I met Bernie Sanders in the
late 1980s when he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University still
contemplating his political future. We had lunch, and I spoke with him about my
concern that leftists and progressives had little in the way of an electoral
strategy, and that it would be useful for someone like him to help convene a
gathering to look at the big picture.
The lunch was great. Sanders was interesting and approachable,
and we talked for quite a while. He went on to make history in his own way, but
he never did convene a gathering of leftists for a serious talk about strategy.
After reading Harry Jaffe’s Why Bernie Sanders Matters, I have a clearer
sense why.
Jaffe’s book is accessible and — leaving aside its liberal
orientation and various glaring mistakes (e.g., suggesting that Stalin formed
the USSR after World War II) — well worth reading.
He paints Sanders as a complicated figure who shies away from
discussions about his personal life or history. This is unfortunate, because it
makes it much more difficult for an outsider to grasp who Sanders is and what
motivates him. But what is very clear, and well demonstrated by Jaffe, is that
Sanders has been relatively consistent in his political
message since the beginning of his career.
Though Sanders describes himself as a “democratic socialist,”
Jaffe correctly characterizes his political practice or reality as more akin to
a left populism. That’s not necessarily a criticism; Sanders’s left-populism
has gotten him through difficult battles and won him some significant victories.
There is a fruitful
comparison to be made between Sanders’s campaign and Jesse Jackson’s
presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. Like Jackson, Sanders has positioned
himself as the champion of the underdog — the champion of those being stepped
on by the wealthy.
Indeed, Jaffe’s discussion of Sanders’s campaign for the
Burlington mayoralty and his initial months in office makes the book worth
reading all by itself. There was little expectation of victory; Sanders ran an
unorthodox campaign against a machine; and then won in an atmosphere where his
political opponents wanted to cut his throat.
Sanders persisted and was successful in building what could be
described as a “ruling coalition,” in which he was seen as a champion of the
people. But Sanders was also restless and wanted to take his political vision
to the national stage. He did. Sanders ran seven successful congressional
races, won a Senate seat in 2006, and was then reelected in 2012.
The success of the Sanders presidential campaign in motivating
masses of people has many explanations, but his integrity and consistency of
message are two of the most cited. Sanders is seen as someone who fights for
what he believes in and, as Jaffe points out, in his various political
altercations with Republicans, has come off as a hard fighter. Yet this hasn’t
made his political opponents dismiss him — even his sometime-friends in the
Democratic Party, some of whom Jaffe says consider Sanders standoffish and
unwilling to compromise. Even they never doubted his principles.
Sanders’s campaign message — particularly about the need for
what he calls a “political revolution” and his emphasis on economic injustice —
is also appealing, but is far from new. He has emphasized these themes time and
again throughout his political career. The only change is that, to paraphrase
his close assistant, Phil Fiermonte, it seems the world has come to see things
as Sanders does.
There is a fruitful comparison to be made between Sanders’s
campaign and Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. Like
Jackson, Sanders has positioned himself as the champion of the underdog — the
champion of those being stepped on by the wealthy. But as Jaffe’s book shows,
there are also problems in Sanders’s otherwise inspiring presidential campaign
that can be better understood by looking back at the Jackson campaigns.
From almost the beginning of his political career, Sanders has
surrounded himself with a very small group of associates — including his wife — who have been described as his “family.”
For the most part, these confidantes are people from or living in Vermont and,
as best I can tell, all white. Jaffe notes that when Sanders started thinking
seriously about his presidential campaign, these confidantes supported the
decision but only if he was running to win. He promised that he was.
This point is interesting because the Sanders campaign, at least
in the beginning, did not appear to be running to win at all but rather acting
more like a pressure group focusing largely on one issue (economic inequality).
By comparison, the two Jackson campaigns — which were the most significant in
my lifetime and saw a major role played by the Left — sought to win from the
beginning, even if Jackson had no expectation of succeeding.
