There are many reasons to love Iowa: corn, bacon, cold winters, lovely people. One of my favorite reasons is the New Pioneer Food Co-op. Oh, and we get to vote first. Yes, that last one is controversial, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Much of it justified. But I’m not here to discuss fairness in the nomination process. I’ve already done that. Today, we Iowans vote (actually, caucus). I’m voting for Bernie Sanders. When your time comes, I think you should, too.
Here’s why.
The Substance of the Bernie Sanders Campaign
You’re probably starting with questions like these: What do I want from a president, and can this candidate deliver it? I’ll divide this post accordingly. Voting can be the art of putting together the substantive and the pragmatic in the right way.
1.Sanders passes the ‘minimum decency’ test.
There’s not a lot I want from a president. At the outset, all I ask is for someone who advocates policies that won’t harm the world compared to how they found it. Amazingly, few candidates meet this minimum decency test.
Here’s the thing about the minimum decency test. Most voters are Democrats or Republicans, or at least they vote like one or the another. You’re probably in the same camp. If you’re a Democrat, you probably think Republican politicians harm the world. And vice-versa if you’re a Republican. The only difference is I think all of you are right. Presidents from both parties advocate policies that harm the world compared to how they found it. They do so by advancing foreign policy that sustains US hegemony and domestic policy that more closely aligns to corporate interests than to popular interests.
Maybe it’s a dark and cynical view of presidential politics, but it has the merit of being an accurate one. And so, a different question: what sorts of policies wouldn’t harm the world, and which candidates advocate those?
In terms of policy, I’d say social democracy in the domestic policy realm and anti-interventionism in the foreign policy realm. I want to see support for, e.g., single-payer health insurance and other social democratic programs paired with consistent opposition to war and interference with other countries.
Among remaining candidates, Bernie Sanders best meets the ‘minimum decency’ test. Elizabeth Warren is a borderline case, but she arguably meets it, too. Everyone else fails.
2. Bernie Sanders has the best domestic policy platform.
Sanders builds his domestic policy program around social democracy. He’s not a socialist, but on routes for a socialist transition social democracy is the starting point. And if you’re not a socialist, Sanders checks most ‘progressive’ boxes. So, Sanders easily wins by socialist measures and edges out Warren by progressive ones.
Central to his platform is the ‘Sandersista Trinity‘: a single-payer health insurance system (Medicare for All), a $15 minimum wage, and free college. He thinks the state should guarantee everyone’s basic needs so they can reach their full potential. Sanders added an immigration plan aimed at curbing enforcement and a plan for large-scale investment in affordable housing. These, too, form key parts of basic needs. And the program goes well beyond that of any other candidate.
Beyond the broad social democratic vision, there are two areas where Sanders stands out. One is his plans on racial and criminal justice in both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, plans putting a spotlight on the structural relationship between race and class in the US. His racial justice plan addresses issues faced both by middle class and working class people of color. His focus on fighting home loan discrimination and encouraging HBCU funding primarily impacts the former, and his focus on ending cash bail and mandatory minimum sentences primarily impacts the latter. The free college plan, of course, unites the groups.
Second, he’s released a labor platform like nothing the US has ever seen at the national level. He wants to make it much easier to unionize, and he wants to stretch the benefits of unions beyond the individual workplace and across industries. This includes building ‘just cause’ protection for most workers currently under ‘at-will employment’. It includes establishing sector-wide bargaining so that in an industry enjoys the benefits of collective bargaining.
3. Bernie Sanders has the best foreign policy platform.
There’s a low bar on foreign policy. Not killing anyone for a year or two would be sufficient to make a person the best foreign policy president in a long time. From invasions to drone wars, each US president kills thousands of people in the service of US hegemony. Each candidate other than Bernie Sanders – including Elizabeth Warren – has the voting record and platform of someone who would continue this way of doing things.
Ironically, my biggest reservation about caucusing for Sanders in 2016 was his mixed voting record on foreign policy. He’s voted for a few interventions over the years – Kosovo and Afghanistan most notably – that I opposed. More fundamentally, I thought he lacked an animating vision of how the US should relate to the world. He seemed to regret some of those votes by 2016, but he didn’t yet have a compelling story about how he’d handle those situations differently now. He was always much, much better than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, but “better than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy” is a dreadfully low bar.
I think Bernie Sanders has developed much of that vision by 2020. He consistently stands against interventionism, even in cases where stepping in has broad support in foreign policy circles. Elizabeth Warren has moved in an anti-interventionist direction in the last year or two, but her recent comments on Iran highlight how she’s still well behind Sanders. Other Democrats, like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, are standard foreign policy hawks who would be utterly disastrous on these issues.
Do I completely trust Sanders on foreign policy? No. It’s still the major gap for a left-wing political program. But he’s way ahead of the field. If you’re looking for the best foreign policy candidate, it’s Bernie Sanders.
