Federal legislation in the Reagan and Bill Clinton eras facilitated the changes that precipitated the decline of the middle class. It follows that all it takes is a healthy round of counter-legislation, featuring new regulations, pro-worker protections, progressive taxation and so on — just as Sanders is proposing — and we can hit the “reset” button. Easy, right? Actually, yes, but you have to have the votes. Sanders has been absolutely clear that getting his program passed into law would require a sea change in the voting habits of Congress, which means that legions of new progressives would have to be elected to the House and Senate to achieve his goals as president. This would most likely take a sustained effort over many election cycles. Sanders’ year on the campaign trail has revealed that there exists a healthy appetite for such an effort. It’s certainly a steep climb, but serious progressives should recognize the benefits of such a national effort to move Congress to the left, even if it doesn’t succeed fully in capturing both houses. The Sanders movement is already developing strategies to pursue these ends, regardless of the outcome of the election. (Of course, the current Democratic establishment has an atrocious record in congressional elections, suffering historic loses during Bill Clinton’s presidency (1994) and twice under Obama (2010 and ’14). As for the idea that Sanders’ programs won’t succeed, that’s another hollow assertion. As he duly notes, many of the programs in his ambitious agenda are already in place in other developed, technological societies, where they are performing much more efficiently than the private market-oriented American model. So, there’s no mystery about their operation. Similarly, a subset of his regulatory agenda and his employment proposals involve merely reimplementing old American programs. The idea, which emerged from his “notorious” New York Daily News interview, that he is clueless about the operation of the industries he’s intent on restructuring, stemmed in part from the interviewer’s confusion about the negotiation process Sanders was describing. More significantly, the notion that a president would understand the intricacies of every industry (or any industry) that his administration would seek to regulate is both absurd and bears no significance to a candidate’s capacity to achieve an agenda — Ronald Reagan again comes to mind. In contrast, Hillary Clinton tried, and famously failed, to restructure American health care. Now on to what may seem an even more insurmountable challenge. Let’s say Sanders is president and has succeeded in implementing his agenda. Would it be possible to achieve his desired end of transforming the economy to serve the interests of poor, working- and middle-class Americans when all the dynamics of the global economy currently function in the opposite direction, with money flowing to the few? Let’s look at the policies Sanders is looking to impose on major corporations and anticipate how they might resist. Sanders would seek higher taxes and make a serious attempt to eliminate tax havens. He would also seek to institute a stricter regulatory regime and protect the interests of workers. All of these moves would contrast with Obama’s policies and undoubtedly be met with considerable resistance. Would enough corporations and their allies resist in a way that could actually disrupt the U.S. economy and potentially undermine a Sanders administration? It’s possible. After all, while it’s difficult for any of these companies to give up on the American market, even temporarily, for Sanders to achieve his ends in the largest economy in the world would signify a new era for the global economy. Nonetheless, for almost every corporation that operates in the United States, there’s another company producing the same services that would like nothing more than to penetrate further into the most stable consumer market in the world. While it’s true that the American middle class is in crisis, there’s no other region of the world yet that comes close to superseding its spending power; and even as its economy remains tepid, the U.S. is an oasis of calm compared to Europe or even China, with its frequent market turbulence. Furthermore, while none of these companies would be happy about the Sanders agenda, many business experts and economists are coming around to the notion that the money he seeks to allocate to the poor and working-class could generate substantial growth that would, in turn, get translated into profits. So, while it’s one thing to destabilize relatively small national economies, it’s a much more challenging and risky proposition to counter a U.S. government with this strategy. Hard-core opponents can look to the next round of elections (always around the corner) to inflict damage on Sanders, while other capitalist actors would do what they always do and try to play the situation for gain. Indeed, Bernie Sanders has a sterling record as a civic manager when it comes to working with businesses to create a vibrant market. He was feared by the business community of Burlington, Vermont, when he won the mayoral election by a razor-thin margin in 1980. When Sanders left that office eight years later, Burlington had been transformed into one of the most dynamic small cities in the country. In fact, Sanders often sells himself short as a candidate. For instance, while he was an innovative left-progressive mayor (Burlington became the first city in the country with community trust housing because of Sanders), his policies also created a very positive environment for small business entrepreneurship, which flourished in Burlington when he was mayor. Now, the policies he’s proposing for his presidency are far better than those of his rivals. Not only does Sanders advocate for putting real money into the pockets of poor and working-class Americans, he also fights predatory lenders, which means money gets spent in the marketplace instead of on paying off onerous debts. Sanders is also an adamant proponent for all communities to have active lending institutions working with small businesses and investing locally — something that doesn’t even merit consideration by the megabanks, whose complete domination of the industry represents an obstacle to the aspirations of Americans. Indeed, Sanders’ proposed single payer health-care system would lift the burden from small businesses across the country of providing health care and represent a counterbalance for those business owners upset over the prospect of a higher minimum wage. Perhaps an old socialist like Sanders resists using the “market” vocabulary that oligarchs like Tony Blair overuse, but Sanders and his ally Elizabeth Warren promote policies that actually nurture entrepreneurship, whereas the neoliberals pay lip service while their Wall Street allies lay debt traps. Building a case for