Bernie Sanders Is Fed Up With Republican Obstruction -- and Democratic Caution
By John Nichols
Bernie Sanders has become the highest-profile and most enthusiastic congressional champion of the argument that Senate Democrats must use their narrow majority to enact a transformational agenda.
Bernie Sanders ran for president promising a political revolution. When he did not secure the Democratic nomination, the unapologetic progressive immediately threw in as a supporter of a more moderate Democrat, Joe Biden, and became an ardent advocate for his former rival.
But that does not mean that Sanders has lost his revolutionary zeal.
In recent days the independent senator from Vermont has become the highest-profile and most enthusiastic congressional champion of the argument that Senate Democrats must use their narrow majority to enact a transformational agenda. Sanders has made it clear that he is pleased by the ambitions of the White House when it comes to strategies like those outlined in the president's initial proposal for an American Jobs Plan. But he has been equally clear in recent days about his frustration with the deference many Democrats continue to show to Republicans who are delaying and disrupting the governing process.
The Biden administration has been engaged in a delicate dance of negotiations with a small group of Republican senators, maintaining the faint hopes of reaching an agreement to approve the president's infrastructure proposal. Republicans, some Democrats, and many pundits who are unable to get over the delusion of "bipartisanship," have suggested that compromise is necessary to enact a more modest proposal.
But Sanders isn't having it.
"If Republicans don't want to cooperate and help us seriously address the many crises we're facing today," he says, "then, yes, we have to move forward without them to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of good-paying, union jobs."
This is about much more than the usual wrangling between Democrats and Republicans. Sanders has a longer and more ambitious history of working with Republicans who really want to get things done -- on issues ranging from fair trade to protecting civil liberties and auditing the Pentagon -- than the vast majority of congressional Democrats. But the senator is unwilling to play the fool. If Republicans fail to bargain in good faith, he is prepared to abandon negotiations and start governing.
Sanders is delivering a similar message with interviews, statements, and social media messages that suggest the time to act has arrived.
When CNN's Wolf Blitzer floated a case for continued negotiations and compromises on the part of Democrats, the senator shot it down.
"The Republicans say they're on board with a lot of President Biden's plan when it comes to 'traditional' infrastructure -- roads, bridges, airports, stuff like that," argued Blitzer. "Are you and other progressives denying President Biden potentially a bipartisan 'win' by including all of the other issues that you're labeling infrastructure that Republicans say is not really traditional infrastructure?"
The Senate Budget Committee chair answered with facts, rather than wishful thinking.
"According to the experts in our country, the American Society of Civil Engineers, what the Republicans are proposing for 'traditional' infrastructure is only a fraction of what we need," said Sanders. "I think every American understands that our roads, and our bridges, our water systems, all of that, is really crumbling before our eyes. I'm a former mayor, and what I know is that, unless you invest in infrastructure, it's only going to get worse -- and it's only going to be more expensive. We now have the opportunity to create millions of good-paying, often union jobs rebuilding our infrastructure. What the Republicans are talking about is totally inadequate."
Totally inadequate. And totally anti-democratic.
As Sanders and his fellow progressives note, Democrats won the presidency, control of the House of Representatives, and control of the Senate in the 2020 election cycle. Now, under any reasonable measure of how the system is supposed to work, the Democrats ought to be governing. And if filibuster reform is required to jump-start the process, so be it.
Echoing the urgency of more than 100 groups that on Thursday declared, "We cannot allow the filibuster to stand in the way of progress or imperil the health of our democracy," Sanders says, "The U.S. Senate is the only institution in the world where a vote of 59-41 can be considered a defeat instead of a huge victory. Enough is enough. Let us change the outdated rules of the Senate, end the filibuster and pass a bold agenda for working families with a majority vote."
Authors Bio:
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."
