Within the endless circus procession that has been the 2020 Democratic Primary, there’s an exhausting refrain that has been leveraged against leftists who do electoral work: “you’re diving the party.” “We need to unite.” “We need to band together to stop Trump.” This is repeated ad nauseum until it’s a reflex reaction not just to pointed criticism of reactionary positions by Democrats, but to any criticism of a Democratic candidate.
The recent media narrative around Elizabeth Warren dubiously claiming Sanders said “a woman can’t be elected president” is an ideal example of this. Sanders has had policy-centered critiques of all candidates, and has carefully made sure his positions and statements can only be interpreted as racist or sexist in the most cynical of bad faith. Invoking the language of #MeToo to automatically trust Warren on this is especially gross considering this term is meant to defend victims of sexual violence whose claims are routinely doubted, not imagined rudeness to bolster a floundering political campaign.
The serious irony here is that one of the reasons Clinton’s supporters said she lost key electoral states was because she was a woman, and American misogyny sank her campaign (partially aided by Sanders, of course, because too many people have failed to exit 2016). So if he even said this, which he most likely didn’t, was he right or wrong?
A long documented history of Sanders saying the opposite, encouraging Warren to run in that very same infamous conversation, and then doing more campaign work in Midwest states for Clinton than she did says this will remain a “he said, she said” bit of political wonk myth for some time. Media loves catty reality TV drama, having found ratings gold during Trump’s 2016 carnival, and what better than to play into a Sanders/Warren feud that gets so much gosh darn engagement?
Sanders, with supernatural patience, has weathered 5 whole years of unqualified criticism that he is a divisive spoiler insurgent who is splitting a unified Democratic Party and making promises he can’t keep, leading to 4 more years of Trump. It kind of goes without saying, but every single word of this is wrong. And there’s a lot to meaningfully criticize Sanders over: his weak foreign policy, his health issues, his failure to fully embrace socialism as a future. The entire concept of electoralism has serious flaws itself.
The concept of a unified Democratic Party is an utter myth. That’s not actually the most salient point here. The claim is that the Democratic Party is being divided. Okay, what is actually dividing it? Between whom? Why do they think this is happening in the first place?
The Big Lies
“Sanders and sexist, racist Bernie Bros are dividing the party to continue white-centered male heteronormativity.” This is the gold standard of bad faith attacks. It’s pristine because it’s a totalizing explanation that requires little factual evidence to back it up. You can just say it. Keep saying it, more and more and eventually it’ll land. Despite demographic facts or polling data or policy positions, this axiom remains a tenent of faith for a group of voters whose faith in their innate moral superiority and righteousness was forever broken by the electoral college victory of Trump. To admit that it was simply their lackluster candidate and a broken, undemocratic electoral system would mean their faith in that very same system to protect their inevitable supremacy would be in vain; an unacceptable position.
“But he’s not even a real Democrat” as if this impotent cry has any more bite than an elderly, toothless porch hound. Only 28% of US voters self-identify as Democrats, and only 56% of Americans voted in 2016. So they’re describing 27% of all voting age people in the US, not even a third of all voters. When less that a 1/4th of all US voters even identify with your party in the first place, labels are more important as part of a political media brand. How is this supposed to be an insult exactly?
Sanders and other leftist candidates are seen as Johnny-Come-Lately’s to the party, invaders, and fakers even though leftists have typically spearheaded every major socially progressive issue for decades, only to have the credit swiped by corporations and ladder climbers who change their logos to rainbows once in a while. The most meaningful changes in our society have rarely come at the ballot box, but actually the reverse, from movements of people upwards, resulting in ballot box or court victories.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Sanders and a larger leftist movement represent an unacceptable alternate narrative to neoliberal capitalism
Sanders is not a socialist, at least not politically. He is not advocating for anything remotely as radical as a worker-owned and operated economy or redistribution of the means of production. He is not leading the charge against the Winter Palace, or even promoting open revolt of any kind.
He may use the words “political revolution”, but what he is really offering is traditional community organizing and public pressure on a national scale. His labor agitation is limited to the traditional forms of shop-level trade unionization. He is a New Deal Democrat and is offering social democratic reforms and a more robust welfare state, using progressive taxation of the wealthy. We are here to push that narrative further to the left as far as possible.
What Sanders is providing is an accessible and potent pushack to the omnipotence of capitalism and markets as the singular stabilizing force in the world. Voters who listen to what he has to say are hearing an actual alternative to always losing more. His argument is for social infrastructure of healthcare, wages, military spending, and personal protections against capital to resemble other industrialized countries. Anything that takes powers away from capital simply can’t be allowed to flourish, hence the cold reception the capitalist Democratic Party provides him and the flurry of bad faith attacks on him and his supporters.
The Really Uncomfortable Truth: The Democratic Party needs to be destroyed and rebuilt
The success or failure of the Democratic Party is an issue of limiting damage by capitalist forces to our health, our environment, and our social cohesion. It is hardly the best option, and in fact, it is simply the least worst. It’s a stopgap measure and it’s unlikely it will be able to solve all the problems it has helped create, even if it is successfully taken over by New Deal progressive. It’s simply not enough, but having a robust electoral apparatus is better than none. There is also value in popularizing increasingly radical ideas through an electoral platform.
The Democratic Party should have a major divide between ways of looking at the world that are increasingly incompatible. California and Australia burn because industry needs to continually increase profits at any cost. Vulnerable people suffer because someone needs to not just be rich, but even richer. These destructive forces are being sustained by a party elite that thinks it’s unaccountable. The recent inroads leftist candidates have made into the party shows they are weak and do not control the narrative anymore. We’re drawing a straight line down the middle: do you support this bullshit system or not? What world do you want to live in?
This uncivil war is healthy and good in every possible way. What this fruitless belief in the power of partisan party allegiance is the vast swathe of everyday people who can’t afford to care about whether or not a college professor didn’t shake hands with the former Vermont mayor. They couldn’t care less who shouts or does race science, they care about whether or not their lives will be less stressful and demoralizing. That’s the space in which we can tell the truth.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.