Sam Stacklin
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

This article gets its basic premises wrong.
First it argues that Bernie Sanders is a sort of political and social pariah. Except he’s still a Senator, still appears regularly for major interviews, and still attracts huge crowds at his regular speeches. He also has done a lot to shift the Democratic platform to the left and make progressive democrats much more politically viable. We haven’t seen many of those yet because the only special elections have been in extremely safe conservative districts.

He also seems to think that a 7 month old political movement not achieving all of its goals immediately is losing. Ignoring the fact that right now the Republicans control the Presidency and Congress so the best the Resistance can do right now is “lessen losses.” And in that they’ve been incredibly successful. The Republicans have been unable to pass any major legislation, the President is under several active investigations, those special elections in safe districts were all much closer than they should have been.

People like the author who expect immediate and radical change and reject anything else as failure is what might bring down the resistance. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted a year before the courts intervened. Seneca Falls was seventy years before Women’s Suffrage. The reforms he desires will take time. The Resistance is the first step.

Ta-Nehisi Coates says it more eloquently:
“But this is what progress always looks like. Progress is not the practice of those in the business of sweeping success. Progress overawes — but its work is slow and grim. Progress waits on people to die, and more enlightened people to take their place. Progress works even as the unenlightened abound, but find their ranks thinned and their positions exposed.

Specifically, democratic progress is not revolution and can never be the gospel of people who measures success by complete victories achieved in singular life-times. Instead it is reserved for those who are unrelenting in struggle, patient beyond their mortal coil, and willing to wage wars across generations.”