Fluid ImaginationFrom Sanders blasts MLB for dropping Vermont Lake Monsters ball club:
“If the multibillionaire owners of Major League Baseball have enough money to pay hundreds of millions in compensation to a single superstar baseball player,” Sanders said, “they have enough money to prevent 40 minor league teams from shutting down in Vermont and all over this country.”
From I Asked Bernie Sanders if It Was All Over. ‘No,’ He Groaned:
“Now, the day after Biden is elected,” [Bernie said,] “we have got to mobilize and organize all over this country to make sure that Biden becomes as progressive a president as is possible, that Democrats control the Senate and the House, and that we can put sufficient pressure on Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to carry out a progressive agenda.”
The problem, though, is that Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount a strong opposition to Donald Trump – they are actively helping Republicans try to fortify the obstacles to long-term progressive change well after this emergency subsides.
The Guardian, Democrats Are Fueling a Corporate Counter-Revolution Against Progressives
I voted for Senator Sanders in the Vermont Democratic Primary on Tuesday, as I said I would. I didn’t need to — I would have and could have voted for Senator Warren, had Sen. Sanders not been on the ticket — but…Bernie is my homeboy. I may have been born in Sen. Warren’s Massachusetts, but I built my family in Sen. Sanders’ Vermont.
My hope is for Sen. Sanders to get the nomination and for him to announce his cabinet before the general election. I’d like to see Senator Warren on that cabinet as the Secretary of the Treasury, and I’d like President Sanders to seek her advice in all matters economic.
Working together, President Sanders and Secretary Warren could become an indomitable force in the nation’s economic reality, re-channeling the flow of American money so it points away from those rich in capital and towards those who live paycheck to paycheck and/or are indigent.
Despite wanting to see her as Secretary of the Treasury, I have no doubt Senator Warren would have made a great American President. She has been and will continue to be an inspiration to thousands of little boys and girls who will someday serve in our government and go to work each day dedicated to doing the right thing.
I don’t yet know who I want Sen. Sanders to pick as his Vice President. Electoral politics plays too great a role (I’m told) for me to pretend at a viable strategy, but I suspect it will be a woman of color from the South. Stacey Abrams, the first black woman in United States history to receive a major party’s nomination for governor, seems to be mentioned the most, but she also lost her election in Georgia (a fact she credibly disputes) and has never served at the Federal level.
In 2018, Sen. Sanders endorsed Abrams in the race for governor. By virtue of that endorsement (and from what little I’ve seen of her), I choose to trust her. Should Sen. Sanders select Abrams to become his nominee for vice president, I will trust he went to work that day dedicated to doing the right thing.
As for the other positions on his cabinet, I don’t yet have any favorites.
But the point I’m rambling to make is this: if Sen. Sanders wins the nomination, the best way to live up to the ethos of his “Not Me. Us.” campaign would be to show voters exactly who “Us” would be.
The Democrats should not run a single person against President Trump. They should run a whole slate of highly qualified civil servants, people who have been in government long enough to understand how it works and who have the motivation to make it work for the majority of Americans.
The Bernie campaign is not about nominating Bernie. It’s about empowering ourselves to rescue the democratic ideals of the American experiment from the world-darkening maw of billionaire capitalism. Sen. Warren’s endorsement of Sen. Sanders could help us accomplish that, but so could the efforts of all those passionate people who worked on her campaign.
Because it’s never been about Bernie. It’s only ever about us.
The biggest sticker on my laptop reads, “Not me. Us.” I received it after promising to make regular, monthly donations to the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
The sticker with the best real estate (i.e., it covers my laptop’s central, glowing Apple) came from a friend of mine. It reads, “Bernie is my homeboy.”
(The third sticker, a relic, advertises the now-defunct library in which my wife and I grew our love).
Despite these two stickers (and my monthly contribution), I have been wavering in my support for Senator Sanders. I still believe he will make a great president, but his mild heart attack in the Fall and his advanced age make me hesitant to vote for him.
As with most progressives, I’ve considered voting for Senator Elizabeth Warren. She impressed me years before she ran for office, back when she first appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and helped his viewers (myself included) better understand the financial shenanigans that are harming the American economy. She was down to Earth, clear, and funny. I’ve supported her ever since.
Like every politician, Senator Warren makes missteps, and like every female politician, she suffers from those missteps to an unfair degree, but unlike every politician, Senator Warren truly cares about helping those who struggle, and she is willing to stand up and fight on their behalf. If she wins the Democratic nomination, I will cast my vote for her with pride.
But then I think about that sticker on my laptop, the one that reads “Not me. Us.,” and I think about the design of the sticker, the silhouette of Bernie’s upper body and upraised fist filled in with the multicolored silhouettes of a crowd.
I don’t want to vote for a politician in 2020. I want to vote for a movement, a progressive wave that will create laws recognizing education as a universal right (and not just the right of children), healthcare as a universal right (and not just the right of the employed), and protection from harm as a universal right (and not just the right of the white majority). I want to vote for the people who recognize that the Earth too has rights, as do all the people and creatures on it; as our rights cannot be compromised, neither can the rights of the Earth.
When I cast my vote for Senator Sanders to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States later this Spring, and again when I cast it for him to become the nation’s 46th president in the Fall, I will do so with the faith that those who share my values will cast similar votes, and together, we will empower progressive representatives throughout the country, from city council members in Texas to U.S. Senators in North Carolina, from school board officials in Hawai’i to governors in Vermont, a wave not of Democrats, but of Berniecrats, individuals who believe as I do, not in Bernie, but in the movement.