Jackson established what can best be described as “base areas”
in various social movements and spoke out on issues specific to those social
movements. As a result, he became an acknowledged champion. Jackson could speak
with white farmers in Kansas, Latino activists in California, a racially mixed
group of auto workers in Missouri, and an entirely black Christian congregation
in Birmingham without missing a beat or failing to speak to the issues with
which they were grappling. There was a place in the campaign for activists
arising out of the movements of the dispossessed, and the campaign was looking
for people ready and willing to work.
The Sanders campaign, by contrast, has focused almost
exclusively on its specific take on economic injustice, and much like the Obama
2008 campaign, gaining entry into the upper or even middle levels of the
campaign for supportive activists is far more difficult than in Jackson’s 1988
campaign.
Sanders also has a laser-like focus and steers most public
discussions back to matters of political corruption and economic inequality.
While he can and will speak about other issues, such as foreign policy, or more
recently race, these are topics with which he seems less comfortable. He treats
them almost as a distraction from the key problems plaguing society.
Sanders has a history with the Civil Rights Movement and is a
committed antiracist at a practical level, but for the most part race (as well
as gender) appear to him matters that will be resolved by addressing economy
injustice. Sanders sees in common economic demands a means to unify and avoid
touching the tripwire of US politics: race. For the senator, economic reforms
that benefit the poor and economically crushed will, ipso facto, benefit people
of color and thus, there is apparently no need to fixate on them.
This is an orientation that resembles the position of many of
the old figures of the early twentieth-century Socialist Party of America that
Sanders admires. But it’s an approach that has been refuted by the practice of
the actual class and democratic struggles in the United States. Attempting to
paper over race simply does not work and while, admittedly, it is a difficult
path in confronting racist oppression, there is no basis to believe that it can
be ignored. In fact, avoiding race and racist oppression generally results in a
disaster.
Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to some of these points in a recent article, which ended on a telling
note: “My hope was to talk to Sanders directly, before writing this article,”
Coates wrote. “I reached out repeatedly to his campaign over the past three
days. The Sanders campaign did not respond.”
Coates’s complaint is echoed by Jaffe, who argues that Sanders
has difficulty dealing with people who disagree with him. This, I am afraid,
could be a major flaw. While it is true that we are accustomed to arrogant and
dismissive politicians, it is also the case that we, correctly, set a higher
standard for those who are self-described progressives or leftists. We assume
that they will accept the reality of difference and will offer a larger tent.
It is not clear, after reading Jaffe, that this conclusion can
be arrived at with regard to Senator Sanders. His passionate, intense belief
system might very well be his undoing if it gets in the way of his willingness
to hear alternative points of view that come from beyond his inner circle.
Thinking about these things as I read Jaffe brought me back to
my long-ago lunch with Sanders. When I asked whether he would play a role in
convening a meeting of left and progressive electoral activists to discuss
strategy, he declined. What becomes clear in reading Jaffe is that Sanders is
not the sort of person to convene such a discussion.
Sanders is not an organization builder. He is more of a movement
leader. He seeks to speak for the dispossessed but is not someone who seeks to
forge a collective strategy. He wants to be the champion of those who are being
crushed by the juggernaut of capitalism, but it’s up to others to convene the
big gatherings.
It’s a tossup whether Sanders would even attend such a meeting,
but through his campaigns, many — though certainly not all — of the issues that
must be addressed and which speak to masses of people have been highlighted in
a manner rarely seen in US politics.
Bill Fletcher
So we need Sanders. But we
also need a social movement that rebuilds the Left much more, a point with
which Sanders would— and has — agreed. The assembly
that I
requested that Sanders call still needs to be convened. Even with a
Sanders campaign, let alone a Sanders presidency, without a national
progressive electoral strategy committed to fighting all forms of exploitation and
oppression, the Right will still win.
This is our challenge. And we have our work cut out for us.
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