http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/21/liberals-no-longer-amused-bernie-sanders-presidential-campaign
The objective of the week for
liberals appears to be to make clear Democratic presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders is some kind of pariah. Despite how his candidacy has transformed into
a phenomenon over the past months, establishment liberals maintain the
U.S. senator from Vermont should not be considered a “serious” candidate.
They believe it would be a huge mistake if a Democrat with unapologetic
socialist leanings won the nomination, especially over Hillary Clinton.
But these cases against
Sanders are really arguments against citizens voting their conscience. The
uncertainty and dismissiveness toward Sanders serves to silence any critics of
the corporate-driven politics entrenched in the Democratic Party. It suggests a
fear that Democrats might actually stand against corporate power for a change.
"What [the liberal
establishemt] argument really amounts to is an argument that Democratic Party
politicians and the operatives who run their campaigns would be uncomfortable
with talking openly about socialism because that would alienate the corporate
interests they have cozied up to in order to win elections."
The New York Times reports “alarmed
Hillary Clinton supporters” are warning Sanders “would be an electoral disaster
who would frighten swing voters and send Democrats in tight congressional and
governor’s races to defeat.” Supporters cast Sanders as “unelectable” and
attempt to present him as the Republicans’ favored nominee because super
political action committees run by operatives like Karl Rove would supposedly
prefer to see the Republican nominee run against Sanders.
Liberal columnist Jonathan
Chait published what is being touted as
the definitive case against Sanders. Another liberal columnist, Michael
Cohen, penned
a shrill op-ed for The Boston Globe, entitled “Bernie Sanders doesn’t know
how politics work.” Vox’s Matt Yglesias urged Democratic voters to take Sanders
“seriously,” by which he means it is time to recognize all Sanders has to
offer America is “half-baked” plans and populist slogans.
This rhetoric fits a playbook
the American liberal class has followed for the past decades. As writer Chris
Hedges argued, “The liberal class’ disposal of its most independent and
courageous members has long been part of its pathology.” After World War I, and
especially after World War II, corporations gradually sought more and more
control of the state. Corporations now hold government completely captive and
the liberal class, which “purged itself of the only members who had the
fortitude and vision to save it from irrelevance,” bears some responsibility.
Those in power expect liberals
to police others on the left who would threaten their supremacy. So, when a
political elite such as Clinton is faced with a formidable opponent, liberal
pundits wittingly or unwittingly devise arguments for why Americans should vote
against their interests and support someone who would likely manage government
in a manner suitable for the corporate state.
Chait has had off-the-record
meetings with President Barack Obama, where he gets to flatter himself with
the fact that a president trusts him to represent
his views in columns written for Americans. So, let’s focus on
deconstructing some of Chait’s arguments against Sanders.
The White House’s favored
pundit confesses he does not support Sanders’ policy vision, but even if he
did, it would be an “unusually poor time” to make this policy vision the
“centerpiece of a presidential campaign.” Democrats, who support Sanders, “risk
losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands
zero chance of enactment even if they win.”
Back in October, Chait called
Clinton the “all-but-certain Democratic nominee,” and he is panicking because
his certainty was wrong. How Chait can claim to know what stands “zero chance
of enactment” when he so misjudged the potential of Sanders’ campaign is
flabbergasting. But the argument, which most deserves to be challenged, is the
notion that Sanders imperils Democrats’ chances in the 2016 election at each
level of government because politicians will have to defend his socialist
leanings.
Citizens are not managers of
democracy. They do not need to concern themselves with political strategy and
cynical concepts like “electability.” To the extent that voting actually
matters, a citizen’s job should be to vote their conscience. After voting,
citizens should participate or return to direct actions and grassroots
organizing, which can grow movements that provide the momentum to make enacting
policies Sanders supports possible.
Chait refuses to contemplate
the role grassroots organizations might play during a Sanders presidency. He
does, however, acknowledge Sanders has mobilized a “mass grassroots volunteer
army.” Yet, Chait maintains Obama organized volunteers on a larger scale than
Sanders, “tried to keep his volunteers engaged throughout his presidency, and
that “failed,” which is not true.
Once Obama was elected in
2008, as Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson reported,
“Obama’s grass-roots network effectively went dark for two months after
Election Day, failing to engage activists eager for their new marching orders.”
David Plouffe, Obama’s former campaign manager, took the network and made it a
part of the Democratic National Committee.
“The move meant that the
machinery of an insurgent candidate, one who had vowed to upend the Washington
establishment, would now become part of that establishment, subject to the
entrenched, partisan interests of the Democratic Party. It made about as much
sense as moving Greenpeace into the headquarters of ExxonMobil,” according to
Dickinson.
What about the idea that
Sanders poses an “enormous obstacle” because Americans respond to “socialism”
with “overwhelming negativity”?
Such an argument rests upon a
legacy of red-baiting and hysteria toward all things labeled socialist or
left-wing. The negativity would not necessarily be impervious to the proposals
of Sanders if he was the nominee and the news media had no choice but to
constantly cover and discuss his socialist-leaning plans.
Most Americans think the
wealthy pay “too little in federal taxes” and back
a tax hike. A majority
supports a single-payer healthcare option. Citizens want programs like
Social Security expanded,
not cut. Half of Americans support
government funding of federal campaigns to address the problem of corporate and
special interest influence in elections.
What Chait’s argument really
amounts to is an argument that Democratic Party politicians and the operatives
who run their campaigns would be uncomfortable with talking openly about
socialism because that would alienate the corporate interests they have cozied
up to in order to win elections.
To demonstrate this is the
case, read this glorious excerpt from the Times about how petrified the
Democratic National Committee is by Sanders:
House Democrats got a taste of
those challenges last fall. As many of their candidates met in Washington with
consultants, donors and reporters, word leaked that Mr. Sanders was to give a
speech explaining what it means to be a democratic socialist. “We had
candidates and consultants calling us, emailing us, saying: ‘What do we say
about this? How do we explain this?’” recalled a House Democratic official, who
requested anonymity because he was not authorized to intervene in the
presidential race.
The official drafted a mock
question-and-answer memo.
“Senator Sanders has caught
fire in the Democratic primary. He is a democratic socialist. Are you a
democratic socialist?” went one of the questions. “No,” was the recommended
response.
Another question asked the
difference between a Democrat and a socialist. Candidates were urged to express
pride in being a Democrat but also belief in capitalism and small businesses,
“the engine of our economy.”
Democrats, along with
President Obama’s administration, have spent the last eight years protecting
capitalism from populist calls for reform, which would diminish the power and
influence of corporations. The Affordable Health Care Act was a prime example,
where Medicare for All was immediately taken off the table, and the political
party manipulated citizens into believing requiring private insurance companies
to offer insurance to all consumers was the best that could be accomplished.
It is one thing to vote for
Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, who are more than happy to serve the
moneyed elite, if you actually believe in what she stands for as a presidential
candidate. But it is quite another thing to delude people into voting for her
simply because it is your view that Bernie Sanders’ vision is difficult to make
a reality. That position accepts the status quo and embraces a politics of low
expectations, where the best elected officials can do is triage the effect of
wealth and power becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the few.
Copyright FDL Media Group ©,
All Rights Reserved.
Kevin Gosztola is managing
editor of Shadowproof Press. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, Unauthorized
Disclosure. Follow him on Twitter: @kgosztola
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