Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Source: Flicke (AFGE).
[Managing Editor’s note: Tikkun does not, and can not, endorse any candidate or party for political office.]
I find it heartbreaking how close we came to having Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee and eventual president of the United States. What a different convention, summer, election, country, and future we would have had! But, alas, my progressive hopes were sadly dashed – yet again. Somehow the candidate with the highest net favorability ratings – largely due to his honesty, kindness, consistency, integrity, and progressive populism – lost to the candidate with the highest unfavorability ratings.
As a doctor of social science, my job in this case is to examine the patient and diagnose the problems. My autopsy of Bernie’s historic 2016 presidential campaign reveals ten causes of death.
1. DNC.
The Democratic National Committee, chaired by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 National Campaign Co-Chair, was biased toward Hillary and against Bernie in all sorts of ways, including debate numbers and scheduling, slanting interviews and corporate mass media articles, database access, party fundraising and support, etc. The DNC broke its own rules and broke the law. If we didn’t already know it, Wikileaks proved it. The DNC rule about superdelegates was another issue in Hillary’s favor, disadvantaging any challengers.
2. Primary & Caucus Shenanigans.
Whether it was unregistered voters being allowed to vote for Hillary in the Iowa and Nevada caucuses or Bernie voters being disenfranchised in New York, California, Arizona and elsewhere or Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary in Massachusetts polling stations, these illegal actions cost Bernie votes, delegates, and nominating contests. Election Justice USA concludes that Bernie may have lost 184 pledged delegates due to irregularities and fraud; if he had been awarded them, Bernie would have had a majority of pledged delegates.
3. Corporate Mass Media.
The corporate mass media was demonstrably against Bernie, thereby minimizing his name recognition, a key factor for an underdog candidate. Bernie was given a tiny fraction of the coverage that Hillary and especially Trump received, whether on major network TV or in the New York Times. And of the little coverage that Bernie received, much of it was dismissive or otherwise negative (including about his major speeches, the many rallies across the country for Bernie, and his primary and caucus victories).
4. Wall Street.
Wall Street corporations were against Bernie and for Hillary, for good reason, pouring tens of millions of dollars into her campaign and the SuperPACs that support her. Hillary’s top donors are from Wall Street and, unfortunately, money matters.
5. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is held in high enough esteem by enough Democrats that had she endorsed Bernie, who she ideologically is closest to, he would have won Massachusetts, where he very narrowly lost, and would have garnered the support of many more Democrats during that crucial period.
6. Millennials.
The youth demographic, or Millennials, typically defined as 18-35 years old, was way disproportionately in favor of Bernie, in the range of 70-80% support, yet Millennials were also way disproportionately less likely to vote, with a pathetic voter turnout of about 15%, the lowest turnout of any age group (and only 12% in 2014). If Millennials, now a larger group than Baby Boomers and making up nearly a third of the potential electorate, had voted in significantly higher numbers, Bernie would have easily been the Democratic nominee for president.
7. Blacks.
Even though Bernie’s history, speeches, policies, and platform for racial justice were the most developed, most honest, and most favorable to the Black community, and many Black intellectuals endorsed and actively supported Bernie, the overwhelming number of African American voters sided with Hillary. If the Black Lives Matter movement, specifically, and African Americans, generally, had sided with Bernie, their closer political ally and stronger advocate, Bernie would have been the nominee.
8. Top-Down Organizations.
Although organizations that let their members vote endorsed Bernie (e.g., MoveOn, Democracy for America, Working Families Party), most organizations announced their endorsement in a top-down fashion and supported Hillary (e.g., Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers), even when they gave Bernie a higher rating than Hillary. Many other organizations, which should have been aligned with Bernie based on policy, stayed silent on the sidelines (e.g., AFL-CIO, Greenpeace, Sierra Club).
9. Armchair Activists.
Too many supporters of Bernie were armchair activists, if that at all, only acting as online supporters, and took little or no other action in support of the campaign. Even activists who did take other action, spent way too much time on minor actions with little or no effect (e.g., online polls, surveys, memes, hypotheticals, hoaxes, rumor mongering, silly name calling, and to some extent social media generally), instead of taking high-impact actions for the campaign (e.g., phone banking, canvassing, registering voters, distributing campaign material).