If enough Berniecrats show up not just to vote, but to take office, the movement on which Senator Sanders staked the power of his presidency will, can, and must deliver on the laws and programs promised by his campaign. And when we get those laws and programs, it won’t be because he did it, but because we did.
Not Bernie. Us.
I’m voting for us.
Robert Reich served as President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. He advised President Obama as a member of his economic transition team, and he forcefully endorsed Senator Sanders’ candidacy for the Democratic nomination in 2016.
He is also a well-loved professor, a prolific writer, and a dedicated explainer of the economy.
Start here.
One of the critiques you hear about Senator Bernie Sanders is that, while his proposals sound great, there’s no way he’ll be able to pass them through Congress, or as the NY Times recently put it, Bernie is “an idealist brimming with inspirational (if unrealistic) proposals.”
Bernie addresses this critique directly, saying:
No president can do it alone…What this campaign is about is building a political movement which revitalizes American democracy, which brings millions of people together – black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American – young and old, men and women, gay and straight, native born and immigrant, people of all religions…When millions of working families stand together, demanding fundamental changes…we have the power to bring about that change.
In other words, the only way to change the system is to start an actual political revolution, one that replaces the same old politicians up and down the ticket with progressive candidates who will fight for the working families of this country.
Is that possible? Maybe.
Is that likely? No.
Which is why many people say the best alternative to the inspirational but unrealistic Sanders is Sec. Hillary Clinton, whom that same NY Times article describes as “an evidence-oriented pragmatist committed to using public authority to solve big problems.”
After all, when you’re talking about a government that oversees a divided populace of more than 300 million people spread across an entire continent, why wouldn’t we prefer an “evidence-oriented pragmatist” over an “unrealistic idealist?” An “evidence-based pragmatist” would be more inclined to find the middle ground between competing ideologies, more open to hearing every side of the argument, and more reasonable when it comes to choosing his or her battles. It just seems much more realistic to elect someone like that and expect that person to at least be able to pass his or her more moderate proposals through Congress.
Unfortunately, we now have six years of evidence to show that “evidence-based pragmatism” is not a successful strategy in Washington D.C. President Obama entered office as a pragmatist, and his actions over the past eight years have supported that claim. He does what he can to move the country in a positive direction, but he doesn’t push too hard to move it too far too fast.
Yes, he passed the Affordable Care Act, but there are still 20 million people without healthcare and a host of issues with the Act itself, and to a large extent, the Act also ensured the financial security of our for-profit healthcare system, the “for-profit” aspect of which is at the heart of everything that is wrong with healthcare in this country.
Yes, he removed the majority of our troops from Afghanistan, but he also reversed his decision to withdraw and will instead leave office with close to 10,000 troops still on the ground in that country (not to mention that “we’re still in combat everyday” in Iraq).
Yes, he passed a massive stimulus bill to get the economy going again, but because he didn’t push for an even bigger bill or follow it up with continued stimulus bills, it eventually became looked upon as a failure, which prevented Washington from even considering the option of increasing domestic investments.
Yes, his administration (eventually) supported legalizing gay marriage (thanks, Joe Biden), but it took a surprise decision from the Supreme Court to actually make it the law of the land.
Yes, his administration has effectively decimated Al Qaeda, but his increased use of military drones has caused the death of hundreds (if not thousands) of innocent civilians, including children, which creates increased hatred for the U.S. throughout the Middle East and serves as a major recruitment tool for ISIS.
On top of all those moderate successes (and moderate failures), President Obama’s legislative successes since the rise of the Tea Party provides very little to crow about.
Now, I don’t want to take anything away from President Obama. There have been very significant and positive changes to this country since he took office in 2008. But because so much of what he accomplished was done by executive order, so much of it can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen. That’s not change we can believe in.
I have no doubt that a President Hillary Clinton would continue with President Obama’s legacy of fighting Congress when she thinks she can win and using executive action when she thinks she can’t, always with her eye on moving America in a more socially progressive and market-oriented direction; in other words, I have no doubt that President Clinton would give us more of the same.
And maybe that’s all we can really hope for right now, and maybe we ought to be glad to get it.
But I’m sorry: that just doesn’t work for me.
Because more of the same means continued stagnation of worker’s incomes, continued shenanigans on Wall Street, continued intransigence on gun control, continued prioritization of the corporate bottom line over the rights and lives of workers and communities, continued commitments to a hawkish foreign policy, and continued increases to our adversarial government.
Sen. Sanders is pushing for something different. He understands that we are at a pivotal moment in our country’s history, and if we don’t change something major about the way we govern this place, then we’ll never be able to address the major challenges facing us as a nation.
Sanders sees those challenges as income inequality, climate change, and campaign finance reform (which is really just a stand-in phrase for “stop having a government of and for millionaires”). Sec. Clinton and President Obama see these challenges as well (or at least, they saw the latter two, and now Sanders is forcing them to see the first one), but they aren’t demanding nearly enough to address any of them.
If President Sanders doesn’t get the political revolution he’s calling for, I have no doubt that he’ll be just as forceful as Sec. Clinton when it comes to fighting Congress on the issues he thinks he can win and using executive action on the ones he thinks he can’t. He’s not going to get rid of any of the advances President Obama made, nor will he fight any less than Clinton to make even more advances when he can.
The difference is that he will be a continued voice for income inequality long after the election is over, a continued voice for taking real action on climate change, and a continued voice for campaign finance reform. He won’t ever stop pushing to enact major and fundamental changes on those issues.
Sec. Clinton, on the other hand, will. She simply will. She’ll “take what she can get,” and then move on to something else. Bernie won’t give up.
And that’s why I won’t give up on him. I will continue to support Sen. Sanders’ campaign until the day he asks me to stop. And I will do so with my voice, with my wallet, and with my vote.