Can We Change the Political System? Strategic Lessons of the Bernie Sanders Campaign

[Lodestar]

A VERY important article. STRATEGY PEOPLE!
Here are some excerpts, but it really must be read in its entirety.
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However, the accumulating fallout from the party's right turn has left Clinton very vulnerable to a candidate like Sanders, for whom she represents the very personification of the party's alliance with Wall Street and corporate America and the devastation it has wreaked. Sanders has thus thrown a wrench in the works, triggering an unprecedented reappraisal of the Clintons' destructive record. In fact, the primary contest has rapidly turned into a national referendum on Clintonism, which -- in the short run at least -- has worked in Sanders' favor.

At the same time, this dynamic also has serious strategic implications for Sanders' long-term objectives. The more he exposes the Clintons as the embodiment of a corrupt political establishment, the more implicated anyone remotely connected to the Clintons becomes. This includes the great majority of Democrats in Congress.

It also includes the Obama administration, which represents the continuation of Clintonism, both in its policies and many of its personnel. This effect is only intensified by the fact that one of Clinton's main lines of defense against Sanders' assault has been to associate herself with Obama, not only by embracing most of his policies but also by offering him as an example of someone who, like her, has long taken Wall Street money.

Not surprisingly, as Sanders' criticism of Clinton has intensified, growing numbers of congressional Democrats have bristled at how it has implicated them and have sharpened their criticisms of him in return. Particularly noteworthy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has already declared his plans for a tax increase and a single-payer health care system dead on arrival. Regarding single-payer, she declared: "It's no use having a conversation about something that's not going to happen."

This puts Sanders in an awkward position, as was illustrated during the New Hampshire debate. In response to a question about how he planned to accomplish his agenda, when, unlike Clinton, he does not have the backing of congressional Democrats, Sanders desperately tried to establish his own Democratic Party bona fides. He insisted that he has been a de facto loyal Democrat, even while a nominal independent, his entire congressional career, noting that his Democratic colleagues have long rewarded him by naming him to important committee positions. In essence, he was insisting that, like Clinton, he too is part of the Democratic establishment. Three weeks later, in an interview with Chris Matthews, he tried to have it the other way, insisting that he is "not an inside-the-beltway guy," despite

Thus, by choosing to run as a Democrat, Sanders finds himself caught in something of a trap. To win the nomination and make the case for his democratic socialist program, he has to maximize his criticism of Clinton (and by implication Democrats in general). However, if he loses and backs Clinton in the general election (as he has promised to do), he will be complicit in perpetuating Clintonism. Indeed, the more people he mobilizes by contrasting himself with Clinton, the greater the sense of disillusionment it may produce if he falls short. Alternatively, should he win both the nomination and the general election, he will have to work with, and thus placate, the very "establishment" on whose cooperation he has built his entire congressional career and whom he is now alienating -- with all the limitations that implies.having spent 25 years in Congress.

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Insidiously, the rightward turn plays into the hands of mainstream Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who are then positioned to blackmail their voting base into supporting their own move to the right by raising the specter of the increasingly extreme Republicans. And as the Democrats move further to the right, they enable the Republicans to go even farther down that road, thereby intensifying the downward spiral. Thus, contrary to those who claim that there are no differences between Democrats and Republicans, the rightward march of the political system in fact thrives on them. This is the dynamic at the heart of a competition between "lesser" and "greater" evils.


An Alternative Inside-Outside Strategy

In order to reverse this dynamic, a radically different inside-outside strategy is therefore called for -- one specifically designed to counter the sources of power of Big Business and its allies, and thus capable of realizing Sanders' goal of less money and more people. First and foremost, this means placing a priority on constructing a source of power external to and relatively independent of the political arena -- namely, mass social movements that are committed to building politically autonomous organizations (unions, co-ops, community organizations etc.), to disrupting business as usual (via strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and the like), and to entering the electoral arena only very warily and with the goal of transforming it.

Clearly, we should not romanticize (much less fetishize) social movements, precisely because they are beset by such significant collective action problems. It is also necessary to acknowledge that their current strength is at a low historical ebb. But without the kind of militant social movements that made the advances of the 1930s and 1960s possible, it is hard to imagine countering the power of capital and its allies. However difficult they may be to build in this day and age, they are no less necessary.

The second imperative is to democratize the political system so that it is more susceptible to pressure from below and becomes an arena that serves the interests of the great majority... cont'd

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35375-could-we-change-the-political-system-strategic-lessons-of-the-bernie-sanders-campaign

[TIME TO PANIC]

1. We have our work cut out for us.

Last edited Tue May 17, 2016, 06:06 PM - Edit history (1)

...you would think the threat of MASS EXTINCTION would light a fire up our asses.

[GoldenThunder]

2. The problem we face...

...is not political in nature. We are trying desperately to survive within a collapsing economy embedded within a collapsing empire embedded within a collapsing ecosystem. I cherish democracy every bit as much as you do but even I recognize that we now find ourselves in a situation that we're not going to vote our way out of. We need to shift or focus away from the political realm and begin to think and live tactically in order for our ideals to survive this collapse. Only when this cataclysm has played itself out will we have the opportunity to foster our ideals through the political process.

We have now entered The Age of Great Consequence.

[Lodestar]

3. Yes, I hear you. Politics seems like a small piece within a collapsing system

and it's difficult to know where to hang on and where to let go.

I'm curious. What do you mean by "think and live tactically".

[GoldenThunder]

4. Great ideals need living people to foster them. If you foster great ideals...

...Don't die. Survive no matter what.