10. Bernie.
Bernie ran a surprisingly great campaign, even surprising himself, but it could have been much better and much more effective. Indeed, he could have won, if he had better handled the following:
a) Age.
Even though Bernie is only about 4-5 years older than Trump and Hillary, he was consistently portrayed as old, while they weren’t, and not only didn’t he do anything to disabuse this view, he often played into and amplified it.
b) Economism.
Even though Bernie had a full platform with many issues across the spectrum, he too often and too quickly focused on economic matters to the exclusion of most others, instead of embracing a deeper and more holistic politics of meaning and calling for a new bottom line that includes yet transcends economics. Bernie should have appealed to people’s whole beings, rather than so single-mindedly focusing on their wallets. Even after this was shown and known as a problem, Bernie mostly kept at it, typically ignoring or seeming to reduce many other problems, including racial and spiritual ones, to economics.
c) Socialism.
Related to this, Bernie identified himself as a socialist, albeit most often a democratic socialist. Although he greatly helped to mainstream the term and thereby educate people about it, which is positive, there are still many Americans who are against it and would not vote for a socialist, whether or not they accurately know what it means. Bernie is much more of a New Dealer than a socialist and it would have been more effective to emphasize his new deal and new bottom line, which would have better resonated with Americans. To a lesser extent, this misguided antipathy to socialism might also have been true about Bernie’s Judaism, which he unfortunately downplayed, and his secular conception of God.
d) Foreign Policy.
With the exception of opposing the Iraq War, Bernie said precious little about foreign policy and demonstrated a profound lack of interest in the subject. This made him seem less presidential and less ready to occupy the office of the president, especially while running against a former secretary of state. Bernie should have both more actively criticized Hillary’s poor judgment despite her vast foreign policy experience and put forward a positive vision of a just foreign policy consistent with his domestic one.
e) Bootstrapping.
After every state contest, and especially after every victory, Bernie should have bootstrapped on the amazing energy that people put into those contests. He should have encouraged people to stay actively involved by personally asking people to donate money to his and other progressive campaigns, to contact people in other states, and to form local branches of Our Revolution for a more bottom-up political revolution.
f) Motto.
Bernie’s campaign slogan, A Future to Believe In, was rarely spoken and not widely known. A better slogan, such as Real Deal, would have much more effectively and coherently conveyed his message and his candidacy, representing his personality, record, and policies for America, with a nice historical tie-in to FDR’s New Deal, which was often referenced in relation to his campaign.
g) VP.
Even though choosing a vice presidential running mate early would have been unusual, this was a very unusual campaign. Bernie should have chosen his strong supporter Nina Turner as VP. As an African American woman, strong feminist, and former Ohio State Representative, she could have greatly helped Bernie in these key areas where he was weaker, undercutting Hillary’s core bases of support. As a powerful speaker and strong supporter of Bernie (“The cause is just and the time is now!”), she would have been a more effective surrogate than she was and would have attracted more media and popular attention for his campaign.
Even with these fatal disadvantages, Bernie awakened millions of people, collected and spent a record amount of money from a record-breaking number of grassroots supporters without relying on SuperPACs and billionaires, helped set the political agenda and shift the public debate leftward, won 23 nominating contests while coming close in some others and garnered about 46% of pledged delegates (becoming the first non-Christian to get any delegates in America), encouraged many other progressives to get involved in the political system, and has started Our Revolution, an organization and movement to continue the political revolution he ignited.
I am highly confident that Bernie could have won the nomination, and then easily the general election against fascistic Trump, but what he accomplished is not too shabby for an old Brooklyn-born Jewish democratic socialist from the tiny state of Vermont. These are no small achievements, despite the unnatural death of the Bernie Sanders campaign for president. Time will tell what his legacy will be for America.
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Dan Brook, Ph.D. teaches Political Science at City College of San Francisco. His ebooks are available at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/brook.
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Hello Dan,
Although I agree with about everything you said, your remarks are not what we most need to hear.
