Human Rights Activists

"I’m probably the last guy to defend Sanders. He is a man of the far left and I most certainly am not. But even a conservative like me can see that Sanders was cheated out of the Democratic presidential nomination the last time, with the Democratic National Committee rigging the whole thing for Hillary Clinton. And now it’s happening again. No wonder the Sanders supporters are angry. What happened on CNN in Iowa was bad for journalism. But it sure was good for Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. Sanders, the authentic candidate on the left in this cycle, as he was in the last, was surging in the Iowa polls. Warren, also on the left, was fading, desperate and in full panic. She began waving her gender card on that dangerous Intersectionality Highway where Democrats, addicted to identity politics, often crack up. Just before the debate, CNN ran a story portraying Sanders as misogynist who thinks a woman couldn’t be elected president. That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t believe that. And at the CNN debate, moderator Abby Phillip took Warren’s gender card, fashioned it into a knife and stabbed Sanders just weeks before the Iowa caucuses."

"But what about Bernie? Let’s give the man some credit. There’s no question he has an intense and enthusiastic following. He is an authentic ideologue – an avowed Democratic Socialist who has the courage of his convictions for decades and succeeded in changing the terms of the debate within the Democratic Party. If he wins Iowa, polls show that he could win New Hampshire – which he won in 2016 – and have a strong shot at the next caucuses in Nevada. But don’t forget that less than a quarter of Democrats call themselves “very liberal” – and in general, Democratic voters are older, more moderate and more blue collar than you might think if you gauge opinion only on Twitter, as Harry Enten has persuasively argued. Sanders’ support for ending private health insurance in favor of Medicare for all isn’t popular – while the public option backed by Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar is even supported by 41% of Republicans. And the very label "socialist" – along with Sanders’ record of defending the Castro regime in Cuba and the Chavez-Maduro regime in Venezuela – could seriously damage outreach to Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere. The Trump team has made it very clear that its campaign will be based on negative partisanship – demonizing Democrats as radical socialists to distract from the President’s broad unpopularity. The bottom line is that they can do that with impunity against an avowed Democratic Socialist such as Bernie Sanders. That’s why they’re pumping up his candidacy, trolling concern about a "rigged system" while also calling him "crazy" and a "communist.""

"Donald Trump loves attacking Democrats as "far-left radical socialists." So why does Team Trump spend so much time pumping up Bernie Sanders? Spoiler alert: It’s a trap. But let’s look at the evidence. For weeks, President Trump has been rushing to Bernie’s defense and accusing Democrats of rigging the primaries against him. He accused Democrats of timing his impeachment trial to hurt Bernie Sanders’ chances, an allegation dutifully echoed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Don Jr. The President was at it again on the eve of the Iowa caucus, tweeting that the Democratic National Committee was trying to "rig the election against Sanders," even as he called Bernie Sanders a "communist" in a pre-Super Bowl safe-space interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. It’s been a repeated riff for months. Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on Meet The Press announced that he was voting for Bernie in Virginia’s open primary – because he wanted a clear contrast between an authentic socialist and Donald Trump. This isn’t subtle. Team Trump wants to run against Bernie Sanders. If you don’t believe me, just ask them."

"For all the policy differences and political minutiae Democrats delve into when criticizing President Trump, the most enduring attacks on Trump from the Democratic establishment remain accusations that Trump is supporting white supremacy and is controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. These are over-the-top accusations, and it’s hard to accept that even most elected Democrats actually believe them. But pushing that message on America for the last three-plus years comes at a price for both sides. For the Democrats, the price is becoming clear: it’s made moderate presidential candidates look less viable than ever. Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates? Sanders may be a career politician, but he’s never been a mainstream politician. His persona and political brand fits much better into the current Democratic narrative that we’re living in desperate times. Establishment Democrats are reaping what they sowed. As a result, it’s looking more and more like Sanders has unstoppable momentum going into the Super Tuesday primaries and beyond. The big question now is whether that Democratic establishment will try to derail Sanders before or during the Democratic National Convention. But either way, the party would be playing with fire and risking alienating those younger voters forever."

