Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) recently gave an interview to Thomas Frank at Salon.com. It was a very good interview, and I urge you to go to that site and read the whole thing. But there were a few questions at the end of the interview that I found especially interesting. Bernie was asked if he was going to run for president in 2016, would he run as a Democrat or Independent, and what a politician could do to solve the growing problem of inequality in this country. Here is what he said:I wanted to talk to you about your own plans for 2016. You haven’t said all that much in public, but it would be nice to know… What I’ll tell you is what I do say in public, which is that, at a time when the middle class is collapsing; when we have more people living in poverty than ever before and we have huge income and wealth inequality; when we are the only major nation on earth that does not have a national healthcare system; when we have millions of young people leaving college deeply in debt; when we have the planetary crisis of climate change; when we, because of Citizens United, have a billionaire class now controlling our political process, we need candidates who are prepared to stand up without apology representing the working families of America and are prepared to take on the billionaire class which controls so much of America. I think that’s absolutely imperative that that takes place. What I have said is that I am giving thought to running for president. I haven’t made that decision. It’s a very, very difficult decision. I have gone to Iowa on a couple of vacations. I’ll be back there. I’ve gone to New Hampshire. I’ll be there this Saturday. And I’ve gone to other places in the country including the south—North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi—to get a sense of how people are feeling. But yes, I am giving thought and I will make the decision at the appropriate time. People always talk about how hard campaigning is. I personally really like Iowa, I think it would be fun to spend a lot of time in Iowa. I agree with you. We were in Iowa last week and I had three town meetings and we had one a week ago Sunday night. We had 450 people coming out in Des Moines, Iowa, for what I thought was a great meeting. Would that mean running as a Democrat, because the Iowa caucuses… That’s a decision, also, that I have to think about. There are advantages and disadvantages of running as an independent and as a Democrat. That’s something I have to talk to a whole lot of people about and sort out. When I was in Iowa, most people thought I should run as a Democrat. I was in New York City the other day, most people thought I should run as an independent. The advantage is pretty obvious: Right now, there is a whole lot of anger and frustration at the two-party system, and more and more people are registering as independents. On the other hand, If you run as an independent, then you have to set up a 50-state political infrastructure which is very difficult in some states. In other words, you have to get an enormous amount of signatures just to get on the ballot, and it is quite possible that in some states the regulations are so onerous and unfair that you may not be able to do it. Those are issues that I just have to talk to a lot of people about. Speaking of that, one of my own personal favorite movements was a third-party movement in the 1890s called Populism. You brought up the two-party monopoly, which is something that drives me crazy, and it’s one of the many things that ensures that you don’t get a responsive system. Is there any way that the two-party monopoly will ever get challenged? Well I should tell you that, as you may or may not know, I was mayor of the city of Burlington for 8 years. In this city, while it was not a legal political party, given Vermont state law, in our city we had three political factions: The Republicans, the Democrats, and what we then called the independent coalition. And the independent coalition, I was the mayor as an independent. We had five out of 13 seats on the city council. Not a majority, but—I think it was 6 out of 13 for a while—but enough for veto power, which I used. So we did it in Burlington. Now, in the state of Vermont, you have the Progressive Party, which was an outgrowth of that effort, which is now the most successful progressive third party in America, which has three state senators and, I can’t remember, six, seven members of the House, and more to come in this election. So in Vermont you are seeing a significant, progressive third party effort. One last question: What is going to turn around the drift toward inequality in this country? What measures could actually happen? What you can do? What a politician can do. I’ll tell you what you do. If you did the following things, it wouldn’t solve all the problems, but you’d have a profound impact on income and wealth inequality: First of all, you raise the minimum wage to a living wage so that the people who are working 40 hours a week are not living in poverty. Number two, and maybe most importantly, you put Americans back to work. Real unemployment today is not 6.1 percent, it is 12 percent. Youth unemployment is 20 percent. If we invest a trillion dollars in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, you can create 13 million decent paying jobs, and I think we need to do that. Thirdly, you stop companies from throwing American workers out on the street and moving to China or Vietnam or Mexico by creating a trade system that works for working people and not just corporate America. You do those things. Then you institute tax reform which asks the wealthy and large corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. You make college affordable and deal with the issue of student debt. Those things will go a long way, and we have legislation that would make significantly more progressive the estate tax. So if you do those things, I think you’d have gone a good way, I think, to rebuilding the middle class in this country and asking the wealthy to start paying their fair share. Regular readers of this blog will know that I like Senator Sanders a lot. In fact I consider him to be one of the two best senators this country has (with the other being Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts). And I believe he is absolutely right about what must be done to solve the problem of inequality in this country. But I am not at all sure it would be a good idea for him to run for president in 2016, or that I could bring myself to vote for him (even though I would love to see him president).
I say that because it has become obvious that the Republicans will be nominating a right-wing extremist in 2016 (because they don't have anyone who is not an extremist who has expressed any interest in running). And I believe that putting any of the GOP extremists in the White House would be a disaster for this country, its economy, and its people. If you think things are bad now (and they are), then wait until one of those right-wing extremists gets in the White House. Any of them would make things much worse.
If I thought Bernie Sanders had a good chance of winning a presidential race, I would happily vote for him -- but I don't. I think the best he could do as an Independent is to take enough progressive votes away from the Democratic candidate (Hillary Clinton) to allow a Republican to win. And if he ran as a Democrat, it would split the party (and maybe make enough progressives mad enough to stay home on election day -- which would elect a Republican president).
Maybe I'm wrong, and for the present I'll keep an open mind. But if he isn't able to swing a whole lot of support his way in the next few months (and it'll take more support than just progressives can offer), then he should stay out of the race.
(NOTE -- The caricature above of Senator Sanders is by DonkeyHotey.)
