Sanders is talking about "putting together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen." For Sanders and his allies, along with progressives who have backed Clinton, the effort itself is consequential -- not just in terms of framing the party's immediate agenda but also in terms of framing the future of our politics.

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Reprinted from The Nation

Bernie Sanders
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Sanders made it clear that his campaign -- which has won 18 contests and 1,355 delegates and has the potential to win more primaries and delegates -- would go on. "The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be. That's why we are in this race until the last vote is cast," said the senator. Then he offered a framework for how that campaign might influence the direction not just of the party but of politics in the years to come.

"[This] campaign," said Sanders, "is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change."

Sanders has expanded on these themes on the campaign trail in recent days, in appearances in the key primary states of Indiana (which votes on May 3) and Oregon (which votes on May 17). On Wednesday, Sanders drew a cheering crowd of 2,200 people to a town-hall meeting on the campus of Purdue University, where he added new material to the stump speech he has delivered from the start of a presidential run that has challenged Clinton and the Democratic Party to move left on a host of issues.

On Thursday in Eugene, Oregon, and again on Friday at the Indiana statehouse, where he rallied with steelworkers whose plants are threatened with closure as part of a corporate relocation to Mexico, Sanders made trade policy central to his demand for a new politics that champions working families over CEOs.

"The Democratic Party, up to now, has not been clear about which side they are on, on the major issues facing this country. You cannot be on the side of those workers who have lost their jobs, because of disastrous trade agreements, and support those corporations who have thrown millions of our workers out on the street," Sanders told the crowd of 8,000 in Oregon.

"The Democratic Party has to reach a fundamental conclusion: Are we on the side of working people or big money interests?" the senator thundered. "Do we stand with the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor or Wall Street speculators and the drug companies and the insurance companies?"

Political and media elites, whose default position is to focus on the horse race (and the personalities associated with it), are quick to dismiss fights over agendas and platforms. With no sense of history, they imagine politics as little more than a progression from one dominant figure to the next. Movements, and the political trends and progressions that extend from movement-oriented campaigns, are invariably dismissed.

But it was a movement, and a movement politics, that forced the Democratic Party to embrace a more muscular civil-rights platform than Harry Truman wanted in 1948; it was a movement, and movement politics, that began to open up the Democratic Party in ways that Lyndon Johnson had resisted in 1964. And it was the dismissal of movements, and movement politics, that proved to be disastrous for the Democratic Party in 1968.

But 2016 is the most volatile political year since 1968. And the responses of the parties to it will define not just political organizations but the politics of this year and the years to come.

So what Bernie Sanders is talking about matters. It does not mean that he will get what he wants at the convention. It does not mean that Hillary Clinton, who has her own vision and her own strategies, should accept every proposal that Sanders or broader movements make. There are no guarantees that the Democratic Party can or will run in 2016 on "the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen."

But no one should buy into the fantasy that this discussion is inconsequential. Platform debates always matter. That's why the candidates (front-runners and challengers) always take them seriously; that's why key players in political parties (governor, mayors, legislators, union leaders) participate in them; that's why interest groups try so hard to influence them.

And it matters, now, that Sanders is talking about "put[ting] together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen."

For Sanders and his allies, along with progressives who have backed Clinton, the effort itself is consequential -- not just in terms of framing the party's immediate agenda but also in terms of framing the future of our politics.

"We could afford to lose the vote," explained the Rev. Jesse Jackson, after waging critical platform fights in 1984. "Issues are negotiable. We could not afford to avoid raising the right questions. Our self-respect and our moral integrity were at stake. Our heads are perhaps bloody, but unbowed. Our back is straight and our vision is clear."

What was true three decades ago remains true now: Platform fights on issues of conscience and consequence, inspired by insurgent campaigns and insurgent movements, are always worth waging.

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.


Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.


Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.


Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."


With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.


Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."