By Jim Miller
What struck me the most about the recent Sanders rally in National City was how much the crowd embodied the notion of the beloved community.
As opposed to the corporate media caricature of Sanders’ supporters as a group of mostly angry, white “Bernie bros,” this huge gathering of over ten thousand people was diverse in age, gender, sexuality, race, and class. It was also a kind, gentle crowd that fell silent when Sanders, in a moving gesture, stopped his speech when someone fainted and waited patiently for the EMTs to come to the rescue before he continued and interrupted chants of “Bernie Cares” by saying “no, WE care.”
The truth is that while many there were surely still hoping against hope for a miracle comeback in the primary, the driving force animating the crowd seemed less about the horserace and more about being about part of something larger than themselves—a movement that just might be able to make things right at the end of the day. Thus, as Sanders spoke about love trumping hate and the need to reject cautious incrementalism and “dream big,” you could almost feel the yearning ooze out of the collective body.
It reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words about the goal of social justice work where “the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community . . . it is agape which is understanding goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return . . . This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.”
In this spirit, the anger that Sanders expresses when he rails against inequality and the ruthless agenda of the “billionaire class” is the “no” that has to come before the “yes.”
This is what Sanders gets and much of the rest of the Democratic establishment clearly does not: that if the Democrats do not speak to the righteous anger that so many Americans feel about their increasing economic and political marginalization, the ugly populist right is happy to do it for them by pitting people against each other rather than aiming their fire at the real citadels of power.
As I recently wrote in my review of Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, this is exactly what is wrong with the Democratic Party today:
At base, the fundamental misunderstanding that they have about inequality is that it is somehow a “technical problem” or a “single issue” rather than, as Frank puts it, “nothing less than the whole vast mystery of how we are going to live together.” It is, in the end, not a “problem” to be fixed but a deep injustice that needs to be made right—a moral rather than a technical issue. But seeing it this way bucks up against the meritocratic assumptions undergirding much of contemporary Democratic policy with all of its undying love for market-friendly technocratic solutions.
What Sanders understands is that the whole question of “how we are going to live together” needs to be addressed in a real and fundamental way by every generation. His politics are “radical” in the neoliberal world because they go “to the root” of what ails us.
So the question of economic inequality is, as King observed long ago, inextricably linked with the problems of racism and militarism. And, updating this formulation, Sanders notes that so too is the problem of climate change which can only be solved by standing up to the suicidal greed of the fossil fuel industry.
In this way, Sanders is the only candidate running for President who is offering a way out of the steel trap of economic inequality and looming climate catastrophe brought to us by the neoliberal order. He knows that we need to change the game and that it will take a real, multifaceted social movement to do so.
Sanders also understands, as Frederick Douglass put it, that “power concedes nothing without demand.” Thus, a vote for Sanders is a vote against the neoliberal order and a vote for a better future either through an unlikely Sanders upset or, more likely, through an ongoing transformation of the political landscape driven by a new generation of Americans yearning for something better than what mainstream American politics has been offering for a long time.
Some on the left are critical of Sanders’ decision to run inside the Democratic Party, but I do not share this skepticism. What his candidacy has already done, whatever the outcome of the race, is change the dominant narrative of American politics by rejecting the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism in the face of overwhelming odds.
This is what Sanders gets and much of the rest of the Democratic establishment clearly does not: that if the Democrats do not speak to the righteous anger that so many Americans feel about their increasing economic and political marginalization, the ugly populist right is happy to do it for them by pitting people against each other rather than aiming their fire at the real citadels of power.
Despite a hostile corporate media system that operates exactly as Noam Chomsky outlines in Manufacturing Consent, a political system where the deck is stacked against outsiders, and a host of other formidable obstacles, Bernie’s historic run has given a whole new generation of Americans hope that our Democracy just might be wrested from the hands of the oligarchs.
And, win or lose, the millions of new voters Sanders has brought into the process along with the cementing of a genuinely left, anti-neoliberal block inside of one of America’s two major political parties is something progressives should celebrate. It’s this historical shift, not personality politics or the current snapshot of the horserace, that really matters.
Hence your vote for Sanders is a step toward changing history for the better by demanding the impossible and pushing the boundaries of conventional politics in a more deeply progressive direction. So don’t be afraid to vote with your heart and your core principles. Vote for Bernie.
It’s not about him, it’s about US. That is what the beloved community is all about.
Coda: Don’t be Afraid
To all my fearful friends on the liberal side of the spectrum, some perspective: we are not on the fast-track to fascism. In the end, the electoral map just doesn’t add up for Donald Trump and the truth is that the PUMAS (Party Unity My Ass) that supported Clinton in 2008 to the end were far more recalcitrant than the majority of Sanders supporters are today if the polls tell us anything. As the New York Times recently reported: “Still, the Democratic resistance is less widespread than it was in the 2008 primary. While 72 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters say they would vote for Mrs. Clinton this fall, a Times/CBS News survey taken in early May 2008 found that only 60 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would vote for Barack Obama in the general election.”