"With his convincing victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders is solidifying his status as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination more than ever before. So how did a life-long avowed socialist and someone who’s never actually won an election as a Democrat get to the top of the party’s mountain? The simple answer is that he’s being supported by millions of younger Democratic voters, and those voters have been raised to be Sanders voters, even if their parents don’t realize it. Here’s how it happened: We convinced everyone college was 100% necessary, and then we made college unaffordable. Since the end of World War II, the chorus of educators, politicians, and journalists making it sound like college was essential for career success only became louder and drowned out any counterargument. At the same time, college tuition costs have exploded thanks greatly to government programs that produced unintended, but predictable consequences. It mostly started in 1978 when more loans and subsidies became available to a greatly expanded number of students. The cost of college tuition has risen by six times more than the rate of inflation since the 1970s. Now, millions of American young people are straddled with college loans that look impossible to repay. The total student loan debt in the U.S. now stands at more than $1.6 trillion. Is it any wonder so many of them are attracted to a candidate who not only promises to forgive their student debts, but presents their predicament as the result of corporate greed and misplaced government priorities? Luckily for Sanders, young voters supporting him for his college tuition forgiveness promises don’t seem to be too interested in his own family history. His wife Jane Sanders was president of the now defunct Burlington College and she and other administrators were reportedly the subjects of a long-running FBI probe that they misled bank loan officers about the real number of donations pledged to the college. The FBI probe of the matter ended in 2018, and Jane Sanders was not charged. But the policies she oversaw, which included pushing for major campus expansions, were indicative of some of the root causes of increased college costs in America."

"Just as Amy has shown on the debate stage, she is the best person to take on Bernie Sanders and the best candidate to beat Donald Trump. Both ​on​ and ​off​ the debate stage, Amy has highlighted the consequences of having Bernie Sanders lead the top of the ticket, including his divisive politics and health care plan that would kick 149 million Americans off their insurance."

"So, look, the way I see this is that Bernie is winning right now because the Democratic Party is a progressive party, and progressive ideas are popular ideas, even if there are a lot of people on this stage who don't want to say so. You know, but Bernie and I agree on a lot of things, but I think I would make a better president than Bernie. And the reason for that is that getting a progressive agenda enacted is going to be really hard, and it's going to take someone who digs into the details to make it happen. Bernie and I both wanted to help rein in Wall Street. In 2008, we both got our chance. But I dug in. I fought the big banks. I built the coalitions, and I won. Bernie and I both want to see universal health care, but Bernie's plan doesn't explain how to get there, doesn't show how we're going to get enough allies into it, and doesn't show enough about how we're going to pay for it. I dug in. I did the work. And then Bernie's team trashed me for it. We need a president who is going to dig in, do the hard work, and actually get it done. Progressives have got one shot. And we need to spend it with a leader who will get something done."

"Like Trump, Sanders comes from outside the institutional party he seeks to lead, and a substantial portion of his appeal rests precisely on that independence, and on pent up frustration with the party leadership. Like Trump, Sanders is leading a movement deeply bound up with his own persona, something hard to imagine sustaining itself in his absence. And like Trump, were Sanders to achieve victory, he could face persistent resistance within the party to promoting his agenda, and he would certainly have difficulty staffing his administration with people associated with his movement rather than the institutional party. That's a fact that will surely affect the actual course of policymaking in a Sanders administration as it has in Trump's. But there are two crucial differences between Sanders and Trump. First, Sanders is a sincere ideologue like Goldwater and Reagan, not an opportunist. He is running to transform his party ideologically rather than simply conquer it and make it his plaything. There's a reason why Trump has done so little to actually turn the GOP into a worker's party and to repudiate the wealth-favoring policies backed by its donors: Because he is not actually that interested in policy. Sanders is. That difference cuts both ways, however. It makes it easier for Sanders to get between Trump and his lies, and separate him from that portion of his supporters who believed he was a relative moderate in 2016. But it also makes it easier for Trump to retain the loyalty of his party's regulars, and to separate Sanders from the portion of his coalition that is worried about him not because he might lose but because he might win. Cynicism has its advantages as well as its drawbacks."

"Could Sanders be more than a harbinger, though, and achieve something like Ronald Reagan's breakthrough? There are tempting parallels. Reagan challenged the incumbent Gerald Ford for the nomination in 1976 and nearly took the nomination from him, much as Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a far tougher run for her money than anyone could have imagined. And like Reagan, Sanders has demonstrated the ability to be far more pragmatic in government than he is often given credit for, working within the system and demonstrating an admirable institutional conservatism with his support for the filibuster and opposition to court packing. His historic support for gun rights even has a parallel in Reagan's support for abortion rights as California governor."

