Last December, during Bernie Sanders' filibuster speech on the Senate floor against extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, I started a website at SandersForPresident.org with a petition asking Sen. Sanders to run for president either as a Democrat or an independent. Within days, several hundred people signed the petition. I was amazed by the groundswell of grassroots support.
A couple weeks later, journalists asked Bernie Sanders about the petition and he firmly denied any interest in running for president. I reported this discouraging development on the Sanders for President blog and replaced the front page of the website with a simple notice in large text saying that Sen. Sanders has decided not to run for president.
Nevertheless, people have continued to urge the progressive Senator from Vermont to run, and hundreds more people have signed the petition in the past few months -- despite no attempt on my part to promote it. Last week, Sen. Sanders said in a radio interview that he hopes somebody will run for president in the Democratic primary against President Obama. Another surge of signatures following that statement has raised the total number of people publicly calling for Bernie Sanders to become a presidential candidate to well over 900.
I have a feeling that this Sanders for President thing is not going to die. It has taken on a life of its own as a true grassroots movement.
Reading over the comments people have posted with their signatures on the petition, it appears that most people are asking Bernie Sanders to run for president because they feel that America is at a historic crisis point and that the leaders of both major political parties are now advocating conservative policies which are destroying our nation.
For example, one signer of the petition writes:
I am 65 yr. old, a retired R.N., mother of 3 and grandmother of 6. I spent my adult life helping others; and try to do so as a retiree. In all of these years, I have never seen government so dysfunctional, so insane, so destructive as it is now.
I am extremely disappointed in Barack Obama; and cannot vote for him for ethical reasons. I am NOT a chess piece, nor are millions of others. He has allowed the Republicans to bully him into a miserable corner. He brought the election failure of 2010 on himself. I do not think we can survive 4 more years under his bizarre “leadership.” I know we will never survive 4 years under the malicious, greed-driven reign of the Far-Right, Extremist Republican Tea Party.
We DESPERATELY need a sane, honest, ethical, leader of integrity and courage. We do NOT need “just another politician.” This country was made great by the sweat and blood of the Middle Class. We want to lift up the poor. We want opportunity for everyone, not just a few elite. We must end the greed-driven direction this country has gone.
Please consider running for President. The country is on the verge of collapse. … We need wisdom, strength and a champion for the average citizen.
Another person writes:
Mr. Sanders,
You are our last hope to turn this country around. While I fully understand the political ramifacations involved in challenging President Obama in the primaries, I also understand that this country is literally falling apart. People have lost their faith in politicians ability/will to govern for the people and this is leading to more dangerous and extreme ideologies. If we don’t get someone to step up soon, to function as a vanguard for this democracy, we are going to witness a country unravel into a fascist state. The writing is on the wall for those who are students of history. Please consider offering us an alternative.
Barack Obama has been moving further and further to the right and is now pushing for conservative policies such as cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There is no national political leader arguing that the government should be focusing on stimulating the economy and job creation rather than reducing the deficit by cutting programs that are essential to the American middle class.
Bernie Sanders could become such a national leader -- a much needed voice for the huge percentage of the American public (perhaps even the majority, if polls are to be believed!) that is to the left of both the Republicans and Barack Obama on the most important issues facing our country today. If he entered the presidential race, he could mount a truly credible challenge to our center-right "Democratic" president, and I think it's a virtual guarantee that he would get at least 10 or 20% of the vote in the Democratic primaries. If nothing else, a Bernie Sanders presidential run would change the terms of the debate.
Let's face it. American needs a progressive primary challenge to Barack Obama. This is not just something that some progressives want; it is something that America as a whole needs. The integrity of our political system as representative of the spectrum of opinion of the American people is at stake. If nobody challenges President Obama from the left, our nation will have a choice in the 2012 presidential election between a moderately conservative incumbent and an ultra-conservative challenger. Tens of millions of Americans will be effectively disenfranchised, having no one to vote for who represents their values and beliefs.
Such a situation would endanger the very fabric of democracy in our country. It would threaten to cause a huge segment of the American people to regard the current American political system as bordering on illegitimacy.
Therefore, if for no other reason than to protect the democracy we cherish, I am asking you to sign the Bernie Sanders for President petition and leave a comment asking him to run against Barack Obama in the Democratic Party presidential primary. People have a right to have a choice on the ballot that reflects the principles they believe in -- principles that many millions of Americans believe in, which no candidate currently running stands for. Let's urge the honorable and courageous progressive Senator from Vermont to give people that desperately needed choice they deserve.