politics to making health care affordable--the TV cameras
focusing on his delegates showed tears, head-shaking and dull stares.
The following night, more than
a hundred delegates staged a walkout after the official roll-call vote. Many of
the protesting delegates headed out of the convention hall to an impromptu
rally to greet them organized by the Green Party's Jill Stein.
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THE PARKS and streets outside
the Wells Fargo Center had already been the site of days of protests that were
similar to many demonstrations in the U.S. in recent years: energetic and
rapidly radicalizing, but also largely disorganized.
Thousands of people endured
almost 100-degree temperatures for a march to call for clean energy on Sunday;
for rallies organized by the Green Party and Bernie or Bust; for demonstrations
called by different Philadelphia-based organizations fighting racism and
poverty.
Many of the protesters were
Sanders supporters in revolt against being told to get behind Clinton. They
carried homemade signs with slogans like "Unity behind corruption is not
unity" and "#ClintonLiesMatter." Chants of "Jill not
Hill!" were popular, reflecting significant support for the Green Party
candidate among the hardest edges of Sanders backers.
Unlike Cleveland last week,
where a highly militarized police presence caused the protests outside the
Republican National Convention to be smaller, the Philadelphia police for the
most part took a more restrained approach, at least as of midweek--perhaps
because city officials, all of them loyal Democrats, didn't want to antagonize
Sanders supporters more than their party's national leadership already had.
Unlike some of the festivals
of protests that have taken place outside political conventions in the past few
decades, there was no union presence to be found, and few signs of
participation from social movements.
One exception was the march
for Justice for Berta Cáceres, the indigenous activist in Honduras murdered in
March by assassins connected to the regime that came to power in a 2009 coup
that supported by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.
In the evenings, hundreds of
protesters dropped by the Friends Center for the Socialist
Convergence, which featured panel discussions with members of various
socialist and left-wing organizations and tendencies on a range of topics.
Drawing more than 200 people on each of its first two nights, the Convergence
attracted a layer of people radicalized by the Sanders campaign, as well as
providing spaces for collaboration, formal and informal, among radicals of
different stripes.
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BUT FOR many Sanders supporters,
the main focus was on what was happening inside the Wells Fargo Center, where
even loyal opposition was viewed as high treason.
Clinton supporters, as well as
many mainstream media accounts, treated the boos and chants for Bernie as
shocking outbreaks of disloyalty, rather than the raucous back-and-forth that
used to be the norm in U.S. political conventions. Those who deviated from the
Clinton campaign-approved script were treated as if they were contributing
directly to electing Donald Trump.
"I will be respectful of
you, and I want you to be respectful of me," scolded
Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio when she was interrupted by Sanders supporters--as
if the leaked DNC e-mails hadn't shown just how little respect the Democrats
have for those who won't follow the party line.
"We are all
Democrats," Fudge added, "and we need to act like it." She and
other mainstream party figures claim that voicing opposition to Clinton will
hurt the image of party unity.
No doubt many Clinton
supporters are sincere in their desire to project a united front against Trump.
But there's something else at work in this argument. It's also a message to the
party's base that being a Democrat means "unifying" behind the
pro-corporate policies they're going to get from Hillary Clinton for the next
four to eight years--or else face the Republican bogeyman.
To
judge from opinion polls, many Sanders voters are starting to accept this
logic, at least to the extent that they plan to vote for Clinton. But the
events inside and outside the convention show that a minority doesn't. And that
minority is angry--even if their anger is portrayed in the media as the mark of
a Trump admirer--and rightfully so.
The importance of the Sanders
radicalization shouldn't be judged on its impact on the Democratic convention.
On the contrary, as
SocialistWorker.org has argued since Sanders got into the race, the
Democratic Party is designed to absorb and neutralize left-wing challenges.
But in reviving interest in
socialism and raising expectations that mainstream politics can actually
reflect the concerns of working people, the effects of the Sanders campaign
will continue to be felt long after the election is over. The important next step
is to draw those Sanders supporters who want to continue seeking a
"political revolution" into all the grassroots struggles and
political battles taking place in every corner of society.
Sanders himself has shown that
a challenge confined to the Democrats will dry up like a raisin in the sun. But
a left that organizes independently of the two-party duopoly can be revitalized
by the new generation mobilized by Sanders--but inspired to go beyond him and
fight for a different world.
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