I’m a Bernie guy, but I’m not a Bernie or Bust guy. And to explain why, I think I need to discuss where the Democratic Party has been, where it is now, and where I think it’s going to be in the very near future, if we all pull together.
There are a pair of diaries offering competing narratives about what this campaign says about where the Democratic Party is right now. One seeks to compare the party to where it used to be on racial and gender and other social issues. And that narrative even points to the ACA as a mark of Democratic progress, rather than the conservative-inspired pressure release valve I think it is.
The other diary — the “Democrats, we hardly knew ya” diary — warns about the future of the Democratic Party, as it risks turning away the majority of Democrats under 50, who are voting for Sanders — a large majority at that. I think the feelings experssed there are understandable but the plans to bolt the party are desperately misguided. To understand why they are so misguided, we have to understand the history of the Party and this country — how we came to this moment.
There are two important, competing narratives about Democrats today. The first one is that the Democratic Party has moved leftward in important ways, especially on social issues. These “Establishment” Democrats respond to the Sanders wing by saying they’re misrepresenting where we are, and how far we’ve come. The claim there is that the Party is moving leftward — and has moved pretty far to the left, and you can expect that to continue under Clinton.
The other narrative is, I suppose, the generational one — that Clinton’s win is the last gasp of an old guard that is hanging on too long for our good, just to realize their own personal ambitions. That narrative isn’t wrong, and its proponents are right to warn that the Party risks pushing away the younger, more progressive voters — not just for this cycle, either.
The old Democratic Party that prefers the first narrative just isn’t ambitious enough. It never has been, and it’s coming up way short in addressing the needs of these desperate times. That Party has moved leftward on social issues. On economic issues, however, it’s moved far closer to traditional conservative positions than the liberal economic agenda that Sanders has put on offer.
Yes, we’ve moved some distance from the tepid liberalism of Carter and Clinton — but when you hear the red-baiting of Claire McCasklill, and the presumptive nominee attacking someone for proposing a single-payer plan, it’s fair to ask if it’s moved all that much. Is Hillary Clinton to the left of Carter? Honestly, I don’t think so. I mean, on some social issues most of us have moved to the left, but on economic issues, on the environment, and use of force, I think most of us would prefer Carter.
However, I will agree that the Bernie or Busters are advancing an ahistorical argument — though, maybe not in the way some may think.
I cobbled this diary together to put my thoughts from various comments into a coherent whole. But, I should talk about where I started — with a response to a comment about there being greater good in voting for a third party — so I’ll just post my response, which follows:
“there will be a greater good available in a third party.”
Well, no. There won’t be, and there couldn’t be. All there is feeling prideful, wrathful, arrogant self-righteous piety. Some of the seven deadly sins there.
There is no “greater good” in voting for a third party — or in staying home out of protest. A third party can’t win (and couldn’t govern even if it took the White House) — and it won’t have the effect you hope for.
I’ve seen that nonsense before — at least twice. In 1980, Jimmy Carter was deemed to impure, and a centrist. Jimmy Carter — the guy who goes around the world campaigning for human rights, building houses for the indigent, and ensuring electoral integrity. Instead of 4 more years of Carter, we had 12 years of Reaganism, which begat Clintonism.
Then, 20 years later, Al Gore was deemed too impure to vote for. So, instead of the world’s most vocal critic of the fossil fuel industry — the prophet of climate doom — the guy that progressives were clamoring for in ‘04 and ‘08, we got 8 years of Bush, who lit the Mideast on fire, brought down the global economy, allowed New Orleans to drown, and let the climate death spiral shift into high gear. And, after those 8 years of Bush, where did the Democratic Party go? A race down to the wire between Obama and Clinton, and now to Clinton.
You can choose to write in Bernie’s name, vote for Jill Stein, or just skip it. Any of these is just an ineffectual protest, raging against the unfairness of life — to a world that has its own problems to focus on. In the end, as one of the original revolutionaries (possibly Frnaklin) reputedly said “We must all hang together or we shall all surely hang separately.
(As I started by saying in this diary) I’m a Bernie guy, but I’m not a Bernie or Bust guy. What the ‘Bernie or Busters’ don’t seem to get is that when the Democratic Party is weak, we get weak Democrats. If Democrats believe the Party is weak, they will always seek out the mythical center. T
he only way to get the strong Progressive candidates we want is to build a strong, confident Democratic Party that includes all the young progressives. A confident Democratic Party is one that is secure enough to move to the left, to put forward a true, progressive agenda.
