Bernie Sanders Revolution Is Alive and Well Despite Attempts to Snuff It Out

Even better, it’s being led by a diverse roster of modern progressives.

Andrew Endymion
Jul 22, 2017 · 6 min read
Chokwe A. Lumumba, the newly elected mayor of Jackson, MS and a Sanders-style progressive. Photo by Natalie Maynor

During the 2016 Democratic primaries, one of the most enduring attacks made by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its surrogates in the media was that Bernie Sanders’ support came primarily from white males who were various shades of racist, sexist and/or otherwise deplorable. These Clinton loyalists exploited the Bernie Bro phenomenon with far greater success than in 2008, when its Obama Boy precursor failed to gain broader traction.

Chalk another one up to “practice makes perfect.”

As Joan Walsh put it in The Nation:

“Bernie is building a movement, we’re told (with little evidence of lasting organization, by the way), but it’s a movement whose loudest advocates are entitled young men who heap the vilest abuse on women who don’t deign to join it.”

As the primaries wore on, the not-all-Bernie-supporters nuance—as exemplified by Walsh’s “loudest advocates” caveat—diminished or flat-out disappeared. Take it away, Callum Borchers in The Washington Post:

“If there is a trophy for bad behavior, Bernie Sanders’s supporters appear hellbent on taking it from Donald Trump’s.”

That quote was just the tip of the iceberg, though.

As you can see from the editor’s note, Borchers’ article originally included a lead image and video of a female Donald Trump supporter getting attacked. This led to the completely-accidental-and-not-at-all-intended misinterpretation by some readers that the woman was actually a Clinton supporter getting attacked by a sexist Sanders mob. The article also included a half-hearted implication that Sanders, himself, may share in the misogyny due to a single, testy exchange with a female reporter. Finally, Borchers attributed violence in San Jose to Sanders supporters without providing any evidence that was the case, even linking to an article that made no mention of the perpetrators being Sanders supporters (fun fact: San Jose is in Santa Clara County, which voted overwhelmingly for Clinton).

All in all, Borcher’s article was a real doozy, but it wasn’t unique. Nor has the false narrative stopped since the election:

Clinton loyalist Karen Finney says Sanders supporters share in the blame for Hillary’s loss.

Of course, this narrative was transparent garbage from the jump and still is.

If there’s a group of millions of people without thousands of bad actors, nobody’s been able to find it yet. That’s precisely what the Bernie Bros were: A small, disgusting fraction at the bottom of the Sanders-supporters barrel who were emboldened by the anonymity of the Internet. Anyone familiar with voter demographics and results in the Democratic primaries—like, say, the political pundits writing the Bernie Bro hit pieces—knew that.

Granted, Hillary was certainly stronger with non-white voters, especially older non-white voters, as the following chart from YouGov demonstrates:

Similarly, Clinton was also stronger with female voters, especially older female voters. Entrance and exit polls are imperfect tools, but the available data shows a decisive advantage for Hillary amongst women, which makes sense considering her advocacy on behalf of women is one her resume’s least assailable and most admirable bullet points.

That said, the YouGov chart and the available polling data simultaneously show Bernie had considerable support from non-white voters and female voters, especially younger ones. Beyond the hard(ish) data, you only needed to look at the demographics of his massive crowds to see Sanders was attracting voters from all ethnicities, ages, genders and creeds.

This, too, makes sense because the Sanders Revolution is sort of a misnomer.

The revolution/movement/groundswell/whatever you want to call it actually started in the run-up to the 2008 general election and first coalesced behind Barack Obama. But Obama quickly backed off his withering attacks on unbalanced free trade, bailed out the banks, continued to drone the hell out of the Middle East, cracked down on illegal immigration, leaned heavily on partisan politics to pass Obamacare, attacked the free press and generally abandoned his twin campaign pillars of hope and change. Instead, what the country got was relative standard Democratic establishment fare.

Consequently, the movement went in search of a new leader and eventually found it in Bernie Sanders.

