Yes, Being Progressive Matters — Even with a Gridlocked Senate
Super Tuesday is over, and the Democratic race has effectively come down to two candidates: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
After a strong showing, Biden is currently leading Sanders by a 566–501 delegate margin, according to NPR. All other active candidates combine for just 62.
Between Sanders and Biden, it’s clear which candidate has the most progressive agenda. But the fact that Bernie has the most progressive agenda doesn’t inherently imply that he would be the most progressive president. After all, even if Democrats manage to flip the Senate, Sanders would need votes from conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to pass major legislation (and that’s not even mentioning the filibuster).
Does the Democratic candidate’s level of progressivism really matter if most items on their platform will be blocked in the Senate anyway?
“On the issues I care about most, I think the candidates are all roughly interchangeable in terms of what they and Congress can accomplish together,” wrote Vox’s Dylan Matthews in a recent piece.
This view isn’t uncommon. Many see Sanders backers’ excitement for a political revolution as naiveté about the gritty reality of institutional gridlock in Congress.
I won’t deny that the realities of modern American politics will make it incredibly difficult for Sanders to pass major items on his platform like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. That said, there are multiple important, non-trivial ways that Sanders’ progressivism would directly result in actual progressive legislative accomplishments — accomplishments that wouldn’t exist for his moderate challengers.
Sanders’ Foreign Policy Would Be Distinctively More Progressive than Any Challenger’s
Foreign policy hasn’t been a major topic in the Democratic debates. But it’s one of the aspects of government the president has the most authority over.
While most social policy legislation — including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal — would require passage through the Senate, foreign policy is a major exception in which the executive branch has significant leverage.
While Trump has been unable to build the wall or sign a major infrastructure deal, he has been able to make significant changes to U.S. foreign policy, including his travel ban, his tariffs against China, his airstrikes in Syria and Iran, and his withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal and Paris Climate Agreement.
An incoming Democratic president would have similar authority to guide our foreign policy in the opposite direction. And foreign policy also happens to be an area where Sanders is the most distinguished from his competitors.
In an analysis from Data for Progress, Sanders’ platform fully satisfied all 14 progressive foreign policy criteria — something no other candidate achieved. Biden satisfied just 3 of the 14 criteria.
Sanders’ foreign policy is also distinctive from a voting history perspective. In 2002, Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War, and in 2017, Elizabeth Warren voted for an $80 billion increase to the military budget — a gargantuan defense package that was even larger than what Trump asked for. Sanders voted “nay” in both cases.
Again, the issue that the president has the most control over happens to be one of the areas where Sanders is the most distinguished from his peers as a progressive.
Even with a dysfunctional Senate, Sanders’ progressivism would make a material difference on U.S. foreign policy. With hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of Middle Eastern lives on the line, this is something every voter should strongly consider.
Sanders’ Executive Orders Would Look a Lot Better than Biden’s
On Day One, Bernie Sanders plans to legalize marijuana via an executive order. It’s one of many ways that he can advance progressive legislation regardless of the composition of the Senate.
Sanders’ other executive order proposals include:
- Allowing the U.S. to import prescription drugs from Canada
- Canceling federal contracts for companies paying employees less than $15 an hour
- Reinstating DACA, and placing a moratorium on deportations and ICE raids.
Biden wouldn’t pursue these opportunities with the same vigor—if at all. In fact, throughout the campaign, Biden has opposed fully legalizing marijuana, stating in November that it could be a “gateway drug.”
In fairness, it’s likely that courts and even some moderate Democrats would oppose Sanders’ executive proposals. But the scope of executive authority is expanding with each presidency, and Americans broadly support many of Sanders’ plans — 58 percent, for instance, support a Day One executive order to legalize marijuana, while just 33 percent oppose.
Even if Democrats fail to retake the Senate, Sanders could unilaterally advance progressive legislation in ways other candidates wouldn’t.
Bernie Has a Genuinely Transformational — and Historically Effective — Theory of Change
Perhaps the biggest misconception about Bernie Sanders is that he doesn’t know how to compromise.
