Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Emeryville, Calif., on Monday. ,Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
Katrina vanden Heuvel
June 7
Eight years ago today, Hillary Clinton ended her presidential campaign after a long and bitter Democratic primary fight. Tonight, by the time the votes are counted in California, Clinton is expected to secure enough delegates (including pledged delegates and endorsing superdelegates) to make her the party’s presumptive nominee, even as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plans to press onward until the Democratic convention next month.
For those of us who supported Sanders, the inevitable disappointment at falling short will be joined with deep pride and excitement about a campaign that electrified so many progressive voters nationwide. If past is prologue, we can expect the political and media establishment to eagerly cast aside Sanders and his talk of a revolution. But while the primaries may be coming to an end, the political revolution that Sanders has been leading for the last year may be just beginning — if Sanders and especially his supporters remain steadfast in pursuit of the larger goals that have fueled his campaign.
Indeed, when the Nation’s editors endorsed Sanders in January, we praised his “clarion call for fundamental reform,” but we also argued that his campaign was about the future of progressivism as much as winning the White House in 2016. “His run has already created the space for a more powerful progressive movement and demonstrated that a different kind of politics is possible,” we wrote. “This is a revolution that should live on, no matter who wins the nomination.”
Clinton may take the nomination, but Sanders surely has won the political debate. He started at single digits in the polls and was widely dismissed as a “fringe” candidate. He has astounded even his supporters, winning more than 20 contests, 10 million votes and 1,500 pledged delegates, the most of any true insurgent in modern history. He has captured the support of young voters by record margins. And he did so less with personal charisma than with the power of his ideas and the force of the integrity demonstrated by spurning traditional deep-pocketed donors in favor of grass-roots fundraising. Harvard researchers found that Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have actually become more progressive over the course of the campaign. Sanders hasn’t merely won a seat at the table, he’s started a sea change in Democratic politics that the party will have to adjust to.
Even as Clinton turns her focus to Donald Trump, Sanders will play a major role over the next five months. At the convention, we will witness a powerful demonstration of the passion that Sanders represents. His allies will seek to ensure that the Democratic Party platform incorporates the fundamental reforms that he has championed — from the $15 minimum wage and Medicare-for-all, to tuition-free college and breaking up the banks, to rebuilding our infrastructure and getting serious about climate change. He will use his prime-time address to lay out the next stage in the political revolution, while showing that stopping Trump is vital to its progress.
And with his massive army of passionate supporters, Sanders can continue to fundraise and campaign for progressive candidates in congressional races across the country, helping to grow the ranks of leaders who share his vision in Washington. He’s already endorsed strong insurgents such as Zephyr Teachout, Pramila Jayapal and Lucy Flores.
Looking ahead to 2017, if Democrats take back the Senate, Sanders is in line to become chairman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee. As a leading member of the Democratic caucus, he can wield the influence he’s earned during his campaign to keep pushing his colleagues — and, hopefully, a Democratic president — to embrace more progressive positions on key issues. Meanwhile, having awakened a new generation of progressive voters to politics, he can help make sure that young people don’t sleep through another midterm election cycle in 2018, reversing a damaging trend that has helped the Republican Party seize and maintain control of Congress.
While Sanders has already indicated he will endorse Clinton if she captures the nomination, neither he nor any leader can deliver the votes of his supporters. That challenge is Clinton’s. Sanders has already nudged Clinton to the left on key issues during the campaign, including trade policy and the minimum wage. The Democratic National Committee made one important concession last month by allowing Sanders to name five strong progressive allies to the platform committee (though the DNC also vetoed one Sanders pick, National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro, on the strange grounds that it did not want labor leaders on the candidate’s lists).
Clinton’s challenge now is not only to gain Sanders’s support, but also to earn the enthusiasm of his voters. Sanders won young voters and Democratic-leaning independents by staggering margins. Clinton should not assume that the threat posed by Trump will suffice to get them to turn out for her in large numbers. She has to move from being the candidate of “No We Can’t” to one who offers real change to those in desperate need of it.
Most important for the future of our politics and country will be the trajectory of the political energy that the Sanders campaign has helped to galvanize. As my Nation colleague D.D. Guttenplan reports, some movement activists are already starting to pour their energy into initiatives, such as the People’s Summit and Brand New Congress, to sustain the momentum from the Sanders campaign. “What Sanders himself decides to do with the power he has acquired is enormously important. Ultimately, though, what his people — Bernie’s Army — do with their power is even more important,” he writes.
The Democratic establishment wants Sanders and his supporters to report for duty and line up behind Clinton — to put aside their dreams, forget the bitterness of the primaries, and enlist. This is, for many, an unrealistic expectation. Sanders and his supporters are building a political movement both inside and outside the Democratic Party. They have their own agenda. They will support their own candidates and drive their own issues. They are proud — and should be proud — of what has already been built.
But what they should see clearly is that while the political revolution this country needs is far more profound than anything Clinton has ever championed, the defeat of Trump is essential to its progress. If Clinton becomes president, the movement can continue to build its momentum. If Trump wins, its activists will be forced to refight battles of the past — on race, on top-end tax cuts, on nativism, on choice — rather than push a new agenda for the future.
Robert Borosage
June 8, 2016
Campaign for America's Future
Hillary Clinton became the “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party Tuesday night, and will be the first woman ever to win the presidential nomination of a major party.
Clinton won primaries in New Jersey, New Mexico and California, the large states at issue. She will finish the primary season having won a majority of the votes cast, a majority of the primaries contested, and a majority of the pledged delegates.