Since then, the Sanders revolution has weathered a constant barrage of attempted kill shots.

First came the political establishment’s virtually unanimous and enthusiastic support for Hillary Clinton, which included sketchy dealings between her campaign and both the mainstream media as well as the DNC. When that failed to dispatch the often-cranky, septuagenarian Senator from Vermont, the aforementioned Bernie Bro charade began in earnest. That did the trick in the Democratic primaries, but lo and behold, Clinton lost to the orange combover and Sanders, not Hillary, emerged as the Democrats most popular active politician.

Not only that, Bernie’s popularity spanned all non-Republican demographics, according to a Harvard-Harris survey conducted in April:

Whelp, we can’t have that so two new tactics were added to the toxic mix aimed at snuffing out the Berniecrats’ momentum.

Clinton hard-liners began popping up to insist Sanders was destroying the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, other highly credible voices—like Charles Krauthammer at Fox News, who people on the left should definitely listen to—began pushing the narrative that progressives couldn’t win elections by styling themselves after Sanders.

Or Elizabeth Warren, for that matter, whose political vision is a more realistic version of Sanders’ and who is quite popular, herself.

Fox News with words of wisdom to save the Democratic Party.

The argument sounds good on the surface.

Throughout the United States’ history, “socialism” has been a non-starter. Even “democratic socialist” next to a candidate’s name was enough to send voters fleeing to the arms of the nearest major-party candidate (who would frequently proceed to chuck said voters under the nearest bus). Dig a little deeper into the argument, though, and it loses a lot of luster.

The US has shown the capacity for change of a much more dramatic nature than warming up to new political ideologies that share a good deal with old political ideologies.

And a quick look around the country reveals numerous examples that suggest such a change is happening right now.

Down in Jackson, Mississippi, Chokwe Antar Lumumba recently took over the mayor’s office, a victorious path that included a trouncing of the incumbent mayor, Democrat Tony Yarber, in the primary. Yarber led a business-friendly administration plagued by allegations of corruption and endorsed Hillary Clinton in the presidential primaries. Lumumba, on the other hand, ran as an openly radical—you might even say, socialist—Democrat and a quick search of his Twitter feed shows numerous mentions of Bernie Sanders.

While Lumumba’s successful candidacy is the biggest feather in the modern progressive cap thus far, there are many other reasons for optimism.

James Thompson put up a stiff fight in Kansas’ 4th congressional district despite basically no support from the national Democratic Party and a staunchly conservative electorate. Thompson specifically identified Sanders as his inspiration for running. Up in Montana, Rob Quist rallied with Bernie Sanders and came close to pulling a monumental upset in the at-large congressional district special election. But those are relatively empty moral victories; you can’t govern on them.

So what about actual victories like Lumumba’s?

Yvette Simpson stomped on the incumbent Democrat, who hosted a big-money fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, during the primary for Cincinnati’s next mayor. She will face him again in the November 7th election. Down in Georgia, khalid kamau, a former Sanders delegate, locked down a seat on the South Fulton City Council. Natalie Vowell, another former Sanders delegate and one who was openly lukewarm about Clinton, won a spot on the St. Louis Board of Education. The list gets longer with each election.

Yes, these are all small potatoes next to races for governors or congressional seats. But in case you haven’t heard, Democrats haven’t been winning many of those in recent years. The top-down approach to electioneering isn’t working, just listen to Ex-President Obama:

Barack Obama talks about the Democrats’ need to build momentum at the local level of politics.

Building from the ground up is precisely what the Sanders revolution is doing despite the Democratic elite’s best efforts to kill it in its infancy. On that note, they’re finding the echoes of Bernie Sanders’ primary battle harder to kill than the Clinton email story.

Not bad for a movement without lasting organization, wouldn’t you say?

Andrew Endymion

Written by

Leans to the left, but sees reason on both sides if you get beyond the leadership. Hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty are my pet peeves.

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