The capitalist establishment, which includes the media and the Democratic establishment, is hierarchical and corrupt by nature. They will ALWAYS oppose any threat to their wealth and power with all their might.
There is only one way that we can even begin to compete with them; and that is to build a YUGE face to face movement everywhere and on every level. Neighborhoods, workplaces, co-ops, schools, places of worship; all have to be organized. Only when this is done will a political challenge be possible.
If we continue to restrict our attention to electoral politics, we will always fall short. Except for a small minority of political junkies, elections are, at most, once a year. We need to organize where we live and work EVERY DAY. And that is what we have to be talking and writing about. HOW TO ORGANIZE.
Laurence, there are MANY things we need to hear. I get what you’re saying (I’ve taught and written about organizing), but I don’t think that community organizing and electoral politics are mutually exclusive. Each should inspire the other. The Bernie campaign spread a lot of political awareness and created a lot of organizers. In any event, I encourage you to continue organizing and to write an article about your experiences and ideas.
Look: politics itself invites corruption by its very nature……..every politician is a power monger……..accumulating power, especially POWER OVER others…………so there’s no real solution other than small, local, community organizing with equal power to all……..in our world it’s a rarity and doesn’t affect the world at large enough to change things for us all.
Any human being who gets legally handed the kind of powers the president has (even taking into consideration congress’s powers) is in an almost surreal situation: what to do with that power? It’s almost beyond human nature to use it wisely even most of the time…..at best, the best of them uses those powers OCCASIONALLY wisely…………there’s too much power in too few hands ………
Although this is a nice approach to dissecting what went wrong I cannot agree with the comment on the Millennials. because I think it’s directly related to fraud with 13 million votes that will either not counted or turned in favor of Hillary Clinton. I honestly think that fraud is the main reason why Bernie didn’t get the nomination.
Fraud was definitely a major issue, as I indicated; millennials not voting was also a major issue that could have overcompensated for the fraud. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
What fraud? Sanders never disputed a result
Yes…….fraud and corruption flood all the centers of big power everywhere……….so we can go on discussing this but the world seems to be moving in its own direction nevertheless………….but the young and energetic spirits have to fight the evil activities…….it’s the way the world turns………..speaking from a elderly person’s point of view, looking back at so many past struggles for justice and liberty……..I’ve turned pessimistic……..
You’re being very vague
The fact that Bernie didn’t claim fraud is not evidence of the absence of it. Various states experienced what could be fraud (e.g., NY, CA, AZ, NV). In a country ruled by law, there would at least be investigations to search for evidence, some of which I suspect would be easy to find.
The Sanders team could have gone to court to try and proved fraud. They didn’t consider it. Investigations are not launched based on anecdotal “evidence “. There’s a bot more to it in order to devote manpower to launch a major investigations. I would think that Bernie’s lawyers did not consider it.
Damn right!! There were more new registered voters that were unable to have their voices heard than were actually able to vote. Had the voting machines not been rigged to flip votes, and the new registered voters given provisional ballots and the like, he would have (and did actually) win the primaries by a landslide. Blaming millenials at this stage is just a shitty copout and wanna be excuse they’re trying to use to justify the #DeathOfDemocracy we all just witnessed.
Saying people didn’t work hard enough for the #Revolution is bullshit as well. The number of people that phone banked, canvassed, and busted their asses for the entire last year was more than anyone can fathom. Hell, we were phone banking from abroad!! THOUSANDS showed up in Philly to protest and were again exterminated by the machine and it’s filthy tactics.
No matter how much fear mongering, propaganda pushing, lies and doubt sowing, they will never be able to force us to vote for the #QueenOfCorruption, and they’ve done it to themselves.
#NeverHillary #NeverTrump #Killary #DontKillMeHillary #BringBernieBack
Where’s the actual proof? Hard core proof that substantiates your claim . Have voting records been subpoenaed. Has Bernie, lined up beside you since he world have been the target of the conspiracy?
Sanders began with the goal of reconstructing and reinvigorating a progressive movement. Both he and his supporters were seduced into d evolving his campaign into a partisan intra-party electoral battle with an end date of whenever he lost — or very unlikely — when his term ended. Movements do not have such definite end dates. Sanders abandoned his long term goal because he — and we still think that politics are elections. But as many wise people have said, if elections could change things they would be illegal.