“Much of what [Bernie is] proposing is very, very much pie in the sky,” Biden said on Sunday. “I’m able to cross the aisle and get things done.”
“He is a closed-minded ideologue who shows little willingness to compromise and little ability to bring people together,” wrote Max Boot in the Washington Post.
Many mistake Sanders’ bold, ambitious rhetoric for naiveté of the realities of Congress. But Sanders is no political novice. He’s served 16 years in the House and 13 years in the Senate, and knows exactly how the Congressional process works.
Last year, Sanders passed a War Powers Resolution to end the war in Yemen. The resolution passed 54–46 through a Republican Senate, earning the votes of Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
Five years earlier, in 2014, Sanders came together with John McCain to pass a bipartisan bill expanding veterans’ health benefits and constructing 26 new VA medical facilities. And if you look back even further, Sanders was labeled the “Amendment King” in Congress for passing more roll call amendments than any other member from 1995 to 2007 — a stretch in which Republicans controlled the House.
In short, the idea that Sanders doesn’t know how to compromise is simply not true.
But what about Bernie’s “political revolution”?
I want to make an important, nuanced point that many seem to miss: Sanders’ political revolution doesn’t replace compromise — it builds upon it. Bernie has as much experience as any of his rivals in crafting incremental negotiations. What sets him apart is his grassroots, bottom-up theory of change, which should be seen as an added layer on top of compromise — not wholly in place of it.
Sanders is currently dominating the grassroots endorsement race, racking up 29 of 46 union endorsements and 21 of 26 advocacy group endorsements in the Democratic primary, according to a Data for Progress analysis.
It’s this support that makes his political revolution viable. Bernie is the only candidate in the race whose theory of change extends beyond the political negotiation skills that every candidate (including Sanders) possesses, and involves something more transformational: the creation of a grassroots political movement.
To many, this “political revolution” may sound unrealistic or overly theoretical. But through the lens of 20th Century political change, it’s incredibly pragmatic.
The New Deal of the 1930's and the Civil Rights Movement and expansion of social welfare in the 1960's were easily the two most impactful progressive shifts in recent history. What’s sometimes forgotten is that neither were sparked by under-the-table, incremental reforms. Rather, as political scientist Frances Fox Piven explains in Challenging Authority, they happened because of grassroots political movements in which a multiracial, multigenerational coalition of working class Americans held their representatives accountable, the spectrum of the debate was pushed to the left, and ambitious progressive priorities were placed at the center of the national agenda.
Although partisan polarization has increased since the 60's, this strategy can still be effective in today’s political climate. Sanders’ 2016 run alone has already pushed the Democratic platform substantially to the left. There’s a reason that Kamala Harris, in seeking to become the “consensus” 2020 Democrat, chose to back Medicare for All over the public option: she recognized that because of the progressive movement, it was electorally imperative that she support it.
The GOP, Trump, and the Tea Party have been successfully pushing the spectrum of political debate to the right for years. It’s time that someone on the left countered that.
It’s true that Sanders won’t be able to accomplish anything near his entire platform if elected. But galvanizing the public to hold their representatives accountable and creating a national movement around popular issues is historically the most pragmatic way of creating major political change.
No matter what, of course, compromise will be necessary. The difference is that creating a political movement and pushing the spectrum of debate to the left will likely make the compromise position more progressive. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was widely criticized for her recent comments that in the fight for Medicare for All, “the worst-case scenario [is] we compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option” — but the idea behind her point is sound. In fact, if it weren’t for Sanders, it would likely be Obamacare — not the more expansive public option—that would be seen as the “centrist” position on healthcare.
The bottom line is that when it comes to foreign policy, executive orders, and passing the major progressive legislation we need, Sanders’ administration would be meaningfully more progressive than Biden’s — even with a dysfunctional, gridlocked Senate.
The “pragmatic” choice is not Joe Biden. It’s Bernie Sanders.
