{"id":2477,"date":"2020-12-16T08:48:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T08:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139854"},"modified":"2020-12-16T08:48:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T08:48:40","slug":"bernie-sanders-and-progressives-in-our-winter-of-discontent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/16\/bernie-sanders-and-progressives-in-our-winter-of-discontent\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie Sanders and Progressives in Our Winter of Discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Bernie Sanders is not in a good political position right now. Yes, he continues to speak vital truths to \u2014 and about \u2014 power. His ability to reach a national audience with progressive wisdom and specific proposals is unmatched. And, during the last several decades, no one has done more to move the nation\u2019s discourse leftward. But now, Sanders is in a political box.<\/p>\n

After a summer and fall dominated by the imperative of defeating Donald Trump, progressive forces are entering a winter of discontent. Joe Biden has offered them little on the list of top personnel<\/a> being named to his administration. While Sanders wants to maintain a cordial relationship with the incoming president, he doesn\u2019t like what he\u2019s seeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe progressive movement deserves a number of seats \u2014 important seats \u2014 in the Biden administration,\u201d Sanders said<\/a> last week. \u201cHave I seen that at this point? I have not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanders foreshadowed the current situation back in mid-November, when he told<\/a> The Associated Press: \u201cIt seems to me pretty clear that progressive views need to be expressed within a Biden administration. It would be, for example, enormously insulting if Biden put together a \u2018team of rivals\u2019 \u2014 and there\u2019s some discussion that that\u2019s what he intends to do \u2014 which might include Republicans and conservative Democrats \u2014 but which ignored the progressive community. I think that would be very, very unfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, Sanders and avid supporters of the Bernie 2020 campaign have ample reasons to feel frustrated, even \u201cenormously\u201d insulted. It\u2019s small comfort that Biden\u2019s picks so far are purportedly \u201cnot as bad as Obama\u2019s<\/a>\u201d were 12 years ago. That\u2019s a low bar, especially to those who understand that Barack Obama heavily corporatized his presidency from the outset. And given the past decade\u2019s leftward political migration among Democrats and independents at the grassroots, Biden\u2019s selections have been even more out of step with the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

Reporting on Biden\u2019s overall selections as this week began, the Washington Post <\/em>found<\/a> that \u201cabout 80 percent of the White House and agency officials he\u2019s announced have the word \u2018Obama\u2019 on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 from previous White House or Obama campaign jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden conveyed notable disregard for Sanders by nominating an OMB director with a long record of publicly expressing antagonism toward him. The Post<\/em> just reported<\/a> that \u201cthe transition team never reached out to\u201d Sanders about \u201cBiden\u2019s decision to tap Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to a person familiar with the lack of communication, despite Sanders\u2019s role as the top Democrat on one of the committees that will hold Tanden\u2019s confirmation hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from Capitol Hill, many progressive organizations are regrouping while \u201cthe Bernie movement\u201d evaporates. Coalescing in its place are a range of resilient, overlapping movements that owe much of their emergent long-term power to his visionary leadership.<\/p>\n

Nationally, Sanders became a shaper of history in unprecedented ways. Unlike almost every other major candidate for president in our lifetimes, he has always been part of social movements. For 30 years, Sanders not only continued to have one foot in the streets and one foot in the halls of Congress; somehow, he often seemed to be relentlessly in both places with both feet.<\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders has fulfilled what the legendary progressive activist and theoretician Saul Alinsky described as a key goal of political organizers \u2014 to work themselves out of a job \u2014 so that other activists will become ready, willing and able to carry on.<\/p>\n

At this juncture, while Sanders is ill-positioned and uninclined to push back very hard against the evident trajectory of Biden\u2019s decisions, many progressives are starting to throw down gauntlets against the corporate and militaristic aspects of the incoming presidency. While the lunacy of the Trumpian GOP is nonstop and corporate Democrats have control of party top-down power levers, the broad democratic left is now stronger, better-funded and better-networked than it has been in many decades, with greatly enhanced electoral capacities as well as vitality of its social movements.<\/p>\n

Those electoral capacities and social movements have long been intertwined with the tireless work of Bernie Sanders. But a crucial dynamic going forward into 2021 and beyond will be the resolve of progressives to methodically challenge the Biden administration. Senator Sanders is unlikely to have the leverage or inclination to lead the fight.<\/p>\n

Sanders has tried to call in some political chits, but Biden \u2014 probably figuring that Sanders won\u2019t really go to the mat \u2014 does not seem to care much. Days ago, Sanders said<\/a> in an interview with Axios<\/em>: \u201cI\u2019ve told the Biden people: The progressive movement is 35-40 percent of the Democratic coalition. Without a lot of other enormously hard work on the part of grassroots activists and progressives, Joe would not have won the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders was the catalyst for galvanizing the grassroots progressive power that propelled his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. His deep analysis, tenacity, eloquence and bold actions created new pathways. As this century enters its third decade, the torch needs to be grasped by others to lead the way.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair Bernie Sanders is not in a good political position right now. Yes, he continues to speak vital truths to \u2014 and about \u2014\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2478,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions\/2478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}