"Like father of the conservative movement Barry Goldwater, Sanders is a factional candidate of the true faith, the representative of those who believe his party has lost touch with its ideological moorings. His brand is consistency and sincerity, which wins him affection if not support even from some opponents. But those very same qualities make it easy for the opposition (both within and outside the party) to tar him as a radical and an extremist. Sen. Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election badly — but he was running against Lyndon Johnson, a legislative titan whose approval rating was over 75 percent that February. And Goldwater transformed his party nonetheless. His opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of ideological realignment that turned the South solidly Republican, a key factor powering Ronald Reagan's victorious quest for the presidency in 1980 and Newt Gingrich's capture of the House of Representatives in 1994. How did Goldwater's thrashing ultimately lead to a Republican majority? The answer is both ideological and demographic. Goldwater realigned the Republican center toward the South and West, the fastest-growing regions of the country. Increasing dominance in these regions led to a substantial electoral college advantage that wasn't broken until 1992. Ideologically, meanwhile, he gave Republicans something to be for rather than merely against. That's why they were able to define a new political era when Reagan won. That's the promise that Sanders holds even if he loses: that he opens the door not only to a return to power, but a transformation of the terms of the debate, something neither Clinton nor Obama — nor Eisenhower, Nixon, or Bush — achieved, but that FDR, Johnson, and Reagan did. But what's the demographic basis of Sanders' rise? And could it actually point to a dominant coalition, whether it manifests in 2020 or a subsequent election?"

"The Democratic Party's officials are going to do everything they can, as they did four years ago, to block that independent vote. That vote is Sanders' vote. Those against Sanders in the Democratic leadership are also going to do what they can to reduce the Hispanic vote. It's strange to me that we always talk about Biden and the black vote. What's not talked about is that Sanders really owns the Hispanic vote, and in California that's decisive. They're doing everything they can to block Hispanic voters, young voters and independent voters who support Bernie Sanders."

"Biden cleaned house, earning over 60 percent of the African-American vote according to exit polls—a dynamic that suggests a familiar challenge ahead for Sanders. In 2016, his insurgent campaign against Sec. Hillary Clinton saw its momentum blunted repeatedly by her overwhelming support among African-Americans. Sanders very well may have won that nomination if he could only have drawn more black support. After licking his wounds, Sanders learned his lesson and did the hard work of establishing more of a sustained presence in black and brown political life. He dramatically diversified his campaign at the top and made inroads with younger, more progressive up-and-coming community leaders and politicians of color who tend to be more open to his ambitious agenda than more moderate, older African-Americans. For some time now, it appeared as though Sanders’ work was paying off. He handily won Latinos and held his own with African-Americans in Nevada, the first truly diverse state to participate in the 2020 primary to date. And until recently, polls showed him surging in South Carolina, even threatening to take the lead. Pundits will have a field day trying to diagnose what went wrong for the 2020 frontrunner in South Carolina. Was it the Clyburn endorsement (which felt dramatic and inevitable at the same time)? The impact of the most prolonged attacks on Sanders by his competitors since the race began? Sanders continues to show strength with black voters under 40, which is more than can be said for Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and arguably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have all garnered almost no support from African-Americans to date."

"In a sign of the increasing urgency of the calendar, Sanders devoted part of his speech to imploring young people to vote and to rebutting critiques of his electability in a race against Trump. Sanders needs a larger turnout among young voters to hold off his rivals and convince Democratic skeptics that he can win in the fall. His double-digit defeat in South Carolina was a shellacking. If his landslide in Nevada suggested that Sanders had made deep inroads among the Latino community, the result in South Carolina is a reminder that he has a much tougher challenge in winning over African Americans, and particularly older voters. More important, however, Sanders must hope that South Carolina is not the first sign of a broader national reconsideration of his candidacy. The answer to that question could be clear by Tuesday night."

"Indeed, Sanders’s biggest threat is not any one of his opponents but a party establishment that remains nervous about his potential nomination. Within minutes of the polls closing in South Carolina tonight, pressure was building for some of the lagging candidates to drop out and rally behind Biden. “I’m hoping some of the candidates tomorrow get out,” former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a previous chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN as he endorsed the former vice president. Sanders, however, would rather most of his rivals stay in for now—even if that means he takes a few losses on Super Tuesday."