In a clear statement – largely distorted by the media – Bernie Sanders vowed to keep building the movement for change, designating the defeat of Donald Trump as the vital next step.
The Presumptive Nominee
Clinton’s pledged delegates will not provide the majority needed to win the nomination because superdelegates constitute 15 percent of the convention votes and have the right to change their minds up until they cast their votes at the convention. With polls showing Sanders running much stronger against Donald Trump, he has every right to lobby those delegates to vote for him.
But with Clinton winning California, and leading in the popular vote and pledged delegates, superdelegates will consolidate behind Clinton. Few progressives think that superdelegates should overturn the choice of a majority of votes cast, even though the Sanders campaign has been growing in strength and appeal. Hillary Clinton will be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
Sanders: The Struggle Continues
Mainstream media coverage of Sanders’ early morning speech in Santa Monica was, not surprisingly, utterly distorted. The New York Times painted him as raining on Clinton’s parade, “petulant,” “grudging,” “messianic,” and quoted grumpy old man David Gergen suggesting that Sanders was becoming “a grumpy old man.”
In fact, Sanders’ remarks were very carefully drawn and worthy of more accurate reporting.
After thanking the voters and volunteers in California and other states, Sanders began by celebrating what his campaign had accomplished, correctly asserting that in winning the votes of young people by large margins in virtually every state, his campaign captured the future:
“Young people understand that they are the future of America, and they intend to help shape that future. And I am enormously optimistic about the future of our country when so many young people have come on board and understand that our vision, a vision of social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and environmental justice, must be the future of America. Our vision will be the future of America.”
Then he turned immediately to the next challenge for his movement, defeating Donald Trump:
“Our campaign from day one has understood some very basic points and that is first we will not allow right-wing Republicans to control our government. And that is especially true with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate. The American people, in my view, will never support a candidate whose major theme is bigotry.”
Defeating Trump, however, is but a step. “Our mission,” Sanders repeated, “is transforming our country,” ending extreme inequality, overturning a “corrupt campaign finance system,” and a “broken criminal justice system.” This mission requires “break up of the major banks on Wall Street, guaranteeing health care to all people as a right, real immigration reform, progressive tax reform.”
Sanders called on his supporters to continue building that movement and “that you all know it is more than Bernie.”
“What we understand, and what every one of us has always understood, is that real change never occurs from the top on down, always from the bottom on up. … That is the history of America, whether it is the creation of the trade union movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay movement. And that is what OUR movement is about.”
He then vowed to continue the fight in the last primary in the District of Columbia, and “to take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia,” and the Democratic convention.
He promised to continue to work for “every vote and every delegate we can get,” and then pivoted to announce that he had a “very kind call” from President Obama, looking forward to “working with him to ensure that we move this country forward, and that he’d received a “very gracious call” from Secretary Clinton. “Our fight is to transform our country and to understand that we are in this together….And to understand that the struggle continues.”
Contrary to the media coverage, this is not a defiant speech of a sore loser. It isn’t a declaration of a scorched-earth campaign headed into Philadelphia. It is, I would argue, a clear and compelling argument to his followers: We’ve come a long way; we’ve won the future; we’ll continue to build a movement to transform this country; we’ll take our argument into the platform fight at the convention; and then the first step is to defeat the threat posed by Trump, but that is only the first step.
Clinton, of course, would prefer that Sanders end his campaign and embrace her as the reform leader. But Sanders has been clear from the start: he’s building a movement to challenge a failed establishment and transform the party and the country. He’ll take that fight to Philadelphia and into the general election and beyond. What he signaled in his speech early this morning was that he sees beating Trump as essential to building the movement, and will move “together” to make that happen.
The scurrilous and misleading media coverage is not a surprise. The mainstream media began this campaign with a virtual coronation of Clinton and Bush (H and Jeb!) before a vote was cast. And they ended it by announcing Clinton the winner in outrageous banner headlines before the voting booths even opened on the final major primary day. Those headlines were based on a secret AP canvas of unelected superdelegates, speaking anonymously about their intentions.
The mainstream media ignored Sanders at the beginning of the campaign as he drew record crowds, and dismissed his chances in the middle of the campaign, even as he gained support despite the clamor that the race was over. An insurgent candidate challenging the establishment isn’t likely to get a fair shake from the media or the party, which only reinforces the need to build independent organization and communication networks.
The Clinton-Trump Contrast
Last night featured a stark contrast between the set-piece Clinton and Trump victory speeches. Clinton sensibly celebrated “making history.” Her speech praised Sanders, attacked Trump as a “bully,” drawing a contrast between “building bridges” and “building walls.” It offered a broad statement of contrasting values, but was notably free of substance.
Trump, in contrast, delivered prepared remarks that outlined what his “America First” posture means – in trade, in foreign policy, in energy policy, in economics. His made an explicit appeal to Sanders supporters, echoing Sanders’ indictment of a “rigged” economy and corrupted politics. Ironically, his speech provided clearer policy contrasts than Clinton’s. He sought to make himself the candidate of change, painting Clinton as more of the same. But he stayed in character. He promised a major speech on “the Clintons” next week, teeing up what will be an ugly campaign. Trump ticks off platform planks without policies to back them up. He is, as Clinton repeats, unfit to be president.
Americans are not going to elect Donald Trump president of the United States, no matter what passing polls suggest. But Clinton would be well advised to put forth a bold vision and platform for change. Without that, this campaign will disintegrate into a spitball fight, at which Trump excels.
Spread the word