Let's get real, Bernie fans: It isn't "giving up" to admit a revolution isn't coming [View all]

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Thursday, Jan 21, 2016 06:57 AM CST

Let’s get real, Bernie fans: It isn’t “giving up” to admit a revolution isn’t coming
Sanders supporters have embraced the candidate's calls for a revolution. But structural barriers are real

Let’s get real, Bernie fans: It isn’t “giving up” to admit a revolution isn’t coming http://www.salon.com/2016/01/21/lets_get_real_bernie_fans_it_isnt_giving_up_to_admit_a_revolution_isnt_coming/ via @Salon


Gary Legum


This past week has brought the shape of the Democratic primary into sharper focus. As we head into the start of voting, anyone paying attention to the arguments being made among voters, political professionals and opinion columnists should be able to recognize that the nomination fight is a battle between Hillary Clinton’s continuation of the pragmatic and incremental leftward policy push begun by Barack Obama, and the whole-loaf, smash-the-system revolution promised by Bernie Sanders.


One argument that pundits such as Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman have made, and which I think is being yadda-yadda’d a little too much by Sanders’s supporters, is the observation that any Democratic president will be hamstrung by what will almost assuredly be a Republican-controlled Congress. Thanks to gerrymandering and demographic sorting (the habit of liberals to live in clusters in major cities while conservative voters are more evenly spread out through the country), the House of Representatives has little chance of seeing a Democratic majority either this year or in 2018.

Democrats have a better chance of retaking the Senate, but even there they will not have anything close to a 60-vote supermajority that can stop Republican obstructionism. Furthermore, there will still be enough moderate and conservative Democrats in the chamber to water down any liberal legislation. Add in that the Democratic caucus will likely be led by Chuck Schumer, who is not exactly Elizabeth Warren, and it is very likely that the Senate will be the same chokepoint it has been for most of our history. (And for which our sainted Founding Fathers designed it to be.)....................

This is something I think gets overlooked in all the talk about Sanders’s revolution. For evidence, one only need look back at the early years of the Obama administration.
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This is not to argue that everyone should forget Sanders and go vote for Hillary Clinton, though obviously I fall into the incrementalism, get-what-you-can-within-the-system’s-constraints camp. But the constraints are there, they can’t be wished away, and they make rapid change nearly impossible in our polarized times. So I think it’s important for supporters of liberalism to remember them and to decide, no matter who is the nominee, the practical goals they will need to achieve to overcome them.....................