"For a brief moment last Tuesday after the Democratic presidential debate, past the hallways that snaked from the spin room to the exit near the back of the Gaillard Center in South Carolina, two of the candidates ended up stuck together in a small room, unable to leave. There was a problem with the door — security needed to unlock it — and so they stood together waiting. Had chance put them there with anybody else, it might’ve been a moment of awkward silence. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders dislike plenty of people, but not each other. The fact of their friendship, based on a little-discussed, yearslong mutual respect, is all at once entirely unexpected and intuitively obvious. As candidates, they shared a stubborn force of will and a fierce distaste for their enemies — both of them salty, but in vastly different ways. As senators, they work together all the time, but in matters of ideology and political sensibility, they agree on very little. He, for example, will hate this article — see: "political gossip," personality-driven media, etc. She already loves it."

"On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders. Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a “distortion of history.” Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn’t surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee. Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign -- and the grassroots energy behind it -- to melt away. That’s not going to happen. Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul -- as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that’s saying something.)"

"No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we’re up against: A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins. A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted façade. Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy."

"I am supporting Bernie Sanders for president because I believe that his campaign and his understanding of politics complements the priorities that women of color defined decades ago...At the same time that I was growing up in Cleveland, Bernie Sanders, who was a few years older, was growing up in Brooklyn. He noticed some of the same paradoxes and injustices that I did and came to a similar conclusion: that he needed to get involved...Sanders has devoted most of his life to social movements. He has shaped them and been shaped by them. He understands that the most substantial and meaningful change comes from the bottom up, not the top down...Sanders has said that as president he will be “organizer-in-chief”. He is committed to fighting for regular working people, which is most of us, and he has the advantage of connection with an existing broad-based social movement. As president he can implement policies that give those who are most harmed by the current system full access to opportunity and a decent human life...In 2016 I served on the LGBTQ steering committee for the Sanders campaign. I am even more excited to support him now...Four of the most dynamic women of color in Congress – representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – have endorsed Bernie...The stakes could not be higher. Before the 2016 election I dreaded a return to the Jim Crow era signaled by the slogan “Make America Great Again”, which obviously meant white. Tragically that is exactly what happened. Four more years is unthinkable. That is why I am working to elect President Bernie Sanders."

"And Black voters over 45 have lived long enough to see the history made by Obama, but also have an even longer memory of the disappointment and shortcomings of candidates who failed. They’ve surveyed the polarized political landscape and bitterly divided Congress, and they doubt that a Sanders’-style political revolution is even a remote possibility in an age when just voting to fund the government is regularly up for debate. Many of them admired the grit and talent of Warren but had no faith that white men in any significant numbers would support a woman for president, even if she was the best choice. The entire black constituency is not unified behind Biden, however; there’s a significant generational split, with many younger voters backing Sanders. These younger voters grew up in the shadow of new possibilities presented by Obama’s victories. For them, the first election they participated in or can even recall was an election of phenomenal change, where a black candidate defied all expectations to win back-to-back terms as president. These are voters who know that hope has worked and believe it can work again, so they are open to Sanders’ critiques of the high costs of college and income inequality, and they agree there’s an urgent need for change."

"Bernie's particular brand of socialism is probably better described as 'grandparent envy.'"

"Let’s face it, Biden isn’t so great on race, either. His support of the controversial 1994 crime bill, as well as his opposition to busing in the 1970s, should give pause to anyone who thinks of him as a committed racial progressive. But Biden has some built-in advantages over Sanders: He was vice president to the first black president, and his moderate politics are generally seen as making him more electable than Sanders. Black folks, given Trump’s threats to racial progress, want him out of the White House in the worst way. The map doesn’t get much easier for Sanders in the next round of primaries; in several upcoming states, the black community is key. No one expects him to abandon his long-held economic message, but if he wants to increase his support from black voters, he needs to pay more attention to race and racism. Otherwise, his revolution will soon fail again."

"The Super Tuesday results reveal a serious flaw in Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign: his lack of support among African Americans, whose votes are critical not only for winning the Democratic primary, but for defeating President Donald Trump in the fall. Democrats who wish to beat Trump but prefer Sanders to former Vice President Joe Biden, must ask themselves the following question: Can a campaign that rests primarily on class warfare and economic justice, one that largely relegates race to a concern simply encompassed by economic reform, attract enough black voters to prevail?"

"For many voters, the 2016 election was their first introduction to the Vermont senator with the unkempt hair and radical ideas. He knew more people would know his name if he ran again in 2020, but he needed to do more: He needed to hire a more diverse staff, attend events at historically black colleges and universities, speak to black media and black people directly, and, perhaps more than anything, listen to black voices. He did all that. But despite his efforts, the support never quite materialized. From the South Carolina primary through Super Tuesday, among black voters, Sanders was trounced by former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders offered a revolution; voters rebuffed it. The black people who did support Sanders tended to be younger—and young people tend to vote at lower rates than older people do."

