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Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties [1]
['John Nichols', 'April', 'Chris Lehmann', 'Elie Mystal', 'Ben Ehrenreich', 'Derek Guy', 'Press Room', 'Joan Walsh', 'Alessandra Mondolfi', 'Felipe De La Hoz']
Date: 2024-11-26 18:42:08+00:00
Politics / Q&A / Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties The senator says in this exclusive interview that challengers to status quo politics can run in Democratic primaries or as independents.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at a labor rally for Harris-Walz in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2024. (Photo by Nathan Morris / NurPhoto)
Bernie Sanders caused a stir last week, when the independent senator from Vermont and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination sent a postelection e-mail to his progressive supporters across the country. In it, he argued that the Democrats suffered politically in 2024 at least in part because they ran a campaign that focused on “protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges.” In contrast, said Sanders, “Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.” Yes, he explained, “the ‘change’ that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.”
Despite that the reality of the threat they posed, Trump and the Republicans still won a narrow popular-vote victory for the presidency, along with control of the US House. That result has inspired an intense debate over the future direction not just of the Democratic Party but of the country. And the senator from Vermont is in the thick of it.
In his e-mail, Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus who campaigned in states across the country this fall for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket, asked a blunt question: “Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life?”
His answer: “Highly unlikely. They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.”
In the face of that stark circumstance, Sanders speculated about how activists can “build a multi-racial, multi-generational working-class movement” in these times. Among the prospects he put on the table was that of challenging corporate-aligned candidates of both major parties. “Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?”
Sanders’s question was rooted in his own experience as a candidate who won his first campaign for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, as an independent challenger to a five-term Democratic mayor, and who has run winning campaigns for the US House and Senate as an independent progressive. It was also influenced by the campaign of former union leader Dan Osborn, who ran this fall as a working-class independent in the deep-red state of Nebraska.
Against an entrenched Republican incumbent, and without big money backing or party support, Osborn shocked pundits by winning 47 percent of the vote. Sanders and other progressives might not have agreed with Osborn’s approach to every issue, but they recognized the success of an independent candidate who, as Dustin Guastella, a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623, and Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation, noted in a recent Guardian article, “outperformed Kamala Harris in Nebraska by 14 percentage points while running an assertively anti-establishment, pro-union platform.”
Amid much speculation about just what Sanders meant with his advocacy for independent candidates who take on both major parties, I spoke with the senator about his e-mail, which he acknowledged had “struck a nerve.” Here’s a lightly edited portion of a longer conversation we had about the future of working-class politics in America.
—John Nichols
John Nichols: Dan Osborn overperformed the Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other challengers to Republicans in key Senate races. Why do you think that was the case?
Bernie Sanders: I think that what Dan Osborn did should be looked at as a model for the future. He took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign, and it tells me that the American people are sick and tired of seeing the rich getting richer. They think billionaires dominate both political parties. They want real change, and Dan’s campaign raised those issues in a very significant way.
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[1] Url:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-working-class-candidates-challenge-both-parties/
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