"He is the most effective
possible weapon we have against Trump, and his presidency would be an
opportunity for an unprecedented transformation of the political system."
Thursday, October 10, 2019
If the emerging corporate
media narrative is
to be believed, Sen. Bernie Sanders's minor heart attack last week dealt a
devastating, and possibly insurmountable, blow to the Vermont senator's bid for
the White House.
But prominent campaign
surrogates, advisers, and supporters in recent days have forcefully pushed back
against that notion and argued Sanders—with his grassroots army as enthusiastic and
motivated as ever—is well-positioned to compete for and ultimately win the 2020
Democratic presidential nomination.
In a video statement released
on Thursday, Sanders himself spoke to supporters and the American public
directly about his recent heart attack and said that he's "feeling really
good and getting stronger every day."
Watch:
Thanking supporters for their
well-wishes, Sanders said his recovery and rest time has allowed him to reflect
on the kinds of adversity that tens of millions of Americans face each and
every day.
"But at the end of the
day, if you're going to look at yourself in the mirror and you're going to say,
'Look, I go around once. I have one life to live, what role do I want to play?'"
Sanders says in the video. "It speaks to the need to create the kind of
country that we can become, where people are working hard to serve each
other—to understand each other. That is the country we can become—we really
can. But we have to have the courage to take on some enormously powerful
special interests."
James Zogby, a committed
Sanders backer and president of the Arab American Institute, said that when the
senator returns to the campaign trail after fully recovering from his heart
stent procedure, he will be greeted by "an invigorated campaign with a
staff and a support base that has doubled down in their efforts to make this
happen."
"Because they realize
that for them—and for me—he's the critical choice," Zogby told HuffPost.
Speaking to reporters outside
of his Vermont home Tuesday, Sanders said he plans to make adjustments to his
schedule—which, before his health scare, frequently included three or
four rallies per day on top of other campaign activity—to ensure he
can sustain his presidential bid over the long haul.
"We're gonna probably not
do three or four rallies a day," Sanders said, adding that he will likely
attend two rallies a day.
Pundits and major
media outlets quickly seized upon the senator's remarks as evidence
that he is dramatically dialing back his campaign activity or even, in
the words of FiveThirtyEight's
Nate Silver, "entering a phase where his goal is to pull the nominee to
the left and/or to build a movement rather than to actually win."
The campaign, and Sanders
himself, quickly and aggressively disputed both claims.
"As Bernie said, we are
going to have an active campaign," Faiz Shakir, Sanders's campaign
manager, told Common Dreams. "Instead of a breakneck series of events
that lap the field, we are going to keep a marathoner's pace that still manages
to outrun everyone else."
In an interview with NBC News Wednesday,
Sanders said he plans to "start off slower" once he hits the trail
again "and build up and build up and build up."
"We're going to get back
into the groove of a very vigorous campaign," Sanders said. "I love
doing rallies and I love doing town meetings."
The senator also dismissed the
notion that his campaign was not sufficiently transparent about his health, a
line some
political reporters pushed after the campaign announced last Friday
that Sanders had a heart attack.
"That's nonsense. I don't
know what people think campaigns are, you know we're dealing with all kinds of
doctors and we wanted to have a sense of what the hell was going on
really," Sanders told NBC. "So the first thing that we're trying
to do is understand what's going on and not run to the New York Times and
have to report every 15 minutes. You know, this is not a baseball game. So I
think we acted absolutely appropriately."
David Welch, a recently
retired cardio rehab nurse in California who supports Sanders for president but
has no affiliation with the campaign, wrote in
a Common Dreams op-ed Thursday that the senator's heart attack is not
a concern for him.
Based on his 36 years as a
health professional working with cardiac patients, Welch said that given what
is known about Sanders' heart attack and the stent procedure which followed,
there's no reason to be worried about his ability to return to full health and
the campaign.
"Remember, those arteries
had been narrowed for a long time," writes Welch. "Even with narrowed
arteries the senator has been keeping up a pace that most younger people
couldn't hope to match. Now, they are wide open and he's probably had no
significant heart damage... Honestly, the people who should be most
worried right now are the campaign staff who will have to keep up with him now
that the arteries are fully open."
In an op-ed for CNN Wednesday,
Adam Kassam and Ben Eschenheimer wrote that "of course" Sanders could
still serve as president following his heart attack.
"The suggestion that
Sanders should stand down and endorse another candidate because of a health
condition that many Americans live and work with is not only callous, but
carries a bitter flavor of discrimination," wrote Kassam and Eschenheimer.
"Indeed it scans as ableism, a shameful undercurrent that has pervaded
discussions of the 2020 election, along with ageism."
While Sanders has been off the
trail for several days to rest after his procedure, his grassroots campaign
operation does not appear to have lost any momentum. Last week, just hours
after news of Sanders' heart stent procedure, the campaign worked the senator's
health scare into the case for Medicare for All.
"As you see the headlines
about Bernie today, send him your good vibes—and remember how important the
fight for Medicare for All really is," said Sanders speechwriter David
Sirota.
On Tuesday, the campaign
announced that volunteers made 1.3 million calls in Iowa, New Hampshire,
Nevada, South Carolina, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma, easily hitting
their goal of a million calls over a 10-day period.
The campaign said the senator
also received 8,000 donations on Wednesday, just a week after team Sanders announced it
raised $25.3 million from an average donation of $18 in the third quarter of
2019—the largest haul in the Democratic field, fueled by contributions from
teachers and employees of Starbucks, Amazon, and Walmart.
"It was like a rallying
cry. It was incredible," RoseAnn DeMoro, former executive director of
National Nurses United and prominent Sanders backer, told HuffPost of
the flood of support for Sanders following his procedure. "That's the
difference between having a movement as opposed to just a campaign."
Speaking to the Associated
Press, DeMoro stressed that Sanders's heart attack was "minor" and
that the "stents will be extremely helpful in terms of blood flow."
"I assume he'll be far
more vigorous," DeMoro said. "Heaven help the opposition."
For Nathan Robinson, editor
of Current Affairs magazine and unabashed Sanders supporter, the
senator's health scare brought into sharp relief the urgency of nominating
Sanders to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.
In an article titled "Why
Bernie Has to Win," published just
days after Sanders's hospitalization, Robinson echoed a prescient argument
he made
in the midst of the 2016 Democratic primary: Sanders represents the best
chance to both defeat Trump and enact a transformational progressive agenda.
"I actually feel like
Bernie's hospitalization is a sign that we have to do more to get him
elected," Robinson wrote. "He is the most effective possible weapon
we have against Trump, and his presidency would be an opportunity for an
unprecedented transformation of the political system."
Robinson continued:
To be honest, Bernie shouldn't
have to be exerting himself in the way he has been. Because this campaign
isn't about him. In fact, if Bernie is elected, he shouldn't
have to be doing the bulk of the work. He is a vehicle for the creation of a
people's presidency. We are not nominating him because he is a messianic leader
who will solve our problems and personally guide us to the promised land. We
are nominating him because his is the name we put on the ballot in order to
achieve power. This campaign isn't about Bernie Sanders, it's about getting the
Bernie Sanders agenda passed: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, free college,
workplace democracy.
"We have one
last shot," Robinson concluded. "Are we going to sit and Raise
Questions from the stands or are we going to commit ourselves to making sure
that this time, we do not let Donald Trump win the presidential election?
Bernie will fight until his very last breath to make this a humane country that
cares for its people... That's what he will do. So what will you and I do to
help?"
