Editorials & Other Articles

Uncle Joe

(58,365 posts) Tue Apr 26, 2016, 05:34 AM Apr 2016

What's the Future of Bernie Sanders' Political Revolution?

Future of the revolution won't look anything like Sanders; it will be led by millennials and people of color

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That moonshot, of course, is the 74-year-old democratic socialist vying for the nation's top office. Having suffered a double-digits loss in New York last Tuesday, Sanders is now focused on garnering votes in the five states voting this week — though mathematically, his chances of securing the nomination are now slim. But win or lose, the future of the political revolution Sanders has championed probably won't look anything like him. Rather, it will be headed by millennials and people of color — groups that, thanks to demographic shifts, promise to be major electoral bases in the coming years.

Encouraged by the momentum Sanders' campaign has generated, the young people heading up some of the last decade's most influential social movements are grappling with how to build a new kind of politics, as active in the streets as it is in the halls of power. Disillusioned by the lost hope of Obama's historic election in 2008, they know better than to take any candidate, however progressive, at their word. Even leaders who feel the Bern share a kind of agnosticism for their work beyond election season, ready to ramp up protests whether Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office.

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Importantly, she says, Sanders' campaign, spurred on by forces like Occupy, made room for new ideas on a popular scale — not just candidates.

"He and all the movements managed to push back the idea that socialism is this terrible thing," she says. "Who knew that could ever happen? That's why the left has failed since the Sixties: It couldn't figure out how to do this effectively."

Despite a new acceptance for the term, a democratic socialist may not take the Oval Office in 2016. And, in reality, Sanders' socialism may be more in line with New Deal, "Warrenite" Democrats than Eugene V. Debs. But as recent polling shows, the younger Americans are, the more likely they are to hold a positive view of socialism, long considered a dirty word in American politics. Defining and popularizing what socialism means in 21st century America — be it climate justice, reparations, a basic income or all of the above — will be up to a generation of activists some 50 years Bernie's junior.

If a small-s socialism really is rising in America, it will look different than any form we've yet seen around the world. Like Podemos, Spain's rising anti-austerity party, or the grassroots army surrounding insurgent Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, it will be fiercely local, and a creature of its context. Young, decentralized and with people of color at its center, open-source political parties are on the horizon. And if Sanders is the revolutionary moonshot Councilmember Williams says he is, then today's movements are building a ship bound — against all odds — for Mars.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/whats-the-future-of-bernie-sanders-political-revolution-20160425