"Sanders’ relentless attacks on millionaires and billionaires didn’t resonate with a large segment of the black community that takes pride in the successes of black billionaires such as Robert Smith, who paid off the student loan debt of the entire 2019 graduating class at Morehouse College. Sanders doesn’t seem to understand that although many African Americans suffer from an economic system stacked against them, we are economically aspirational. Many African Americans applaud the high achievement and success of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z and Michael Jordan. But Sanders’ biggest mistake, undoubtedly, was his failure to understand the mindset of middle-aged and older African Americans. For many of these voters, Trump’s relentless attempts to dismantle Obamacare and destroy the entire legacy of the first black president – Barack Obama – has been an unending nightmare. The unyielding assault and systematic attack on other prominent African American leaders, like Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and the dismantling of safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for seniors made removing Trump from office a pivotal issue for many black voters."

"Many of us vividly recall the hotly contested 2016 primary race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, whom I strongly supported. Sanders’ message of fighting income inequality and pushing for Medicare for all resonated with many Democratic voters, as it does now, and after winning the New Hampshire primary he seemed to have momentum on his side. But the race inevitably shifted to the South and its heavy contingent of black voters. Clinton benefited from her husband’s popularity with black voters and pulverized Sanders in South Carolina by 47 percentage points. Sanders next got crushed on Super Tuesday, losing the southern and southwest states of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. In 2020, Sanders was determined to avoid repeating that history. He tried to increase his percentage of the black vote by blanketing Facebook with ads that highlighted his long-standing commitment to civil rights. He also talked up issues of paramount importance to the black community – criminal justice reform and social-economic injustice. Sanders enlisted the help of influential black surrogates such as Harvard Professor Cornel West and rapper Killer Mike. He began airing a TV ad that features former President Barack Obama’s past praise of him, even though he has positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate. Former Obama aides like David Axelrod questioned the ad given that Sanders and the former President were not particularly close. In Mississippi, his campaign funded an ad campaign on black radio. But despite all this, Sanders once again failed miserably with black voters. He got crushed, again, in South Carolina and then suffered a blowout loss on Super Tuesday. And Tuesday night, he suffered perhaps a fatal blow by losing the three Ms – Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan. So, what did Sanders do wrong this time? Well, it didn’t help that on the Sunday before Super Tuesday he failed to appear at a Bloody Sunday ceremonial event in Selma, Alabama, that honors the civil rights leaders who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sanders compounded that mistake by canceling a rally in Mississippi. Perhaps unknown to him is that many African Americans from my hometown of St. Louis hail from the South and have deep ties to blacks in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Sanders’ actions were an affront not just to those southerners, but to blacks in Missouri."

"Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders received the most votes in the first three primary elections. After centrist Joe Biden scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic Party establishment around him. Candidates... immediately dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden... The party bosses likely wanted to ensure that Sanders would not upend the corporate order... At the March 15 debate with Biden, Sanders asked the rhetorical question: Where is the power in America?...“Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America?” Sanders criticized the bipartisan $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill. It mandates temporary paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave. But it exempts companies with more than 500 employees from the obligation to provide leave, excluding about 6.5 million workers. Moreover, the exemptions disproportionately hurt low-wage workers. And it contains no limits on the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to profit from the coronavirus... When he defines himself as a democratic socialist, Sanders said, he means “Economic rights are human rights.” The core of his Medicare for All plan is, “Health care is a human right.”"

"...even now, Bernie Sanders, the senator who has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare for all, is considered an outlier in his bid for the White House, even by his own party."

