One of my first pieces of political writing I can still recall was a criticism of an allegedly socialist House member in the late 1990s for voting in favor of US intervention in Yugoslavia. That House member was, of course, Bernie Sanders. I still think there’s value in criticizing Bernie in some ways and in some circumstances. But let’s talk a bit more about that.
Twitter debate over the Bernie Sanders campaign degenerated into a dumpster fire a long time ago. Or, to put it more accurately, it degenerated twice. Once during the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton. And then a second time during the 2020 campaign. And so, I’m writing a post about criticizing Bernie in light of all this. Do people do it well or poorly? And how do we do it well?
Criticizing Bernie
Here are 5 theses on criticizing Bernie. Some are in apparent tension with others, but I think they hold together.
1. Criticizing Bernie is fine, and there’s plenty to criticize.
Bernie’s done numerous things worth criticizing. Let’s put them into three camps.
First, while Sanders does promote movement-building, he hasn’t yet built any sustainable movements. He shows promise, but he hasn’t taken it beyond promissory. He built the electoral vehicle Our Revolution after the 2016 election, but it mostly failed. And he moved the Overton Window to the left during and after 2016, and several states passed bills modeled on his Sandersista Trinity. That’s good. But it’s limited. His best work on this front was probably his time as Mayor of Burlington.
Second, the Sanders vision for ‘democratic socialism‘ sounds more like next stage FDR-style social democracy than socialism. And Sanders hasn’t even really hinted at how to turn the social democracy-to-socialism transition, if he even supports that transition. The same problem plagues leftist electoralists from DSA caucuses to Jacobin editors.
Third, Sanders apparently lacks a deeper vision of how identity relates to issues of socioeconomic status (SES). Sometimes he stacks them next to each other, and sometimes even integrates them locally. For example, he proposed very good platforms on criminal justice and racial justice. Pretty easily the best platforms among the candidates. But then he does things like advocate for running anti-abortion candidates and vote for anti-sex worker legislation.
2. Most Bernie critics across the political spectrum hold him to a double standard.
But let’s take a step back. Criticizing Bernie is popular, and lots of people do it. But usually not for things like what I wrote above. A few Sanders critics descend into utter horseshit. We might look at, for example, Chelsea Clinton’s disinformation campaign against Medicare for All. We can set that aside because it doesn’t merit a response.
More interesting cases are ones where 2020 supporters of, say, Booker, Harris, or Warren attack Sanders for centering SES to the exclusion of race. The criticism has merit until the part where they use it as an argument for their favorite candidates – candidates who center race to the exclusion of SES, in the case of Booker and Harris, or center means-tested programs to the (deeper, anyway) exclusion of both race and SES, in the case of Warren. We can contrast this again to the Sanders proposals on criminal justice and racial justice, which balance these issues better than any proposal from Booker, Harris, or Warren. This is all without examining the cottage industry of criticism of Sanders from various identitarian perspectives.
Oh yeah, and Booker, Harris, and Warren all voted for the same anti-sex worker legislation.
And so, here’s the gist of it. Sanders has problems, but the other candidates have deeper ones. Sanders isn’t a socialist, but certainly neither is anyone else. Sanders’s Twitter fans do bad things, but so do fans of other candidates. People hold Sanders to a higher bar, for various reasons. Some noble and some disingenuous. The only thing I’ve seen or heard Sanders doing worse than anyone else is using small events and fora for excessive self-promotion. And while he shouldn’t do that, and it’s fine to criticize him for it, it’s not a top electoral issue. None of the Sanders criticism points to…voting for someone else as the correct response.
3. Jacobin is a borderline propaganda outlet.
I’m not opposed to Jacobin. It runs a lot of great content, and it draws attention to issues and places not otherwise visible. Read its recent housing issue. It’s full of good stuff.
That said, come on guys. We get it. You’re enthusiastic about the Sanders campaign. But you’re over the top. You don’t need to constantly run hit or contrast pieces on the other candidates. I’m tired of reading about Biden and Buttigieg and Gabbard and Harris and Yang and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren and Warren. Those are all different articles on Warren, guys. Got the point. We need good leftist analysis, not social democratic red meat politics. And don’t get me started on that entire issue devoted to a Bernie utopia.
4. The mainstream US press is blatantly biased against Bernie.
The mainstream US press sets boundaries for ‘proper’ political debate. Among other functions. See Herman and Chomsky on these topics. That’s why people pressed them, however ineffectively, against covering Trump like a serious politician. And the US press has made it entirely clear it thinks Bernie Sanders operates outside those political boundaries. That we’re even having a discussion over whether the Washington Post, in particular, does this is just baffling. It does. Repeatedly. If you think it doesn’t, you’re not paying close attention.
Look, all sorts of factors influence coverage, and even the mainstream US press varies. Part of that story involves gender and race. In an earlier post on why Biden and Sanders lead, I cited in particular Kate Manne’s work on gender and media coverage. For a more recent example, we might look at racial bias in the negative coverage of Julián Castro after his dispute with Joe Biden in the third debate.
But while race and gender play a role, ideological boundary-setting is the press’s primary function here. If circumstances changed, the press might elevate a candidate like Castro or Warren. They will never elevate Bernie Sanders, at least as long as he’s a viable candidate and as far to the left as he is today. And it doesn’t matter how many women or people of color support him. They’ll move the goalposts each time.
This hits not only Sanders himself, but also the broader left. As FAIR documents, the press elevated Warren this summer in part because she’s a ‘Sanders alternative’ acceptable to both governing ideology and (perhaps) the electorate. If and when Sanders drops out, they’ll likely go on the offensive against Warren in favor of someone like Biden, Buttigieg, or Harris. The press always hits the leftmost viable candidate.
5. Bernie’s the best candidate in the Democratic primaries.
At the end of the day, he’s the best candidate. And it’s not close.
The only serious choice for the left is to vote for Sanders in the primaries or to abstain from voting in the primaries. I’ve pointed out several times in this blog the merits of the Castro and Warren campaigns. And I think those campaigns do have merits. Were either to win the nomination, they’d be worth serious consideration for a vote in the November 2020 election. But Sanders is by far the best choice in the primaries. That people on the left might vote for a different candidate calls for an error theory and a serious examination of the state of leftist electoralism in the US. It’s a bad choice, and the people making that choice are wrong. Not bad people, just people who are making a bad decision.
The error theory and examination of leftist electoralism will have to come later, though.
The ‘Why’ of Criticizing Bernie
I think we’re left with the issue of goals and methods. When people criticize Sanders to push him to the left on some issue, or to push the US as a whole to the left on that issue, the criticism is worthwhile. Or at least defensible. Hell, I don’t even have a major beef with people who argue against Sanders because they prefer election boycotts. But when people criticize Sanders disingenuously from the right, or from some sort of identitarian or narrowly representationalist perspective, these aren’t worthwhile criticisms.
