Now Age Minute — Rock n Roll Fantasy
Perpetuating his rock n roll fantasy, Senator Bernie Sanders explained during the MSNBC Democratic Debate last Thursday night what a “political revolution” is. In his definition,
“We have raised 3.5 million individual contributions, averaging $27 dollars apiece. That is what the political revolution means.”
Bernie Sanders reminds me a lot of my grandfather Morris. In the early 80s, when Morris was in his 70s, we’d spend many an afternoon floating in the pool of his South Florida community talking politics. A daily reader of the New York Daily News, Morris, also with white hair, also a booming voice, also occasionally with waving arms, loved to talk politics. In the midst of a different revolution, there was no shortage of conversation. Morris, who immigrated to the US during the First World War, also survived the Great Depression and the Second World War, was a realist. He knew the revolution Reagan was peddling was delusional. I’m certain he’d say the same about the revolution Sanders is peddling today, albeit from the opposite ideological position as Reagan.
Foreign policy matters
1976 was a rough year for President Ford: the economy was weak, and the mood of the country was still in its post-Watergate funk. Yet, in the presidential campaign, Ford was chipping away at Jimmy Carter’s lead, until the second debate between the two candidates. When questioned about the US relationship with the Soviet Union, Ford memorably stated, “There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” That a sitting president, smack in the middle of the Cold War, could make such a statement required the most tolerant ear for forgiveness. No such ear showed up. Carter went on to win the election.
While Sanders’ cringe-worthy remarks about North Korea during the MSNBC debate wasn’t as fatal as Ford’s flop, it is telling. For someone whose been in politics for thirty five some-odd-years, Sanders curiously lacks an innate curiosity about foreign policy matters. And his campaign’s catch up game has been pretty lack luster, as pointed out by Francis Wilkinson, in Bloomberg View,
A president is the nation’s commander in chief and lead diplomat. Sanders’s failure to wrap his head around those responsibilities, nine months after he announced his bid for president, is inexcusable. “ISIS” is not the answer to every question about the Middle East. And there is more to foreign policy acumen than a vote against the Iraq War 14 years ago.
Add to that, Sanders voted to keep the Iraq War funded, and supported the escapade in Libya, which is now our next stop in the endless-war-against-whomever. No wonder he stopped calling Hillary out on that one.
Finally, Sanders must be the only self-identifying progressive afraid to be overly critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. Perhaps he’s afraid to jeopardize his committee positions in the senate.
Black lives matters
The matters of Black Lives Matter occupy the lead car on the justice train in 2016, not something you hitch on the back when you see it’s politically necessary, particularly if you call yourself a “progressive.”
While the Occupy movement was squashed by our overly militarized police, the Black Lives Matter movement has evolved from the organizational tactics of Occupy, and taken their fight directly to elected leaders, to those running for office, and in some cases running themselves.
Racial issues, particularly issues confronting the black community are not something that’s been in sharp focus for Sanders. Coming from a state with roughly a 1% black population, it’s easy to understand why. When confronted by Black Lives Matter activists at Netroots Nation gathering last summer, Sanders became impatient, defensive and petulant.
Since then, the Sanders campaign has been, as in foreign policy, playing catch up with his understanding of Black Lives Matter, and the institutional racism facing the black community as a whole. As Sanders told Anderson Cooper last week, “We are reaching out, as strongly as we can, for example to the African-American community, and to the Latino community.”
As part of that reaching out, Sanders was asked if he supports reparations to the black community for slavery. Sanders does not — he thinks it would never make it through congress — a position which was repaid with a rebuke in the Atlantic by one of America’s leading black intellectuals, Ta-Nehisi Coates,
“Unfortunately, Sanders’s radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy. What he proposes in lieu of reparations — job creation, investment in cities, and free higher education — is well within the Overton window, and his platform on race echoes Democratic orthodoxy.”
Accomplishment matters
Unlike Barack Obama, Sanders comes with twenty five years of congressional baggage. What’s in it? Not so much, it turns out, as there’s little legislative accomplishment to show for his tenure in the US House or Senate. According to Nick Kristof writing in the NY Times,
Another reason for skepticism is his congressional record. In 25 years in Congress, Sanders has been primary sponsor of just three bills that became law, and two were simply to rename post offices in Vermont; he did better with amendments. Clinton wasn’t particularly effective as a legislator, either, but to me Sanders’s record suggests that his strength is as a passionate advocate, not as a deal-maker who gets results.