"Two of Sanders’ top advisers — pollster Ben Tulchin and speechwriter David Sirota — told Sanders that he should pointedly take on Biden at the Feb. 25 debate in South Carolina, which the former vice president saw as his firewall state. They also said Sanders should use billionaire Mike Bloomberg as a foil, and attack him over his record of supporting stop-and-frisk, in order to deflect from the onslaught he would no doubt face as the newly anointed frontrunner. The stakes were high: In an email to senior staff, Tulchin said that moderate voters were beginning to unify behind Biden and that the consolidation would intensify if he won South Carolina, according to people familiar with the message. But on the stage that night, Sanders didn’t take his aides’ advice. Instead, he largely gave Biden a pass, bashed Bloomberg sometimes — but not over stop-and-frisk — and mostly stuck to his standard talking points. It wasn’t the first nor the last time Sanders eschewed his staffers’ suggestions to be more aggressive with his top rival. Their warnings proved prescient: Biden went on to sweep the day in South Carolina, unify moderates, and then carry Super Tuesday. "Knocking out Biden was job No. 1. And even when he was down, no one went for a knockout blow," said a top aide. "That was the problem." Sanders’ unwillingness to go for Biden’s jugular is just one of the decisions campaign aides are wrestling with since he exited the primary Wednesday. Despite being the best fundraiser in the Democratic field, having near universal name ID, and leading a massive volunteer army, Sanders performed worse in many ways in 2020 than in 2016. He badly lost among African-Americans yet again, and the rural and working-class white voters who were with him four years ago abandoned him."

"The big corporate Democratic Party donors made it clear that if Bernie Sanders became the presidential nominee, they would support Trump. The donor class has created a system where they cannot fail. If it's Trump or Biden, Goldman Sachs doesn't lose, ExxonMobil doesn't lose, Raytheon doesn't lose, Citibank doesn't lose. There is no way that they can lose. They have rigged the system so that their interests are always served."

"As military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes, “endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified); the nation’s various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically.” When the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year came before Congress this summer, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a modest 10 percent reduction in military spending so $70 billion could be re-directed to domestic programs. Representative Barbara Lee introduced a House resolution calling for $350 billion worth of DOD cuts. Neither proposal has gained much traction, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Instead, the House Armed Services Committee just voted 56 to 0 to spend $740.5 billion on the Pentagon in the coming year, prefiguring the outcome of upcoming votes by the full House and Senate."

"I think that Senator Sanders did a wonderful job. I think Michelle Obama was very powerful last night. But you’re right with Senator Sanders that — look, one of the things I noticed out there right now is that whether people are liberal or conservative, they’re Republican, Democrat, independent, what they want are solutions. And I think what Bernie did well in highlighting was this is what electing Joe Biden is going to mean for you and your family — raising the minimum wage, healthcare, a number of other things that are going to make people’s lives better. That’s what I think people want to know. You know, how is this person going to make my life and the life of my family and the country better than it is today?"

"It was hopeful to have a socialist with really good policies go as far as he did in this rigged process. The ideas his campaign put forth helped us imagine a different outcome, a world in which sensible, humane policies that support people and planet were the law of the land. I imagine that world every day. Bernie’s campaign made that easier. It changed the conversation."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"Why is it OK for me to admit having used marijuana but not heroin? I know why, of course. Because most people have been led to believe that heroin is inherently a dangerous drug, whereas pot is just a harmless giggle. It's frustrating. Consider the remarks made by senator Bernie Sanders at the start of 2018 on this subject: "Marijuana is not the same as heroin. No one who has seriously studied the issue believes that marijuana should be classified as a Schedule I drug beside killer drugs like heroin." As politicians go, Sanders seems to be a fair-minded, well-intentioned individual. But his drug perspective is ignorant. Here's why: In order for a drug, any drug, to produce an effect in the brain, it must first bind to a unique site recognized by that drug. This site, this "receptor"-a specialized structure that recognizes and responds to a particular chemical-is endogenous, meaning that it's in all of us. We also have an endogenous chemical that binds to each of these receptors. That means, each of our brains contains heroin-like and THC-like chemicals and their corresponding receptors."

"Sanders was one of just four members of the Senate Democratic caucus to vote against advancing the latest NDAA, which is on track to pass the upper chamber this week. Joining Sanders in voting no were Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). The House approved its version of the NDAA in September. None of the corporate-backed House Democrats currently holding up the reconciliation bill over purported concerns about its costs voted against the proposed Pentagon budget increase, which progressive lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to block. In his floor speech Wednesday, Sanders pointed out that the Senate's 2022 military policy bill proposes spending "$37 billion more than President Trump's last defense budget and $25 billion more than what President Biden requested....Sanders' remarks on the NDAA... came as Democrats in Congress also worked to finalize the Build Back Better Act, a reconciliation package whose social spending and climate provisions have been gutted to satisfy right-wing members of the majority party such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)."

"Bernie is a taker, not a maker"

"Nobody in their right mind believes Joe Biden is going to be on the ticket in 2024 and the vice president is certainly not up to this job. So, you've got people like Liz Warren who are now making all kinds of noises about taking the leadership reins of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders this week talked about, well, if Biden's not on the ticket, I may make another run at the age of 135, but the progressives are really agitated because they're saying, "Look, we're going to lose in November because we have a messaging issue," which is not the case, "but also because we have not delivered on our agenda.""

