Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties
Bernie Sanders: We Need More Working-Class Candidates to Challenge Both Parties
The senator says in this exclusive interview that challengers to status quo politics can run in Democratic primaries or as independents.
Bernie Sanders caused a stir last week, when the independent senator from Vermont and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination sent a post-election email to his progressive supporters across the country. In it, he argued that the Democrats suffered politically in 2024 at least in part because they ran a campaign that focused on “protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges.”
In contrast, said Sanders, “Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.” Yes, he explained, “the ‘change’ that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.”
Despite that the reality of the threat they posed, Trump and the Republicans still won a narrow popular-vote victory for the presidency, along with control of the US House. That result has inspired an intense debate over the future direction not just of the Democratic Party but of the country. And the senator from Vermont is in the thick of it.
In his email, Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus who campaigned in states across the country this fall for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket, asked a blunt question: “Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life?”
His answer: “Highly unlikely. They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.”
Best reply so far
83Where is this?
Must've hit hard.
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Cant do that while Citizens United ruling still stands and Musk can buy whatever president he wants.
26Dont forget to add Aipac to this lists. I have no idea how they aren’t scrutinized more commonly. I am sure they played a big part this election.
Imagine if there was a pro chinese organization being politically active in the US openly lobbying and funding both US parties for chinese interests.
Its bad on a silver plater.
20Because it's anti-semetic if you stop them from bribing, blackmailing, and spying on our politicians.
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And who is going to undo any of that first?
The key is to look beyond myopic electoralism as the only way a party can express power and organize. Organize with direct action, organize labor, and teach socialism.
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Yes, and they need to run as third party. The Democratic Party has proven that they will destroy any attempt to push their party left.
13What will more candidates do?
I don't see how that addresses the issue, at least on a federal level. Bernie was one of the most popular candidates in previous elections and that didn't count for anything. It's clear that the game is rigged. Look at other countries, where the equivalent party to the Democrats (that is, the 'middle left') has a leadership still beholden to corporate interests despite their working class rank-and-file and substantial union lobbying.
Third parties already exist and you can see how viable they are. The FPTP spoiler effect isn't going away any time soon.
10Third parties already exist and you can see how viable they are. The FPTP spoiler effect isn’t going away any time soon.
Well... if the issue of slavery was central to the development of the Republican Party, and the working class struggles of Europe led to the creation of Labour and SocDem Parties in Europe
There is a slim chance, that by precedent, one breaking issue could widen up, as to create a new political party that swallows up and destroys one of the moribund parties, through its absorption of its former key constituencies
(though it must take advantage of the power vacuum fully) (emphasis on the term 'slim', to refer to 1%)
Heck, we could follow Canada, and have it so that America relies on multi-partisan coalitions, rather than Dems, Reps, or even both alone
Then, again, Idk Americans, so mindlessly downvote me if ye want...
Nothing in life is ever so permanent...
10Aside from our need for voting reform, the bigger issue lies in that most prominent media outlets are owned by the same billionaires that are bankrolling the two parties. No third (or fourth, fifth, etc) will have chance in hell at gaining ground in the current media climate because they will immediately be scrubbed and erased from the narrative.
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Bernie didn’t stand a chance because both of the “parties” are corrupt af. More candidates that don’t require some corporate controlled party to endorse them to actually show up on the ballot, is exactly what we need.
You can then take it further by outlawing absolutely any lobbying and sponsorships of political campaigns; have an equal amount of funds set aside that allows each candidate an equal amount of airtime/advertising/etc.. You could take it even further by having a government owned and dedicated channel for each candidate to showcase their agenda and goals that they’d like to run on, with proper fact checking and ability for voters to hold those candidates accountable post elections.
Simply saying “more candidates won’t fix it”, is the same as not doing anything at all. We need to separate all the corporate parties and interests from our democracy.
7You can then take it further by outlawing absolutely any lobbying and sponsorships of political campaigns; have an equal amount of funds set aside that allows each candidate an equal amount of airtime/advertising/etc… You could take it even further by having a government owned and dedicated channel for each candidate to showcase their agenda and goals that they’d like to run on, with proper fact checking and ability for voters to hold those candidates accountable post elections.