I don’t think Bernie abandoned his long-term goals. You may disagree with his tactics, but he believes that fascistic Trump must be defeated, even if by the very flawed Hillary, for Bernie’s long-term goals to even have a chance.
I also disagree with you about elections. We have seen, both historically and recently, and at every level – city, state, and federal – that elections matter very much and do indeed change things. If they have too often changed things for the worse, we have the power to change things for the better.
Every politicians has to compromise or else nothing gets done
most of what ‘gets done’ in compromised politics is draconian laws passed to revoke former human and citizen rights laws, and to empower conglomerate corporations to usurp all the earth’s resources by seizing foreign land for corporate exploitation.
I don’t disagree with anything my former graduate school colleague has written in the original “anatomy” piece. I do, however, respectfully disagree that Trump is a fascist. Bernie Sanders’ campaign and movement had much more in common with the spirit of Trump’s populism. Trump has remained steadfastly opposed to TPP and clearly wants to end US imperialism and warmongering. When Elizabeth Warren refused to endorse Bernie Sanders, it became very clear that her critique of Wall Street’s lethal greed was as hollow as her ridiculous cries from the bully pulpit that Tump is a bully. The Clintons–(the real bullies)– work their victims over with precision, dangling either carrot or stick. Loretta Lynch on the tarmac etc. The Clintons are the real fascists.
I did not actually say Trump is fascist, but that he is fascistic. That’s a subtle but important point. Of course it also depends on how we define fascist, though I wonder at what point in time fascists like Hitler and Mussolini became fascists and what we would have called them before that point.
Good summary. Warren declined to endorse when it counted (when Merkley endorsed him) to protect her political future rather than help transform national politics. She could even have suggested she’d accept if Bernie asked her to be VP.
Bernie was blind to the importance of engaging the Black community. Your suggestion of a Black vice-presidential candidate (another possibility: Congresswoman Maxine Waters) is an indication of what he could have done if he had thought through the necessity of a coalition with Black energy. Why did Hillary think of visiting the mothers of the Black men killed by cops, but Bernie did not? Even the TV-streamed announcement of “Our Revolution”: coming from Vermont showed a roomful of whites with one single Black face. Even by then, having lost the nomination, Bernie and his advisers did not act on the need to create a movement with serious Black presence. RULE 1: There will never be a successful progressive or radical movement in America that does not include both Black and white components. Shalom, salaam, peace, Earth! — Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center.
Little late for a postmortem when the body has already been disposed of.
The only way to defeat Trump is to vote for Hillary. Whether you like it or not, that is the only reality. This in a system they call the greatest democracy! There will hopefully be another Bernie in the future. In the meantime, if Trump does get in while you are all busy with your analysis, even the friends of the USA will be hard pushed to stay that way.
Do you really think that Hillary has more compunctions, conscience or control of her distorted ego than Trump?
Even a better person than either of those two, when handed the powers inherent in the presidential political post is more likely than not to abuse them. The extent of raw power there is in itself an evil that perpetuates and aggrandizes itself by its very nature and scope.
Do you hold tat as true for teh current president?
absolutely……and those that came before him, as well……the war mongering has been going on for quite a while…..obama just continued with the ‘tradition’……
…..not just war mongering,…….but the grand-scale corruption in every corner of the system…..
Right now, we need to stop worrying about whether Hillary is far enough left for us, and whether the DNC isn’t pure enough, and start worrying about an increasingly likely Trump victory.. For anyone who believes (as I do) that Sanders would have done better to position himself as a new New Dealer than as a “socialist,” remember that the achievement of the New Deal was to save the free enterprise system from itself, not to replace it with a different system. Those on the Left seem to be as much in their own bubble as those on the Right have been. The problem is that the Far Right, including not only radical Christian and Jewish Fundamentalists and Free Market Mystics,but now outright neo-nazis and unapologetic racialists, have broken out of the bubble and are threatening to go fully mainstream. Wake up, people!
wake up……and do what?!……..vote for the lesser of the two draconian evils?!