[Note: this diary — err, blog entry — is adapted from my own comment to another entry]
Kossack (soon to be ex-Kossack, if you read his entry) Lurker4evah said this, paraphrasing what Hillary Clinton is effectively offering voters:
“Bernie won’t be able to pass any of these things because the Right-Wingers in congress will stop him. I can get things done.” That means more triangulation. More starting negotiations from positions they believe Republicans will accept. Honestly, I’d rather no new laws passed than have another NAFTA, or Communications Act, or any number of triangulated bills worked out with bankers that only served to further the right wing’s long game.
Exactly. It comes down to principle as to whether the vaunted “getting things done” amounts to prying up the fingers of the 99%, 90%, or whatever sub-99-percentage you care to name who are trying not to make a one-way slip towards poverty.
On Feb. 25, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had Bernie on his Hardball “College Tour” show. Matthews was very much taking the position Lurker4evah alludes to in the above quote, i.e., Sanders won’t be able to get anything done. Sanders, however, was having none of it:
MATTHEWS: Let's say you get elected...you meet with the leadership in the Senate and say "I have a program here; I want to have free - I mean, government-funded tuition for public universities. There are things I want done on Social Security to increase benefits. There are things I want done on health care so it can become like 'Medicare for life'" - You've got very strong positions.
SANDERS: Right.
MITCHELL: And [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell looks at you the same way he looked at President Obama and says, "Forget about it."
SANDERS: And then you know what I say? I say, "Hey, Mitch. Take a look out the window. There are a million young people out there who don't want to be in debt for half their life for the crime of going to college. And if you want to antagonize those million people or lose your job, Mitch...if you don't want to lose your job, you'd better start listening to what we have to say.” That's the point. That's how change takes place.
The canard that Matthews pushed here is based on the premise that McConnell and the other obstructionists in Congress are not simply temporary officeholders but hold their positions as though there were carved into Mount Rushmore. Great and Powerful Ozzes all, we are to believe. Yet to Sanders, if we “revitalize American Democracy,” then the people who are bearing the brunt of institutionalized extreme income and wealth inequality will use the one vote they hopefully haven’t yet had taken from them. This is why Sanders says it’s not all about him or the presidential campaign; it’s down-ballot. It’s Congress, it’s state, it’s county, it’s city, it’s local. If enough people are mobilized to demand the promotion of the “general welfare” — demand that the politicians are supposed to think in terms of head counts, not dollar counts, as to whom is affected by the legislation they craft and vote on — then that is what will come to pass. Bernie rightly points out to Matthews that this is how any change that we in hindsight view as having been necessary, right, and good has come to pass, from the end of slavery to women’s suffrage to same-gender marriage.
Incrementalism, especially when ground nearly to a standstill, is morally bankrupt as aspirations go when an alternative — dare I say progressive — approach can ease suffering and provide hope to the hopeless sooner rather than later. Sanders’ “political revolution,” in which people rise up and demand better — is one such alternative.
A lot of people are stampeding toward this view of how they want their government to govern having finally had it made achievable to them thanks to Sanders, and that view includes changes that benefit large swaths of people at the marginally increased expense of a relatively tiny slice of exceptionally and, to many, unimaginably well-off people. Mitch McConnell ignores that stampede at his expense, and I dare say, so does Kos.
The Sanders campaign has added interest, excitement, engagement, and votes to the Democratic Party [I identify as independent but will generally vote with and for Democrats] and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it brought eyeballs to this site. By way of welcome here at DailyKos, to face these new people brought to the community via their interest in Sanders with the pronouncement that come March 15, this site will presume Clinton is the nominee and that therefore criticism thereof will be irrelevant and regarded as such is nothing but asinine. It encapsulates the whole meme perfectly: inevitable...coronation...”her turn”…
“Better Democrats,” Kos...”better Democrats,” remember? We’ve found one in Bernie Sanders (whom, I should point out, the Party leadership was not able to cultivate internally — which is its own warning sign right there — and now appears to be sandbagging), and whereas it may be your site to fiefdom as you wish, we’re already predisposed to reject candidates who are simply supposed to be elected on identity and name recognition. Rather, we look at record, not only to see if a candidate made a good move or a bad move but also as a predictor of how they will govern in the future. To us, the historical dots have been connected between trade, tax, and regulation policy, the deterioration in the quality of the job market, the Great Recession, fossil-fuel overdependence, the hollowing out of the middle class, and a darkly venal political campaign system. Bernie Sanders is the only 2016 candidate who openly and forcefully recognizes these as the defining challenges of the American Experiment today as part of his campaign and has a voting and rhetorical record going back for decades that is completely consistent with that motivation. Sanders is not the first post-Watergate presidential candidate to do so (think Nader, Jackson, Perot) but Sanders distinguishes himself with over 30 years of experience in Congress — experience so productive he became known as the “Amendment King.”