We all know how that one ended.
Jim Miller
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The Demo-Liberal establishment is promoting Trump. The notion is, by giving coverage and issuing reaction statements to the con man people will, simply out of sheer terror, eventually grant another four terms to the Democratic candidate called Hillary. Press and politicians are thinking alike. This mindlessness and lack of invention may be a disaster in the making. Every Hillary reaction to a Trump mud ball is only a reaction; there’s no there, there, in reacting. Can we remember her positions on the major issues? No. But we can certainly learn that she rejects racism, anti-Muslimism, Mysogyny and all the Trumpisms he blunders into. She needs to drill deeper into the situation we are in.
Bernie Sanders has done the Democratic Party as well as the people of the US a huge favor by staying within the Democratic Party as opposed to starting or running in a Third Party. He will not siphon off votes for Hillary as a Third Party candidate would if Hillary is the nominee. There’s still a chance, of course, that Bernie will be the nominee especially if he wins California. Then the Superdelegates will have to think twice especially in states he’s won. In any event Bernie has changed the nature of the Democratic Party and pushed Hillary way to the Left of where she started this campaign. I’m not sure if Trump has pushed the Republicans to the right. He is all over the board. My guess is that, if he were to win, he would yield to the Republican establishment on most things, but who knows? He might be a thorn in their sides too.
Hillary Clinton is the pick of the deep state: banks, hedge funds, the Pentagon, oil, insurance, big pharma, the defense industry etc.
Under a Clinton administration, Federal Reserve and Treasury policy will continue as is (despite the warning signs coming from the top down, at present) through the next inevitable collapse and bail-out (or bail-in).
The endless war on terror will continue along with the escalation of a new cold war with Russia and China. The surveillance state will grow unabated and civil liberties will be imperiled.
She will end some wars that are as destructive: the war on reproductive rights and women’s health, immigrants and fair housing. She will probably work to reduce criminal penalties for non-violent offenders and work to protect the environment.
With all faults, she gets my vote in November, Bernie gets it in June.
I’ve tried and failed to wrap my brain around the Trump candidacy. Yes, I understand and share the frustration of the average voter, which is primarily economic, but disagree as to its cause which is, in my opinion, Fed and Treasury policy, defense spending.
I hope the surprising success of the Trump candidacy is because Hillary is perceived to have a major likability problem with many voters and only a cartoon, WWE villain like Donald Trump can safeguard her coronation. If not, the alternatives are troubling.
We’re being told to vote for Hillary in the primary for another negative reason; if we don’t, we’ll weaken her and eventually contribute to Trump’s win. That’s establishment reckoning. It ignores, and probably discourages, all argument about what we can do, substituting fear of Trump for positive messages. We don’t vote out of fear; we stay home because of it.
I couldn’t help but notice the calm of the crowd waiting to get into the Bernie Sanders rally in National City. I had arrived very early with my friend who is elderly and I was worried that she couldn’t stand for a long time. Even though I had read that we couldn’t bring in chairs, I had encouraged her to bring a folding chair that folded into a cane. We were treated so kindly by everyone waiting for hours. I was astonished, as a long-time activist, that I knew so few people and yet I felt as if they were all friends. No one showed any sign of being irritated by the waiting. And when finally the crowd started to move into the rally area, a volunteer guided my friend and me into the ADA area. I was just overwhelmed by the kindness and consideration. And as Jim writes, the way the crowd stayed quite while the EMTs made their way to the person who needed help – following the example of their hero, seemed a glimpse of what it could be like to live in a country led by this man. The media is lying to us with their stories of angry berniebot Sanders supporters. These people are the crème de la crème of our nation and I left that day not only inspired by the candidate, but by his supporters. Sanders is leading us down the noble path. The contrast with Trump is unnerving.
When fashion is shown on the runways, everyone knows that most sane women are not going to actually wear the clothes worn by the models on the streets. However, the DIRECTION becomes clear. So it is with Sanders. He might not win. But, our voices in June have to state that this is the direction we want to take. If the elites think that we’ll remain quiet and that we will do nothing, they will continue to demand bailouts and concessions. Time to act people!
You have hit the nail on the head and driven it into the plank in one strike. The fix is in incrementally with voter suppression in many states already but if Sanders doesn’t win, the problems of the Clinton campaign will only increase if she doesn’t recognize what you’ve so eloquently pointed out…and she won’t. Let’s hope for a pre-convention indictment.
Pre-convention “indictment” is a deep dive into a shallow pool.
Agreed, America isn’t going to be saved by an indictment of Hillary. We’re all going to have to talk and vote. We’ve yet to see this movement fail, and it’s likely to be lots healthier than the Democratic National Committee after it holds its nominal convention.
Then why isn’t the Hillary camp welcoming those who love Bernie into the fold? They’re being dismissive and making very arrogant assumptions that all of these voters and all of this energy will automatically follow her. Bad leadership.
Nice piece–you nailed it.