Sanders as a responsible steward of our globalized technological society — or, in turn, as a candidate to steal the mantle from the GOP as the true friend of small businesses — may not tickle the fancy of radicals who want to see Sanders’ plans for real systemic change. But his capacity to humanize the current economic arrangements are an important part of his appeal. He is not an agent of chaos. Even if his reintroduction of FDR-like programs were the totality of his agenda, that would represent a great step forward. But Sanders is a politician with legions of followers who recognize that ameliorating the current conditions of capitalism is a necessary prelude to advancing further toward a “beautiful community” of social solidarity. If you think that’s hyperbole, you haven’t been to one of his rallies or had firsthand experiences with the vast array of pro-Sanders online communities. The latter may be vilified by thin-skinned Clinton surrogates; but for the already converted (or just curious) it’s a welcoming, cooperative culture where there’s a nonstop exchange of ideas (and joie de vivre) supported by an unspoken code that everyone will give it their all to help Sanders in his quest to forge a more sane, equitable society. There’s no denying that the Sanders campaign has succeeded in altering the national political dialogue. As fellow Vermonter Greg Guma, who has written extensively on Sanders, has noted: “He’s opened up the debate on a number of questions. We weren’t using the term oligarchy in the United States until Bernie started using it this year. He’s raising … the class consciousness of the country and we’re having a different kind of campaign with a different lexicon than we usually do.” This is especially significant because neoliberalism is more than just a set of economic policies, it’s the hegemonic ideology of our time. That is a fancy way of saying that the general population, on balance, has accepted how society and the economy were organized under neoliberalism as being normal or natural — “It’s just the way things are,” so to speak. In particular, it is the acceptance that every facet of human life is to be negotiated as a market exchange; the logic of profit-making supersedes the logic of human life. Now the spell has worn off. First the Occupy movement and now the Sanders campaign have shown that millennials and their older allies will not accept lives of debt servitude alone and in silence. Evidence now flourishes online of an embryonic counter-hegemonic ideology in which utter contempt for the sclerotic political class, the mainstream media and corporate capitalism is common parlance. In this context, the Sanders campaign’s proposition — that government policy can be so dramatically altered through an electoral rebellion that it can contain capitalism’s abuses and nurture a just, equitable society — proved the perfect antidote to the sense of political impotence that followed Occupy’s demise. Now, almost overnight, Sanders-esque politics have come to dominate online public forums, and Sanders (and/or the policies he supports) wins by overwhelming landslides in virtually every online poll imaginable. Just as conspicuous an element of the Sanders phenomenon is a cultural code that prevails across the movement: a sort of free-floating declaration that we are now going to build a society that returns to prioritizing the human soul in a non-exploitative, harmonious world. The Sanders campaign has produced a significant body of excellent short films, a subset of which foregrounds the humanity of the victims of the violence of the neoliberal order. Another group highlights the vastly superior human life accessible through social solidarity. This ethos pervades the mass events Sanders has staged, all of which presage a better world for Americans outside the exhausting regimentation of “working more hours for less money.” Hovering over all of this is a recognition of the need to build a society that truly seeks to heal the wounds of the past and garner the courage to conquer the existential threat of climate catastrophe going forward. While the nuts and bolts of a public policy regime that defangs neoliberalism remains the focus of “detail” in this election campaign, the draw of the Sanders movement for its legions of devotees is that this more equitable economic regime is envisioned in the service of building a society predicated upon human liberation and the aspiration of a return to living in harmony with nature. This places the Sanders movement firmly in the tradition of modern revolutionary movements, which have been in retreat since the Thatcher/Reagan era. Now, exhilarating, radical mass movements are vying for state power in some of the most technologically advanced countries in the world: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the U.K. The great revolutionary tradition of expanding equality and liberty is back from a long hibernation. One of the signature components of corporate rule via a well-functioning hegemonic ideology is the maintenance of a docile population: Low voter turnout is desirable. Mass engagement is fine, but only if motivated by the personal charisma of a mainstream candidate. When there are more progressive candidates, they receive no media attention; they are expected to remain cordial, respect the process, and invariably drop out early, proving that Americans support the status quo. Sanders himself was reluctant to run in early 2015, for fear that he’d discredit the causes he supported by attracting single-digit support. He changed his mind only after he toured the country and was met with enthusiastic responses from what at the time seemed like sizable crowds of about 2,000. The momentum never stopped. The response in California these past two weeks has been spectacular. The mainstream media and the political establishment have clearly signaled to Sanders that the game is up. They expect him to stand aside after Tuesday. Sanders has already said he will not. Thus, the results from Tuesday’s elections, especially in California, will bear tremendous significance, particularly for the prospects for left progressive politics in America. The poet William Wordsworth famously wrote of the early years of the French Revolution: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, “But to be young was very heaven! The opportunity to break out of a stultifying social order and the prospect of remaking the world, building a moral economy and expanding freedom retain spectacular appeal — but history shows that such a chance doesn’t come around too often. The Sanders campaign has rebirthed this feeling, and without any risk of nightmarish excess. A light has been turned on. Your support matters…

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#2016 election#bernie sanders#democratic primary#democrats#hillary clinton#politics#td-original#usa