I don't understand how these good ideas will become law until there are a majority of elected representatives outside of the two corrupt parties.
I also don't believe a majority of elected representatives outside of the two corrupt parties will form until those ideas become laws.
The game is rigged.
Simply saying “more candidates won’t fix it”, is the same as not doing anything at all.
It is absolutely not. If we can analyze a situation and conclude ahead of time that a strategy is not viable, then we can avoid wasting huge amounts of effort, time and money on something as functionally useful as doing nothing at all. When I say 'the game is rigged', I'm not saying do nothing. I'm saying don't play the game and expect to win. There is a world of politics outside the 4 year cycle of elections which has historically proven itself capable of gaining workers rights, protecting minority groups and improving our lives. (This also don't mean to simply ignore electoral politics, even Bernie's campaign was pragmatically useful in some ways, but don't expect that we're going to topple the mafia with trendy campaigns and ballots)
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at least on a federal level
The FPTP spoiler effect isn't going away any time soon.
You are 100% spot on. What we need are progressive candidates on the local level, were voting rules are determined, to push Rank Choice Voting. The Two Party System is a result of FPTP voting; take that away and implement RCV and the Two Party System will begin to crumble naturally.
5Yep. And TODAY is the fucking time to talk about it. We just came off an election where a lot of folks were feeling bad about their choices.
4The Two Party System is a result of FPTP voting; take that away and implement RCV and the Two Party System will begin to crumble naturally.
I agree that FPTP systematically promotes a two-party system and ranked choice voting enables it to me more easily removed, but I would point out that it's not an automatic inevitability that RCV will . Australia, for example, has had RCV (IRV) since 1918:
The preferential system was introduced for federal elections in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party was seen to have split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative federal government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk.
Yet I would classify Australia as effectively a two party system for many of its decades (if we treat the Coalition as a single party), with 90%+ of votes going to one of two parties, until the past few decades.
I want to emphasize I'm not disagreeing, because one could characterize this recent change as it naturally crumbling, albeit with factors causing it to only really catalyze recently: [quote re: 2022 federal election]
Australia is unusual in electing independents at all, let alone in large numbers. There are more independents elected to the Australian House of Representatives than elected to the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand Parliaments put together. The recent growth in minor party and independent representation is just the latest example in a long history of power sharing in Australian parliaments.
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More candidates down ballot, not just top of the ticket. Get working class people in local and state government, who can help drive forward voting reform.
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10Not even that, they went with the 2020 playbook of "Hey, at least I'm not Trump." It worked in 2020 due to Trump's shit being fresh in everyone's minds, plus his bungled covid response. Now that covid is basically in the rearview mirror (as far as the majority of the population is concerned) and prices are through the roof, it's once again time to blame the democrats for the previous administration's fiscal irresponsibility and go with the big spenders once again.
8
More Americans align ideologically with the Greens anyways. What Workers need to do is organize and read theory. I have an Introductory Marxist Reading List if anyone wants to start somewhere but doesn't know how.
8Stop making campaigns so expensive and you might see that. We have had a couple "working class" candidates in the past but they were extremely niche so didn't garner much support
5I had a giant fight with relatives about Bernie Sanders way back when. They were basically arguing that even though they did not fear "socialism" (or so they claimed), they didn't like Bernie simply because he was too old. Biden was the way forward, they said.
I think about that a lot, every time I see Bernie still keeping it real.
4The democratic party spent a ton of resources this election on barring progressive candidates from running. Bernie himself endorsed Kamala. Stop listening to anything any of them say, they are all fighting a battle to keep you from supporting progressive candidates.
3Stop listening to anything any of them say
Exactly! Cover your ears and go nanner nanner naner I can't hear you. That'll show them!
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We need to replace First-past-the-post voting so we can have more then two viable political parties.
3Both parties love FPTP. Putting the cart before the horse is impossible.
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Yes, maybe democrats should have pushed for political literacy in schools. Yet they kept their citizens in the dark on how to participate in using their right to run for office.
3If it didn't cost $millions we might have more working class candidates. If ballot access was more accessible we would have more working class candidates.
1We agree, Bernie. We agree.
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