How to Abet the Right: Bernie Sanders and the Damaging Political Laziness of Blaming Democrats
Back in 2016, Bernie Sanders’ campaign in the Democratic presidential primary breathed life into American electoral politics, adding vibrancy and breadth in vigorously elevating working-class interests and making the inequities of the U.S. class system a central issue in the national political conversation. He didn’t shy away from the “S” word–socialism–and reporting at the time indicated a growing curiosity and positive inclination in voters toward socialism, suggesting an at least momentary thawing of the debilitating “anti-communist” ideology which has been so deeply embedded in American culture and thought and which has without a doubt severely hamstrung progressive political discourse and thinking for generations.
Sanders has persisted in his crusade as self-proclaimed champion of the working class; but his self-congratulatory advocacy has sunk to the level of self-aggrandizing grandstanding that actually gives oxygen to right-wing talking points, levying great harm against working-class Americans and their families. Moreover, in what seems like it can only be bad faith, Sanders grossly misrepresents the Democratic Party and the realities of the political processes of–and obstacles to–change available in the three branches of government.
Sanders’ distortions are damaging precisely because they interfere in–and risk disarming–efforts to imagine a narrative of progress in socialist directions and to understand the role of electoral politics within that narrative.
Let me explain what I mean by Sanders’ distortions of political process and his fairly gross and therefore damaging misrepresentation of the Democratic Party—and by damaging, I mean even to the cause of those seeking a more socialist system in America.
In his election post-mortem, Sanders launched into his well-worn riff accusing the Democratic Party of abandoning the working class, asserting that it "should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right."
We need to critically assess in layers Sanders’ accusation here that the Democratic Party abandoned the working class.
For starters, we need to recognize that part of what’s damaging about his rhetoric is that it repeats and thus reinforces right-wing talking points, implicitly advancing Republican claims that they are the party that represents working-class interests. Sanders’ simplistic and often off-base critique does as much to shepherd working-class voters into the deadly embrace of Republicans more than anything the Democrats themselves do. Sanders’ self-serving rhetoric, in fact, fuels the fascist turn. And this wouldn’t be the first time. Back in 2016, Sanders’ hesitancy, outright lethargy, in endorsing Hillary Clinton against the horror Trump represented may very well have been the difference in inflicting a Trump presidency on America in the first place, as his supporters who turned to Trump in swing states may very well have decided the election.
Second, let’s assess the accuracy of Sanders’ claim, starting with the question of what it would mean to abandon the working class. I’ll stipulate that the Democratic Party is certainly not a party committed to achieving a classless society, but does that really mean, particularly within the current context of American electoral politics, that Democrats have abandoned the working class?
Ironically, or more precisely, hypocritically, Sanders congratulated himself in a post-election op-ed for creating with President Joe Biden a strongly pro-working-class platform, writing:
As an Independent member of the US Senate, I caucus with the Democrats. In that capacity I have been proud to work with President Biden on one of the most ambitious pro-worker agendas in modern history.
We passed the American Rescue Plan to pull us out of the COVID-19 economic downturn; made historic investments in rebuilding our infrastructure and in transforming our energy system; began the process of rebuilding our manufacturing base; lowered the cost of prescription drugs and forgave student debt for five million Americans. Biden promised to be the most progressive president since FDR and, on domestic issues, he kept his word.
So where’s the Democrats’ abandonment of the working class?
And the fact of the matter is that in many ways Democrats tend to favor and, indeed, champion policy that is by and large favorable to working-class interests, even if certainly not revolutionary, while Republicans tend to advocate for policies that are not just less favorable but are absolutely adverse to the interests of most Americans, especially working-class families.
And don’t believe Sanders himself. Here are a few other contrasts to consider:
Democrats have supported measures to expand access to affordable healthcare for Americans while Republicans have routinely opposed such measures, seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act on umpteen occasions with no plan to replace it despite assertions to the contrary. Moreover, Republican governors have refused federal funds that would have enabled them to expand Medicaid to more people in their states.
Republicans routinely oppose raising the federal minimum wage while Democrats by and large support doing so.
Republicans refused to extend the child tax credit Biden had instituted, which reduced child poverty by 30%
Republican governors have refused federal funding to help working families address food insecurity.
Harris in her campaign proposed a tax plan that would have provided tax cuts to Americans making less than $400,000, while Trump and the Republicans continue to pursue more tax cuts for the wealthy after already giving a huge tax cut to the wealthiest Americans and corporations in Trump’s first term. The monies involved in these tax cuts could provide great relief to working-class Americans and mark a basic step toward addressing the grotesque economic inequality in the U.S. and recognizing that workers create wealth and that the wealthy rely on workers and the U.S. infrastructure to create their wealth and thus should help pay for its upkeep and updating.