On the trail, Sanders has been touting his legislative success in forging compromise with John McCain to craft and pass a bill to reform the Veterans Administration. But, according to a story in last week’s NY Times, the compromising didn’t come easy to Sanders, extending the horror show at VA hospitals around the country. From the Times,
“His ideological perspective blurred his ability to recognize the operational reality of what was happening at the V.A.,” said Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The reality was that he was one of the last people to publicly recognize the gravity of the situation.”
Revolution matters
I looked over Sanders’ website to see if there was any stated definition of his so-called “political revolution.” Nothing. Not a word. Thanks be to Google, I did a little searching, and found a post at Daily Kos that fleshed out his revolution in a little more detail,
You know, when thousands of young people in their district are saying “You vote against this, you’re out of your job, because we know what’s going on.” So this gets back to what a political revolution is about, is bringing people in touch with the Congress, not having that huge wall. That’s how you bring about change.
Last year at this time, I remember reading stories about Sanders pondering a presidential run, and if to do so as an Independent or a Democrat. Like others on the left, I was disappointed by his decision, for reasons Jeffrey St. Clair gets at in Counterpunch,
In reality, the Sanders revolution was over before it started. The revolutionary aspiration expired the moment Sanders decided to run in the Democratic Party primaries, instead of as an independent, where he might have proved a real menace to the neoliberal establishment. Sanders even pledged to support HRC in the general election. What kind of “revolutionary” agrees to leave Marie Antoinette on the throne?
Cult worship matters
For Sanders’ minions — largely white hipsters too young, and hippies too burned-out, to remember the past — he’s something between the messiah and Semitic Santa. While most know little about him, they trust that he’s done, and can do, no wrong. It’s an infantile response, likely initiated by prominent liberal media voices, for whom Sanders is as pure as freshly fallen Vermont snow. So pure, he doesn’t require a last name. Sure, there’s Hillary and Jeb!, but it resonates different with “Bernie,” which lands with a tone somewhere between “Jesus” and “Barney” (the dinosaur).
For those revving for a revolution that doesn’t involve guns and bullets, it’s important to understand that it doesn’t begin with a singular individual. Certainly with none of the candidates in this year’s two-party horse race.
As we witnessed with Obama, meaningful, progressive change at the national level is impossible without grass-roots support, which means more than folks sending money, casting votes, and calling their congress members. Big money trumps all that.
What, then, would a revolution look like? For starters, it would look to build third-parties, as the two major parties are corrupted to the core. It would build from the ground up, seeding school boards, mayors offices, city and town councils.
What I see now playing out in regards to both Sanders and Trump, is a cult-of-personality response to political demagoguery, which appeal to a voter’s emotional impulses. Clearly, none of either candidates’ proposals offer any clear path to passage. No matter. Just keep repeating the slogans, and sharing them as picture memes on social media.
To be clear, there’s much about what Sanders is presenting that makes good policy sense to me. I just don’t believe he’s the best candidate to carry that water. His decision to identify as a socialist, yet to caucus with the Democrats in congress was a calculated, political decision. And it’s one that’s compromised his progressive cred. He refuses, for example, to call for significant cuts in military spending, which would take him a lot closer to paying for his proposals, and remove the additional burden he proposes to place on the backs of middle class taxpayers. And yes, he’s just plain too old.
For my Democratic Party-faithful friends who say it’s I who peddles fantasy, I ask what happened to the fantasy of pinning irrational hopes upon Barack Obama? I’m sorry it didn’t work out as hoped.
So, no, I don’t “feel the bern”, and that’s okay. I don’t succumb to the fear peddled by both the Democrats and Republicans, perpetuated by the “lesser-evilism” that Green Party Presidential Candidate, Jill Stein, talked about when I interviewed her last summer.
In the end, the Democratic National Committee is not party to the political revolution Sanders is pushing, no matter how many donations or primary votes he receives. Rather, like previous progressive stalwarts running within the Democratic Party, Sanders will dump his supporters off with Hillary at the convention (or sooner). And that’s no fantasy.
There’s a guy in my block, he lives for rock
He plays records day and night
And when he feels down he puts some rock ’n’ roll on
And it makes him feel alright
–Ray Davies “Rock n Roll Fantasy”
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