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Sanders' frustration is key to understanding why Dems lost the working class... [1]
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Date: 2025-01-19
Bernie Sanders is nominally listed as an Independent representing the state of Vermont but everyone knows where his heart is. He ran for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and 2020 and lost to the eventual presidential candidate each time. During those campaigns, Sanders was the outsider fighting long odds, with little support from Democratic regulars within the party apparatus. In his post-mortem review of the disastrous 2024 election, Sanders called out his party for their abandonment of the electorate that had been the backbone of Democratic support since FDR promised and delivered to them a “New Deal”:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right. — The Nation, “Bernie Sanders Is Right: Democrats Have Abandoned the Working Class,” by Jeet Heer
Sanders’ popularity among working-class voters and his powerful analysis of what Democrats are doing wrong should be carefully considered by his party. Democrats have lost too much of their support among a middle class that has grown and evolved under Democratic policies. It is no longer the “white middle-class” because the Democratic Party under FDR, JFK, and LBJ didn’t simply court the votes of the majority segment of the working class but opened the party to those who had been denied their piece of the American Dream because of poverty, circumstance, and prejudice.
Sanders has tapped into the frustration of American voters who see the top 1% in control of 30% of all the nation’s wealth— and the gap is growing. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut not particularly known as the most progressive member of the Democratic establishment agreed with Sanders:
“...when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”
Democrats have been preaching hope and change while the vast middle class has abandoned hope and is demanding change. The next Democratic candidates for office at all levels should take a page from Sanders’ book. Donald Trump and the “MAGA movement” have confused our frustration with the government for anger. Bernie’s appeal to both the ultra-left and some on the right can be best understood not by labels like socialist, progressive, conservative, or liberal. These are the names we have chosen to call each other. While Sanders and Trump have both been labeled ”populists” and their political appeal can sometimes overlap, the difference goes far beyond labels. The two represent entirely different political philosophies and each would reject the other’s policies as extremist:
Pairing Sanders and Trump indicates just how flexible the term populist has become and poses the question as to whether populist has any useful meaning and if so, what it might be ... By the measure of this historical legacy, Bernie Sanders looks very much like a populist for the “Second Gilded Age,” both in his diagnosis of and solutions to society’s ills. By the same historical measure, Donald Trump, with his gold-plated jets and mansions, looks very much like the type of plutocrat the Populists held responsible for the injustices and inequities of their time. This suggests that to understand today’s headlines about a populist Trump we need a different historical measure and to examine how some contemporary political commentators have separated the term populist from its origins. — OAH, “If Trump and Sanders Are Both Populists, What Does Populist Mean?,” by Charles Postel
If Democrats want to regain their status with a growingly disaffected middle-class they should reclaim their brand of populism and expose the new right’s heretical expropriation of the term. They are what they propose to take on.
The party should now be focused on determining which potential candidates share more than political expediency with their ‘populist’ pretensions. It partly explains the bipartisan appeal of Sanders and the effectiveness of Biden’s “Joeisms” which demonstrated his authentic working-class credentials. It was what Democrats were going for with their selection of Tim Walz. Pete Buttigieg and AOC have backgrounds and the political astuteness to use their life stories to substantiate their own political authenticity and their understanding of the frustrations of those who work for a living. Stacy Abrams is another who draws her political strength from an intimacy with those she has represented while in government. Others will emerge but success depends on their ability to rise above the labels others place on them, especially within the party.
Bernie Sanders’ specific appeal to voters who might disagree with his politics is tied to solutions to problems he voiced so authentically— frustrated by the inability of current political parties including his own to address them. In that context when he spoke about wealth redistribution it sounded less like socialism and more like fairness. It is the “deal” Democrats have promised from FDR that would be new, fair, and square. What voters are particularly attracted to is the practical nature of his politics as opposed to the abstractness of policy:
Every day we are paying more for energy than we should due to poor insulation, inefficient lights, appliances, and heating and cooling equipment - money we could save by investing in energy efficiency. — Bernie Sanders
Whether Democrats can abandon the allure of the donor class is the real test. Money and its proximity to power is a recipe for corruption. Compromise and bipartisanship should not be the ultimate goals of governance. Sometimes compromise is used to avert solutions and to slow reform. And bipartisanship can often be purchased at great cost. The first two years of the Biden administration were marked by the political need and Biden’s preference for bipartisan agreement. The process was infuriating and led to a belief in the ineffectual nature of government. The courting of bipartisan support made the administration seem weak despite its accomplishments because debated in public, the results appeared to be half-measures. A divided government best serves those who resist change and progress.
Progressives in the Democratic Party have been characterized by some in the media as extremists as if to equate them with the right-wing extremists within the MAGA movement. The characterization feeds a misconception that freedom and inequity can somehow coexist within a liberal Democracy. They can’t. Those of us on the left have a right to be angry and frustrated as our rights are placed in jeopardy. The “populist” pretensions adopted by the Republican right mask their economic predilections that in so many ways hurt those it has lured into its trap. This is what NYTimes economic journalist wrote about their faux populism during Kevin McCarthy’s tenure as Speaker in 2023— before he was deposed:
There are currently two clown shows — sorry, but let’s be honest — going on in the Republican Party. One is the intraparty fighting that seems extremely likely to cause a government shutdown a few days from now. The other is the fight over who will come a distant second to Donald Trump in the presidential primaries. There are many strange aspects to both shows. But here’s the one that has long puzzled me: Everyone says that with the rise of MAGA, the G.O.P. has been taken over by populists. So why is the Republican Party’s economic ideology so elitist and antipopulist? — NYTimes, “Soft Corruption and the Limits of Populism,” by Paul Krugman
Krugman goes on to cite the “soft corruption” that has taken over the party and the role played by FOX News and others to withhold covering the overt improper influence being exerted by elites on GOP officeholders and appointees like Clarence Thomas.
As it now stands, the foxes have not only taken over the hen house but have managed to rally the coop to naively cheer on their fate.
No wonder Bernie is so frustrated.
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