Biden and Harris demonstrated their inclination and ability to take on corporate greed and price-gouging when they took on big pharma and dramatically reduced insulin costs for seniors. While it’s just one instance of reigning in corporations, Americans should understand this move as one iteration of a larger strategy, which includes allowing Medicare to negotiate and thus lower drug costs..
We see no movement from Republicans, who only want to de-regulate corporations.
And you only have to open your ears or eyes for two seconds to decipher the fact that Democrats routinely seek to protect programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid–some of the most socialized elements of our political economy–while Republicans never cease to talk about the need to cut if not eliminate them.
So, it’s hard to see how Democrats are not supporting a pro-working-class agenda, even if it’s not an anti-capitalist agenda.
And Sanders’ bad faith comes into play when we consider that he actually knows how Congress works and should know that Republicans routinely obstruct efforts of Democrats to pass progressive legislation.
He knows better than to blame Democrats for failures by the President and Congressional Democrats to address the gross inequities of U.S. class society when the legislative process simply does not allow for it given Republican obstructionism.
Knowing this fact full well, Sanders’ holding Democrats responsible for government’s failures to address working-class interests distorts how the political process actually works and thus also threatens to misdirect political energies and obscure what might be a more efficacious narrative of political change.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who in my view is much more earnest and astute socialist than Sanders–and certainly less arrogant and self-congratulatory–offers a very different socialist narrative for activists who really want change. She supported Biden before he dropped out, explaining how, even with the genocide going on in Gaza, this support made sense:
“You can look at both of these individuals oppositionally as well, depending on what issue you have. But I would rather, even in places of stark disagreement, I would rather be organizing under the conditions of Biden as an opponent on an issue than Trump, who is not… he seeks to dismantle American democracy.”
She underlined the need to take Trump’s retributive and authoritarian rhetoric seriously:
“I am taking that personally, very seriously, because we will not be able to organize for any movement towards anything if we are facing the jailing of dissidents. I mean, this is the kind of authoritarianism that he threatens.”
Imagine that?!? A socialist talking about the conditions for organizing. Notice that she doesn’t think about electoral politics as an end in itself but rather conceptualizes it as one piece, one place to make a choice, in the larger puzzle of American political possibility. She articulates a more nuanced and complex narrative of social change, of socialist progress.
And notice we don’t really hear Sanders talk about organizing. Most self-proclaimed socialists I’ve talked to who rejected electoral politics or wrote in third party tickets, weren’t out organizing or canvassing for third-party candidates. They were sitting on their butts smugly rejecting the Democrats, much like Sanders.
But one has to be pretty naive not to entertain and see the virtue of Ocasio-Cortez’s analysis.
Organizing conditions are huge, as a progressive political agenda will not be realized in the electoral arena alone, but electoral politics can help set the stage.
Republicans are historically anti-union and Project 2025 is especially designed to undermine labor unions. Yet we know labor unions further democracy by offering strong representation to workers and that facilitating labor organizing is key to achieving both political and economic democracy. Ford workers, for example, in the wake of the UAW strike in 2023, received on average $10,000 each through their profit-sharing agreement.
I don’t really hear Sanders talking about the Democrats’ role in creating a more fertile ground for labor organizing.
But to get a greater sense of how supporting the Democratic Party helps create better conditions for progressive politics, just consider the importance of the Supreme Court.
After Trump won in 2016 and appointed Neil Gorsuch to the court in 2017, the Supreme Court was able to undermine unions in the Janus decision, preventing unions from collecting fair share dues. This was big, even if unions have done an admirable job withstanding this blow.
And we shouldn’t forget the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the violence that decision has unleashed on women, who constitute a significant constituency in the working class–or perhaps Sanders didn’t notice.
But Sanders, who is part of the Legislative Branch, really doesn’t talk much about these three branches of government and how our political processes actually work.
He might help a lot if he did, if he put his energies into helping voters understand their interests.
Instead, his simplistic blaming of Democrats is just intellectually and politically lazy, and it fosters a political laziness among progressives, disarming activism and misdirecting progressive energies.
It’s just silly to insist Democrats don’t offer a stark alternative to the Republicans for working-class voters and that they have abandoned the working class. And it’s not just silly; it’s dangerous. I fear this danger lies ahead come January 20.