"Since Biden circa 2022 is often compared to 1970s Jimmy Carter due to a combination of sluggish job approval ratings, unhappy progressive activists, and big-time economic problems (especially inflation), it is germane to observe that Carter managed to soundly defeat Ted Kennedy — the liberal lion of the 1970s and subsequent decades — in the 1980 nomination contest. Are there any Ted Kennedys around right now to mobilize progressive anti-administration grievances into a successful insurgent candidacy? Someday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have that stature — but not now. Indeed, the only potential rival from any wing of the party who is in that position is Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden. And even if there were some Kennedy-like figure available, would the fight disable the Democratic Party (as it arguably did in 1980) more than slogging ahead with the incumbent?"

"The emcee announced that next we'd hear from a presidential candidate, a U.S. senator from Vermont. The politician's name wasn't familiar to me, but I turned around to see if I might recognize him. I didn't. I saw an older white man with white hair. His wife smiled and waved in my direction. I turned back around and returned to fidgeting with the flatware. As he spoke, I listened, but I would be lying if I said I was engaged. But then I noticed that he was speaking frankly about the connection between racial justice and income inequality, and I heard him name mass movement as a solution. "We need to bring people together to take on the powers that be," he said. "When thousands and millions of people stand together, there is no stopping us. We can succeed." He had other clear ideas for solutions: "We need to demilitarize the police," he told the crowd, and finally, I heard him say, "Black lives do matter." I spun around. I couldn't believe what I'd heard. Every single other candidate refused to acknowledge the particular precarity we face in this country as Black people...I hadn't known anything about Bernie Sanders before I saw him onstage at the conference, but his boldness that day had opened my eyes. With his wild gesticulations, and unapologetic manner, he'd shown me that I didn't have to temper what I believed, even in a staid environment. From Bernie, I learned that I could run as myself. Now that I was vying for a Senate seat, I looked him up and scoured his website to learn more about him."

"The 2016 version of Sanders was probably his best: leading with economic concerns and speaking, whenever possible, in universal terms. The left’s future will be in building a multiracial, working-class coalition that began to take shape under Sanders but never grew big enough to overcome Clinton or Biden. Sanders won millions of fans talking about free health care and free higher education, wisely rebranding “single-payer health care” as Medicare for All, name-checking the popular program for senior citizens. He was more attentive to issues of race than his critics gave him credit for, though he was never going to win over moderate Black voters by featuring more incendiary activists and public speakers on his campaign, such as the scandal-scarred Shaun King. His failure to proudly identify as a Democrat — he has been an independent his whole life — probably helped do him in, along with his criticisms of the Obama-Biden wing of the party."

"If the Squad represents the future of the left after Sanders, they would be wise to learn from his example. While Sanders represents one of the smallest states in America, he first rose to power at a time when Vermont was still voting for Republican presidential candidates. Sanders existed in a political world in which his leftism had to be made palatable to the kind of voter who could have preferred George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Representing a rural state that once swung between both parties, he developed an appreciation for talking to an ideologically heterodox constituency that wasn’t always going to support him on every issue. Sanders had to contort himself to appease gun owners and those who wanted a slice of the military-industrial complex at home."

"Where does the left go from here exactly? The most obvious successors to Sanders are the Squad: the leftist members of Congress who endorsed him for president and, in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, worked on his first presidential campaign. None, including AOC, are probably in a position to run in 2024 because members of the House have struggled, historically, to mount serious presidential bids. AOC herself will be turning just 35, the minimum age required by the Constitution to serve as president. Another congressman, Ro Khanna of California, co-chaired Sanders’s 2020 campaign and has been talked about as a future presidential candidate, but unless he reaches a higher office, he is unlikely to ever be a top-tier national candidate. Jamaal Bowman, a Squad member like AOC, could be a compelling contender one day if he ever rises to mayor, governor, or senator in New York."

"Sanders had his weaknesses. He failed to win over a majority of Black voters, particularly those in the South, and struggled to compete with all voters over 50, who make up a large chunk of those who show up in primaries. His socialist brand limited him in states like Florida. His age, while a novelty in 2016, probably hampered him in 2020. A liberal coalition of Democratic voters, those deeply loyal to Clinton, always reviled Sanders, while his supporters who merely disliked her had evaporated four years later, choosing Biden instead."

