Sanders turns his campaign to coronavirus relief
From each according to ability, to each according to need
is not just a slogan.
This will be a very short diary, and I will be around to interact in comments in a couple hours.
Bernie Sanders is shifting his focus from building political support to supporting efforts to respond to the coronavirus spread. The Vermont senator announced on Friday that he will host an online roundtable in Burlington, Vt., where he is "assessing the state of his campaign."
Here’s my take: Sanders is running for president not because of his ego, or his grandiose delusions of power. He is running for president because he cares, extremely deeply, about doing the right thing for the most people.
He’s grumpy, he’s gruff, he’s awkward and fixated… and always has been so.
He’s also been remarkably and persistently correct about many things. Not all, not in all aspects, and not in all details, to be sure. He’s not perfect, and anyone who says he’s perfect or a saint… is foolish.
But recent events should make it pretty damned clear that he (and many like him) are correct.
The issue that Sanders has always addressed, often in ways that are hard to parse for those not used to the “lingo” or raised in “that world”… is resilience.
We must build a system of governance and economic infrastructure that can respond to and withstand “black swans” like this pandemic. Having health care be dependent on employment, nutrition dependent on public school programs, and the entire economy dependent on extracted value from underpaid labor with no security and no benefits means that the instant something bad happens, it craters.
At the current instant, it is pretty clear that Sanders will not be the nominee. Yet 30% or more of the Democratic voting base supports his campaign. That base is not monolithic, does not represent only one sliver of the demographic of our party. It is diverse in age, race, religion, and economic status.
That campaign is now searching for direction.
The problem we have is that simply folding feels wrong… not because Biden is evil or bad, but because the policies that underpin Biden’s career and his current campaign are part and parcel of what has not worked and will not work going forward.
I think this move, if it is the move I expect, namely Turning the campaign into a nationwide advocacy and action network to work for people in a crisis… especially in a moment when it is clearly evident that the federal government is not going to do much of anything except bid against governors for needed supplies and then not use those supplies…
Then I think it is an amazing move.
Doing so gives us the energy and the focus to stay active and engaged and to loudly advocate for the policies we support while showing that those policies are backed up by effective action at least at the local level.
Supporting the eventual nominee wholeheartedly becomes much easier and becomes a natural part of that activism…
Especially if the nominee (Biden) and his campaign and supporters take part.
I am not sure this is what will happen… but I think it is very possible.
Broad support from the party apparatus and the nominee for this kind of pivot brings the best of both worlds: The Sanders campaign becomes a vehicle for both action and advocacy, Sanders himself can and will make big proposals in the Senate, and those proposals have a lot of merit…. buy-in and support gives us the feeling that we’re welcome not only as cheering voices, but as integral and useful components of a broader whole…
And the help and advocacy we do can be used to both aid people in need and bring people in to the general campaign, which is of such critical importance.
What say you?
