Is this a movement, or a campaign?
What happens on Wednesday will tell us if Sanders supporters
are in this for the long haul, or just along for the ride.
I’m voting for Bernie.
He stands for most of the things I’ve stood for my whole life. A foreign
policy that respects other countries. Domestic policies that put the poor and
working class first. Addressing climate change with the urgency that this aching
planet demands. He is demonstrably the candidate who understands these issues best
and has the commitment to address them. Whether that means he would make the
best President is an open question, but I’m voting for him on the issues.
If Bernie doesn’t win (and there is, no one can argue, at
least a 50/50 chance that he won’t), his supporters have a choice to make. We
can howl that the process is rigged (pointless), we can vilify Clinton as a
Wall Street lackey (yawn), or we can act as if we actually believe the words
and the example of Bernie Sanders.
I’m not talking only about the Bernie Sanders who enchants
with his straight talk, who pals around with Pope Francis, who charms tiny
sparrows. I’m talking about the Bernie Sanders who has spent a lifetime as part
of a movement for social justice, a pursuit that has always been secondary to
his personal political aspirations.
The choice for Sanders’ supporters will be whether they can
transform the organization and the energy of the campaign into a lasting movement.
It will be about whether the Sanders’ followers, often criticized for being too
young and too idealistic, can show the Democratic establishment and the rest of
the country, that we are serious about radical change. We have to decide if we
are in this to feel good, or to do good. We also have to make sure that those
in our ranks understand that we will be paying for the changes we hope to bring
about – no small task.
Real change, as Sanders points out relentlessly, can only
begin when we remove money from its central role in our politics. Sanders’
campaign, funded by folks with twenty-seven dollars to spare, just might propel
him to the White House. If it does not, it must unite behind the Clinton
candidacy from now until November, and come January be prepared to push her to
uphold the campaign promises that Bernie has forced her to make.
That has to begin with vigorous support for grassroots
efforts to promote public financing for campaigns. No one has articulated this
more clearly than Sanders. It is the key to returning power to the people and
not just the people who can afford it. Overturn Citizens United. Banish the
notion that corporations are people. Provide public financing for campaigns,
and let ideas, not fund raising power, lead our public discourse.
This should be the first course of action for a Sanders’
Presidency, or the first challenge that the Sanders’ movement lays at the feet
of a President Clinton. Sanders has laid the groundwork for a movement that
combines support for progressive causes, and support for progressive candidates
with a fundraising power that can rival a Super Pac. Imagine a movement
sweeping into key Congressional districts and swing states to turn out voters
and flip some key Congressional seats this fall. Imagine what that movement
could do in 2018 with a similar strategy. Let’s call it a People’s PAC.
Can Sanders’ supporters make this adjustment? Presidential
candidates have tried to convert their campaigns into movements before. Jesse
Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition comes to mind; President Obama’s Organizing for
America group was somehow supposed to keep the grassroots involved even as
their man sat in the Oval Office. Usually they end up as top down entities
serving their leadership, and they peter out or lose relevance.
Many of the Sander’s troops seem to so enjoy vilifying
Clinton that it makes unity seem unlikely. But a united Democratic Party this
fall could open the door to progressive changes no one was was even talking
about before the Sanders surge. A mature movement would recognize its victory even
while conceding the failure of their Presidential campaign.
Clinton devotees must recognize that they will not win over
the Sanders’ voters by simply noting that she is the lesser of two (or more) evils.
We have heard that lullaby too many times. They must fully recognize that
Bernie’s brigade not only rejects the triangulation politics that made the
Clintons so successful in the 90’s, but that they are speaking to the concerns
of a new generation.
A friend of mine who loves Bernie posed a common complaint –
he just doesn’t trust Clinton. I thought that was a good first step. We should
not trust any politician to do anything other than what we have to power to
make them do. Barack Obama in meeting with a group of environmentalists early
in his first term was reported to have quoted FDR to them. “I agree with you.
Now make me do it.”
If Hillary Clinton is our next President, Bernie Sander’s
aroused following don’t have to like her or trust her. As Sanders has made
clear, his political revolution is not solely about deciding who sits in the
Oval Office. It really is about mobilizing the millions who have rallied to his
cause, and then continuing to organize pressure that will keep a progressive
agenda on track.