"All of this is hypothetical, of course, because the 79-year-old Biden insists he is running again. If he does, no Democrat can defeat him. And if Biden bows out, the front-runner for the nomination will be Kamala Harris. Harris cannot clear the field like Biden can, but she will carry a decisive edge as the sitting vice-president. The trouble for liberals is that Harris is at least as unpopular as Biden, and her prior campaign for the presidency was a disaster. Against Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, neither Biden nor Harris inspire a great deal of confidence. But all of this has obscured, for the most part, another dispiriting reality for the many progressives and leftists who have grown used to having one of their own run competitive races for the presidency: There is no obvious heir to Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator, now 80, will almost certainly not run for president a third time. Sanders is an unabashedly left-wing democratic socialist who won major states in both of his presidential bids. If 2020 was a step back for Sanders — he won far fewer votes against Biden than he did against the polarizing Hillary Clinton four years earlier — he still broke through on major terrain, beating the field in enormous states like California and growing his support with working-class Latinos. He was wildly popular with voters under 30. Outside of perhaps Jesse Jackson or George McGovern, there was never a presidential candidate like Sanders in modern American history: someone who contested a Democratic primary from the far left, against the full brunt of the political Establishment, and finished runner-up each time."

"If Sanders were to run again, I’d probably bet on him losing again. In 2020 he underperformed by many metrics compared to his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, and his continual problems with turning out Black voters, moderates and first-time voters in the primaries seem likely to encumber a third attempt as well. But in the unlikely event that he won, he would be well-positioned to beat Trump. Democratic turnout will be high in any general election against Trump; Sanders is immune to Trump’s powerful broadsides against establishment candidate corruption; and Sanders is uniquely well-suited for our populist moment. (None of this is to say I wouldn't have concerns about his age or his competitiveness against a different Republican nominee.) In an ideal world, Sanders is able to help foster the arrival of one of the next lefty champions in electoral politics. But given the right circumstances, he shouldn’t be ruled out as a valuable contributor to a future nominating contest that could be at risk of a dangerously narrow range of debate."

"Without Sanders or a Sanders-like figure in the mix, the 2024 Democratic presidential primary could easily end up feeling more like an attempted coronation than an open field. With Biden in the White House, and the specter of another Donald Trump presidential nomination from the Republican Party, Democratic voters will be primed to look for cues from Biden, party elites and the media on how to keep the boat steady while warding off another potential showdown against Trump. Biden administration figures like Vice President Kamala Harris or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are obvious candidates for Biden’s case for Biden 2.0. Without a serious lefty challenger, the primary debate could skew far too centrist — especially on economic issues, given the challenge of inflation — and focus too heavily on defeating Trump rather than laying out a robust, positive vision of how to address society’s ills."

"Operating with the baseline assumption that Sanders runs only if Biden doesn’t, another condition is that no serious politician with Sanders’ worldview runs as well. If a credible advocate for democratic socialism and anti-imperialism steps up to the plate, then Sanders should use the occasion to pass the torch to the next generation and act as a surrogate for his chosen candidate. (Sanders’ circle has reportedly encouraged Rep. Ro Khanna of California to consider a presidential bid, toward that very end it seems.) Assuming those conditions are met, another Sanders run wouldn’t excite me the way his first two runs did, but it could still be a force for tremendous good. Sanders has become an extraordinarily influential politician through his previous two runs. In 2020, most of the major Democratic candidates took on some of his signature policy proposals like "Medicare for All" — or positioned themselves by holding them at some kind of measured distance. They did this because they believed that Sanders was tapping into real desires in the progressive Democratic electorate, and because they viewed Sanders as a serious threat whose ideas should be co-opted or moderated instead of ignored."

"It pained me that so many people regarded Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign as a bitter defeat rather than a resounding victory in proving there was a constituency and momentum for progressive ideas that could be built upon in the years to come."

"Bernie Sanders lost his mind because I asked for that. He is exactly the reason we need it."

"Whether one agrees with the myriad solutions Sanders lays out in his book to stop the scourge of uber-capitalism, there is no question that he has accurately framed the problem as being about freedom. The Vermont senator has been nothing short of prophetic in warning against the dire consequences of a culture that prizes productivity above all else and coddles and venerates the super-rich. Perhaps most of all, Sanders has powerfully articulated — both in his campaigns and his latest book — the profound lack of decency and utter immorality of the current American economic system. Now it’s up to all of us to decide what to do about it."