Question 2: Why does he think he's the one to create the people's movement to democratize America's money and power?
He doesn't. To the contrary, Bernie recognizes that the people's yearning for such a movement is what has created him as a presidential contender. In the words of a song, he's "the wave, not the ocean." He's not only aware of this basic truth, but he's turned it into an alter call at campaign events: "I can't do this," he cries out, "but WE can!"
Sanders is carrying this message to people everywhere, not just to safe enclaves of blue voters:
- In September, this Jewish democratic socialist became the only Democrat to have the gumption to reach out to hardcore anti-gay, anti-abortion Christian evangelicals. Speaking to 12,000 students at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, he found common ground and even some enthusiastic support by engaging the students on the immorality inherent in America's worsening inequality, poverty, racism, religious intolerance, and defilement of the planet. By respectfully approaching them, Sanders demonstrated the potential of civil discourse to transcend big differences on some issues by finding what we have in common and begin relating around the realization that we're all in this together.
- He's also making a point of campaigning in states that Democratic Party know-it-alls write off as hopelessly Republican -- and he's drawing eye-popping crowds in states that Obama lost, including Arizona, Texas, and West Virginia. He rightly notes that in every state, "the vast majority of people are working people ... struggling to keep their heads above water." Forfeiting their votes is not only "stupid politics," Bernie says, but a craven betrayal: "You do not turn your backs on millions and millions of working people."
- Sanders doesn't even give up on the red-faced mobs that have been cheering the anti-Muslim, anti-Latino, demagogic drivel of The Donald. While some of Donnie's trumpeters are just rank racists and bigots -- and while our first imperative is to stand with those being assaulted -- Bernie understands that many Trump supporters are infuriated and scared because they've lost jobs, homes, and hope to the inscrutable forces of greed. Trump & Gang have cynically manipulated this fury, directing people to look down on "them," rather than looking up at the greedheads causing their misery. Progressives, he says, should be out there trying to refocus this anger, while also offering a genuine alternative of hope. "You have a right to be angry," Sanders says to them, so let's work together "to create an agenda and a political movement that will make your life better, not just other people's lives worse."
I'll let Bernie take this one: "I am not running to fulfill some long-held ambition," he told an interviewer in the Nov. 18 Rolling Stone. "I never believed that I would ever become a mayor, a congressman or a United States senator [much less a president]. ... I am running for one simple reason: This country today is facing extraordinary crises in terms of climate change, income and wealth inequality; in terms of a political system which is now corrupt and leading us toward oligarchy; in terms of the collapse of the middle class; in terms of more people in jail than any other country on Earth, and in terms of an immigration policy which is clearly completely broken. I just do not believe that establishment politics are going to address these issues. ...I do not say 'Elect Bernie Sanders, I'm going to solve all these problems.' We need millions of people to stand up and fight back." In other words, we need "a movement."
He's not just serious -- he's on a mission! Sanders is as offended as the great majority of people are that Washington is so totally in the pockets of moneyed elites that these poisonous crises are allowed to fester and spread. Someone finally has to rebel, and no one had stepped forward, so he did. He's saying: Use me. I'll be your mechanism, your political tool in 2016 for building a democratic movement that can govern in the people's interest, rather than for the 1-percenters. Furthermore, he says, even on the off chance that we don't win the presidency this time, the campaign's organizational effort will create an ongoing, energized network that will elect other progressives, keep building, and move the movement forward for the next time.
Question 4: Yeah, but the GOP gang is howl-at-the-moon insane, so we need to win now. We're told that Bernie's too hot for moderate voters. Directly put: Can Bernie win?
He already is winning. Notice that the Democratic debate this time is not more minimalist, centrist blah-blah, but is focused on full-throated, working class issues: Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, the job-destroying effects of Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, whether Wall Street's monopolistic control of America's money should be busted up, pay equity for women, free higher education for all (paid for with a "Robin Hood Tax" on stock speculators), getting corporate money out of politics, public financing of elections, the expansion of Social Security, rebuilding America's infrastructure, and ... so much more.
By speaking bluntly -- not just about the scourge of inequality, but also about who's causing it and how to reverse it -- Bernie has already shoved the Democratic Party into a better alignment with its historic purpose and with the actual views and needs of the people it's supposed to serve. And that is why he's come so far so fast. Polls show that the senator "no one has ever heard of" is now leading in the New Hampshire primary contest and is within reach of victory in the Iowa caucuses. Moreover, in direct contradiction of the "can't-win" myth, recent polls reveal this important fact: If the November election were held today, Sanders would defeat any of the potential Republican nominees -- winning by margins greater than any other Democrat! Shocked pundits say Sanders seems to have come from nowhere, but in fact, he's coming straight from the people. Nowhere is this clearer than in the financing of his run. Even though he flat-out rejects backing from secretive, dark money SuperPACs, and even though he doesn't hold fat-cat fundraisers or take Wall Street money, he had raised more than $45 million by mid-December, making him competitive for the long run.
Question 5: Okay, but even if he wins, how can he govern, since the Hell-No Numbskulls in Congress will block everything he's proposing?
The difference will be made by the people. The secret to Bernie's campaign success is not [Warning: cold truth ahead] raw charisma or mellifluous eloquence, but the very thing that "expert" political consultants tell candidates to avoid: Substance. He is practicing authentic politics, going directly to voters, speaking truthfully about money and power, bringing it home through specific issues that affect them, placing the message in the moral context of right and wrong, and showing them they can come together to do something about their situation. He is giving America's disenchanted majority a reason to vote again -- not for a personality, but for a tectonic shift in public policies.
"I will not get elected unless there is a huge increase in voter turnout," Sanders says, and he's showing that TURN-ON is what produces turnout. He notes that, of the hundreds of thousands who've come to his events, "90 percent ... have never been to a Democratic Party meeting in their life. The energy and enthusiasm that we are developing in this campaign with young people, with low-income people, with working people is ...[what's] needed to create large voter turnouts."
That's a grassroots movement that a President Sanders would bring to bear on entrenched business-as-usual Washington -- an organized and engaged movement with a broad mandate for change. "My job" says Bernie, "is to activate people to fight for their rights and to force Congress to respond to the needs of working families."
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