The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel on Bernie Sanders

[portlander23]

The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel on Bernie Sanders, Kshama Sawant, and Running a 150-Year-Old Political Magazine
Eli Sanders
The Stranger

So with the October 13 Democratic presidential candidate debate in mind, who fits more with The Nation's history of pushing the country's politics in the magazine's favored direction: Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

Um, Eli, who do you think?

Bernie Sanders.

Let me say that The Nation's been covering Bernie Sanders for just under 30 years. What strikes me is how the corporate media has virtually ignored Bernie Sanders for just under 30 years. You think about the fact that he was on Meet the Press last year for the very first time, and John McCain is on every weekend, has a cot in the studio. I think Bernie Sanders, in many ways, has already won.

What do I mean? The issues he's campaigning on are receiving more attention than ever in his life. He's changed the public conversation for the better, he's put long-neglected issues on the table, and he's focused his campaign on serious problems and offered serious solutions. I think Hillary Clinton, you know, as The Nation editorialized last year: this country deserves a contested primary. Not just for the sake of the Democratic Party but for the sake of ideas which are often left off the radar which need to be heard. And Hillary Clinton needs a more progressive challenger. We've seen that...

She's laid out some very important ideas on voting rights, on incarceration, on immigration, but has definitely been moved, not just by Bernie Sanders but by the movements of our time, to take a different position on, for example, the TPP, right?

And you can say that's opportunistic. But my view is that the role of media, of movements is to hold politicians accountable. I mean, if you give them a free pass—anyone—just as if you give government a free pass, they're not going to move in directions that they might otherwise. So I think it's important to keep the pressure on. And, you know, you go to vote—that's the first step. I think one of Obama's great, tragic errors was in demobilizing a coalition that had built up during that campaign and moving inside the beltway.

[djean111]

1. Hillary is only "moving to the left" for campaign purposes. n/t

[cantbeserious]

3. ^^^ This ^^^

eom

[demwing]

2. "One of Obama's great, tragic errors"

"was in demobilizing a coalition that had built up during that campaign and moving inside the beltway."

And that was his own coalition. If we let Hillary win the WH, Bernie's movement will be forgotten in less than a heartbeat. What is her incentive to follow the progressives? She hasn't in the past, and once elected, her rhetoric will be reduced to "Bernie? Bernie who?"

[wilsonbooks]

4. I think one of Obama's great, tragic errors was in demobilizing a coalition that had built up during

that campaign and moving inside the beltway.


I find that to be a very charitable view. Someone more cynical might say that he was already inside the beltway and his stump populism was a ploy to win votes.