Why Bernie Sanders Is The Perfect Candidate For This Moment in American Politics

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18038/bernie_sanders_president_inequality

Features » June 17, 2015
Why Bernie Sanders Is The Perfect Candidate For This Moment in American Politics

Sanders’s laser-like focus on inequality is perfectly in sync with the nation’s current political climate.
BY Theo Anderson


“When you take on the billionaire class, it ain’t easy.”

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Seeking to explain his long-shot bid, pundits usually note that Sanders will push Clinton to the left. And there is little doubt that he will, at least during the campaign. When he isn’t talking about economic inequality, Sanders is usually talking about climate change. Clinton, who has not distinguished herself on either issue, will be forced to respond. Strong opposition from Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, for example, seems to have forced Clinton to keep her position vague, though she has a history of supporting free-trade initiatives. Sanders, Warren and other progressive Democrats argue that it will hurt American workers and further erode the middle class.

But the potential significance of Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination goes far beyond the 2016 race. And it goes far beyond whatever effects his campaign will have on Clinton.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have promised to grow the economy by cutting taxes, privatizing the public sphere and deregulating the economy. Democrats have mainly promised to limit the damage done by Republicans.

Sanders is a radical because he unapologetically asserts a vision of what government by the people and for the people can actually accomplish—and has accomplished. That vision has animated the progressive movement for more than a century. But relatively few have had the national megaphone that he will hold over the next year. His policy proposals include a jobs program to rebuild roads, bridges, airports and schools; hiking the federal minimum wage; breaking up the biggest banks; reforming the tax code and eliminating corporate loopholes; and investing heavily in renewable energy sources.

“If I do something … I want to do it well,” Sanders told the Brookings audience in February. The measure of whether he succeeds, though, will not be whether he wins the Democratic nomination or even whether he wins a certain percentage of the vote. A better measure will be whether he can help shift our national dialogue and revitalize the progressive movement. What Sanders wrote of his 1996 campaign might also be said of his current run for the presidency: It is “about hopes and dreams that will not be realized in our lifetimes. It is about the fragility of democracy in America.”

On one level, success will mean channeling and amplifying the growing voices of protest against rising inequality—racial, economic and political—in the United States. More than that, it will mean translating the frustration of millions of Americans into an alternative vision of the nation’s future. It will mean making the connection between the Republican agenda and rising inequality—and pointing a way forward for those who are saying “enough is enough,” and who can be mobilized, as Sanders believes, into a grassroots movement with the resources and the will to push back.