4. Bernie Sanders has done the best work on political methods.
American presidents know how to make change. First they win elections, building political capital. Then they negotiate with Congress, spending that political capital to get the best deal. It’s a wholesome American story, suitable for a novel or a season of The West Wing. The problem? It’s not accurate in the real world of 2020. You should look for it in the fiction section, not in electoral politics.
Trouble is, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg still live in this world. But the Biden and Buttigieg vision of how politics works is best left to historical re-enactment. Elizabeth Warren’s brand of wonkish progressivism is a step above Biden and Buttigieg, but it’s not the right method, either. You don’t change the world by dazzling your political rivals with endlessly detailed proposals even highly engaged voters need 20 hours to study. None of these candidates will encourage and engage with mass popular movements.
The Republican Party is viscerally opposed to social democracy, yes, but that’s not the heart of the problem. We can work through philosophical disagreements with good faith and careful negotiation. But there’s no possibility of that right now. The GOP has gradually, inexorably drifted toward racist, white identitarian politics. It can only be defeated, not engaged. And in its most recent, racist form, it can only be destroyed.
Biden doesn’t get this. Buttigieg doesn’t get this. And Warren doesn’t get this. Sanders is closer to the point. Only Sanders engages new or apathetic voters, encourages broader organizing and movement-building, and takes new ideas to new audiences.
Pragmatic Reasons to Vote for Bernie Sanders
5.Bernie Sanders polls very well among Democrats.
MSNBC and other Democratic Party outlets love to present Bernie Sanders as a divisive figure among Democrats. If you’re plugged in to those outlets – or plugged in to Twitter – you’ve probably missed the fact that this is completely wrong. Sanders polls very well among Democrats in terms of favorability. He’s in a statistical tie in favorability among Democrats with Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren – and ahead of Pete Buttigieg – in the regular Economist/YouGov poll. And he’s in first place in the regular Morning Consult poll.
Sanders’s Democratic opponents love asserting he can’t ‘unite the party’. After all, he’s an independent who criticizes the Democratic Party and supports insurgent primary challengers. But don’t buy it. I’ll grant Sanders is likely to spark discontent among Democrats in the media and on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Regular Democratic voters, on the other hand, love him. He’s at least as popular as the other candidates, and measurably more popular than Pete Buttigieg.
Bernie Sanders can unite the party as well as anyone else running.
6. Bernie Sanders polls well against Trump.
People love claiming ‘far left’ candidates can’t win, but there’s no real evidence for the claim. Democrats nominated moderates in 2004 and 2016. They lost. Democrats nominated the more ‘progressive’ candidate in 2008. They won. Go back through history and you’ll find a mix of more centrist and more leftist candidates with a random selection of wins and losses. Ideology within party plays no apparent role in who wins general elections.
We know very little about who would do best against Trump, because polls only start having predictive value about 11-12 months before the election. What do the polls show? They show two candidates doing well against Trump: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. If electability is your major issue, I have two things for you. First, there’s very little we know right now about which candidate is most electable. And second, what little we know suggests Bernie Sanders is as good as anyone else.
Donald Trump’s approval rating in November 2020 will have the biggest impact on who wins the election. Biden or Sanders would likely maximize Democrats’ chances relative to, say, Buttigieg or Warren, but that’s uncertain. And given Biden’s long history of mediocre campaigning and Sanders’s history of winning tough elections, there’s a good case for taking Sanders over Biden on what little electability grounds you’ve got.
7. Bernie Sanders has both broad and deep support.
We know the Sanders base is the most diverse. He does well among all major groups of Democratic voters, with particular strengths among young people, left-leaning independents, and Latinx voters. By contrast, Biden, Buttigieg, and Warren win only regular Democratic voters and offer little potential to expand the Democratic coalition. The Buttigieg and Warren bases lean particularly white and highly educated.
And the Sanders base won’t just vote for him. They’ll knock on doors. They’ll nag their parents, friends, neighbors, and even frenemies to vote for him, too. They’ve made more than 5 million donations to him at about $15-20 a pop. No one has ever run a national campaign like that in the US.
Enthusiasm matters, and Bernie Sanders has the kind of enthusiasm candidates like Biden, Buttigieg, and Warren could only dream of having.
A Future To Believe In
I think the Sanders slogan summarizes what sets his candidacy apart from others. The most important changes don’t start with elected officials. They start with popular movements. But elected officials can set out a vision and rally people to it. Bernie Sanders can do that much more effectively than any Democrat running for president.
Too many Americans face barriers while they’re trying to vote. But for most of us, it’s not too hard a task. It usually doesn’t take more than 15-20 minutes, perhaps a bit longer if you’re caucusing in Iowa. On the whole, it’s low effort for most. Bernie Sanders is the best candidate, and he puts the US in in the best position to move toward a comprehensive social democratic system. With everyone’s basic needs met, we can work toward greater accomplishments, both individually and collectively.
Take a few minutes to vote for Bernie, and then spend much more time fighting for bigger and better things.