We started own this road in 2006 and 2008, but we didn’t go far enough. Facing large Republican majorities almost everywhere and at every level, it should not be surprising to see older Democrats voting for the “safe” centrist candidate.
The fact that Sanders is getting huge majorities of voters under 45 — and doing pretty well in the 45-54 crowd that includes me — says the future belongs to these younger progressives.
Don’t take Sanders’ defeat as a defeat. His campaign represents s a stunning accomplishment, and what he’s done to change the debate is a decisive victory. We’re not ascendant, yet. But now, it’s really only a matter of time — at least within the Party. There’s a lot work to do however, in the next 4 years to lay the groundwork for taking the country back from the Tea Party.
We do need to lay this groundwork, though. That means holding on to the White House, so we can chip away at the horrendous campaign finance decisions that Scalia helped write.
If Thurgood Marshall had hung on to his seat another year, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe we’d have a majority on the Court now. Maybe Al Gore would have won in 2000, with or without SCOTUS. There would be no Citizens United decisions gutting campaign finance laws.
That’s all speculation — but what’s not speculation is the difference between supporting the Democratic nominee and getting her and a Democratic Senate dictating terms in Washington. Then, in 2020, we can have a bigger victory, and maybe take enough states to fix the gerrymandering that helps keep the GOP in control of the House and state houses.
The next four years are incredibly vital to the future of this country and the future of humanity on this planet, as well as the futures of countless number of species. We don’t have time to sit through GOP mis-rule. Those that think it’s just about those 4 years are wrong — as they have been before — because it will mean GOP control in this country for the next 14 years at least.
If that happens, it will be too late for our climate — too late for our water supplies — too late for our agricultural base, our eastern seaboard, and the drought-stricken West. For the sake of everything, we need to come together for at least the next 4 and maybe 8 years. While Clinton is a flip-flopping triangulator on important climate issues like Fracking and the TPP panels, she will repsond to protests,as Obama has done. The Donald, or whomever the GOP might put forth, will not be.
IF the GOP wins the White House, it’s game over for the environment — and it probably means game over for a Democratic Party which will be unable to fix the 2010 gerrymanders. The opposite is also true. If we can deliver some victories for Democrats in 2016, 2018 and 2020, we can at least preserve the progress Obama has made on environmental issues, and we can set the political/electoral conditions for the younger progressive voters to elect new representatives who will deliver on Bernie Sanders’ promises.
For these reasons, I hope both Democratic Parties — the old and the future — can come together for the next 4 years, so the old can leave the future Party a strong base to work from.
In conclusion
While I am desperately disappointed about where the bulk of the Party still finds itself voting in this cycle, I am hopeful that this will change radically over the next decade. We need to be confident and ambitious enough to attract the votes of people who are desperately looking to leaders to take ambitous steps to fix what has gone wrong in this country — the economic and environmental wrongs of the last half-century just as much as the social wrongs of the last 5 centuries,
However, it make it happen, the Democratic Party will have to appeal to the future progressive base, just as the GOP has moved to appeal to its wing-nut base.
If it’s extreme to say we made huge mistakes in listening to the prophets of free-trade, then — as a once skeptic turned opponent — I am an extemist. If it’s extreme to say that there should be no place in the health-care industry for insurance companies who have a vested interest in paying for as little of our care as they can get away with, then I’m an extremist. If it’s extreme to say it’s crazy to wasting and otherwise jeopardizing our most precious resource — water — to extract oil and natural gas, when we could be investing in clean energy, then I’m an extremist.
If it’s extreme to say that no one should graduate owing over $100,000 at interest rates that are higher than the mortgages they can’t afford to take out, then I’m an extremist.
If it’s extreme to think no one should have 8 and 9 figure incomes, even after taxes, when hundreds or thousands of people with 5 figure incomes are being laid off by the same companies, then I am an extremist.
The vast majority of people under 50 voting in the primaries and caucuses agree with me. The extremist progressives may not be the majority yet, but we will be...soon. Honestly, I don’t think these are extreme positions. They are reasonable, sensible ones, but ones we’ve rejected because they sound like the dreaded socialism. If this election has proved anything, it’s that socialism is no longer a dirty word in the American political lexicon.
Bernie Sanders may be 74 years old, but he represents the future of this Party, and we should be working hard to make sure that we welcome that future. A majority actually approve of socialist ideas, even if some of them are still freaked out by the label. If Democrats want to win elections in coming years, they’re going to have to start appealing to the concerns of this coming majority — or they’re going to be buried by fake populists like Trump.