Sanders and the future of the Party

The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016 marks the arrival of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to the head table of American politics. The Overton window has expanded to the Left. The Tea Party movement of 2010 had expanded the window to the Right (with the help of a lot of Koch Brothers money). This new frequency on the political spectrum has not yet been reflected in corporate media, which still covers only the centrist Democrat/conservative Republican conventional terrain.

The same set of tired, dated pundit hacks dominate the Sunday TV talk shows and the editorial pages of corporate print publications. The progressive wing, with a few notable exceptions, is still shut out and marginalized. The media blackout of progressive voices is helping make the market for a seismic shift to webcast news sources like The Young Turks, the Thom Hartman Program, and The Ring of Fire network. For better or worse, the millennial generation is abandoning print newspapers and magazines, and tuning out broadcast and cable TV in favor of online news sources.

Your banner headlines are a function of where you get your news and information. The corporate mainstream media have moved on to the Clintons and their on-going soap opera and to fretting about their complicity in the gigantic train-wreck that is the Trump campaign. In the conservative media outlets, the failure of the Benghazi investigations (with the attendant conspiracy theories) and nonstop reporting on the Clinton Foundation ties to foreign governments take up the headlines.

In progressive media, one of the major headlines is the negotiations between the Sanders camp and the Clinton/DNC forces over the Democratic Party platform. This is an important news story that is not getting much play in mainstream corporate media.

The mainstream coverage of the Sanders campaign, post-primaries, has been mostly designed to marginalize the political revolution that he helped initiate and to demoralize the new set of voters that his campaign has brought into the Democratic Party. The mainstream media is exasperated by Sander’s insistence on staying in through the convention in order to shape the party platform. They are truly perplexed by his principled stand on the issues that matter to his constituency. That’s not how the game is played.

Conventional political guidelines would have him drop out and endorse the leading candidate, in return for a Cabinet position or to retain political viability for a future run. Bernie Sanders doesn’t need any of those prizes. He will return to the Senate with enhanced influence and greater leverage. He will be re-elected by his home state of Vermont for as long as he wants to serve and has no expectation of a post in the Clinton Administration. So he is playing a different game than a conventional Democratic politician. It’s all about setting the stage for the direction of the party in the future. It’s not about his career or standing in the party. That noble intention is why he has generated such strong loyalty from the progressive base.

I experienced this bond of affection and respect in person at my first Bernie rally at a community college in Fairfield last month. It was a scorching hot day, which depressed turnout, but his dedicated cohort of millennials (black, brown, and white) and hardy veterans of the 60’s Cultural Revolution were present and accounted for. As I was leaving the rally, I felt a sense of elation and experienced a reawakening of the radical imagination. It hit me that Bernie’s secret sauce is agape (communal love). He warmly addressed us as brothers and sisters and encouraged us to feel our civic bonds to one another and to nourish our aspiration for a decent and sane society. Bernie’s Rx is the medicine we need to heal the alienation and social distancing that is the defining feature of contemporary American culture.

Closer to home, I attended a fundraiser last week for the Sonoma Valley Democratic Club headlined by another progressive icon, Lynn Woolsey, who served for 20 years in the House as a Congressional Representative for the North Bay. As one of the founding members of the House Progressive Caucus, her take on the 2016 election was of great interest to me. Woolsey commented on the level of chaos in U.S. and international politics, noting the shock wave generated by the Brexit campaign in the U.K. She warned us to be prepared to fight against the rising tide of xenophobic Trumpism both here and in Western Europe.

Woolsey expressed her gratitude for Bernie Sanders inspired campaign, but affirmed her support for the Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton. Lynn gave a run-down on the platform contest to date. Bernie, she noted, has won several major victories, including a commitment to the $15/hr minimum wage, expanding the scope of the Dodd/Frank financial regulations, and ending the death penalty. The major areas still in play: national carbon tax; no on TPP; ending fracking; Medicare for All; campaign finance reform. She anticipated more movement at the convention in Philadelphia.

She encouraged us to write a letter thanking our Congressman, Mike Thompson, for his courageous stand on gun safety. My wife and I sent him a card the next day. Finally, returning to Sonoma County politics, she urged strong support for Noreen Evans as 5th District Supervisor.