So now Bernie has won New Hampshire and it is clear there will be a real fight for the Democratic primaries, and it's a serious question for us whether he's the guy nationally. I feel it would be worthwhile in this moment to pull the camera back and widen the frame. Here are some meditations from my heart today (3500 words or so of them) about why Senator Bernie Sanders ought to be our next President, where I think he's in trouble, and how he can actually pull it off in a big way—the whole thing, winning the election and winning the new world we all need.
We...
Reflecting on this I'm reminded our US Constitution begins with a Preamble that makes plain that it's no accident we are a great nation--it was pretty much the plan all along. Certainly, many have tried to screw this up, but as a guard against this, like many American grade schoolers, I had to memorize and recite this Preamble along with my class. And I find it’s really worth meditating on when thinking about the job of the Presidency and what kind of person we need for it.
| We the People of the United States,
| in Order to form a more perfect Union,
| establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
| provide for the common defense,
| promote the general Welfare, and
| secure the Blessings of Liberty
| to ourselves and our Posterity,
| do ordain and establish this Constitution
| for the United States of America.
Perhaps a minor detail, but in the sixth grade as an immigrant kid from India growing up in New Jersey, I was curious as to why so many regular words like People were capitalized. After all, in our grammar lessons, we were taught not to capitalize regular words that weren’t names of people or places or God. I never got a great answer then, but meditating on it now, my sense is the Founders were sending us message. They wanted to elevate these key abstract concepts and principles, and imbue them with a sense of the sacred or living actuality. And it was a powerful series of ordinary words they chose to elevate this way, and they’re powerful in the sequence they’re in:
Over time, I learned that the job of President is to be the chief guardian of these intents against all enemies foreign and domestic, current and future, and that it’s really difficult to do well, and easy to mess this up. So we better all think pretty hard about it and keep our eye on the ball.
In meditating on it again writing this today, one little word stuck out to which I had never before really paid attention --“for”. When we speak and write, we mostly hear it called the Constitution OF the United States, but I felt an “Aha!” moment tonight when I reflected that We the People ordained and established this Constitution FOR the United States. Makes a difference to feel this Constitution is not just OF us but FOR us, to do all the things mentioned here.
And so it gets to the heart of the matter: what for are these candidates wanting to be president?
What am / for?
Being Progressive
For my part, personally, I'm simply on the side of innovating with Love. Politically, I'm a progressive American. But not partisan. Being a Dem or Republican simply because that's what your mental habit or your family history or your media diet tend you toward is something I've found doesn't work for me -- I've worked in party politics and realized afterward that I was kinda sleeping at the wheel of my own heart. When my heart is "woke" and I'm looking for practical ways to achieve the most good for the most people regardless of party affiliation, then I'm where I want to be, not against partisanship, but outside it, and decidedly, intentionally aiming for the greater good -- a progressive.
Abolitionist Abe Lincoln and trustbuster and parkbuilder Teddy Roosevelt were awesome Republican progressives. New Deal architect FDR and civil rights leaders JFK and LBJ were iconic Dem progressives. None of them perfect but love 'em all. Today, Bernie Sanders has stepped up to the leadership of the modern progressive movement. And I support him, because more than anything, this election is to me about whether we go deeper into or step further out of the box of tribal & party affiliations, and into global & human ones better able to focus on the practical business of progress in an interconnected, complex world.
Our political language and history, instead of unleashing creativity and opening new possibility, have been trapping us. But a post-partisan progressive future is possible. And as a personal preparation for that, I really respect the fact that Sanders has served in Congress as an Independent: party lines don’t always work well if you really put People first. He’s not perfect (and I have more to say on this later), but Sanders I feel does put People above party, and always has. I can't really imagine the courage required to be the Senate’s lone independent voice but he’s been that, unfailingly. And we need that now.
The Republican candidates all self-identify as conservative, not progressive. It's simply not a priority to address social, economic, racial, or gender progress or justice, nor climate change nor global affairs in anything resembling a heartfelt, nonjudgmental or practical way. Quite the opposite -- continued violence and oppression of minorities, denial and war seem to be their notion of the way forward. None seem to see the vital link between our national interest and being a strong global leader in resolving these. The current conservative view is not of us leading the world, but of us VERSUS the world. Without judgment, and with love, and they'd all agree -- it's NOT progressive, it's conservative; and it's Republican, not post-partisan. The "We" in their "We the People" is not a group that seems to include us all.
State Violence
The Republican contenders stance on violence and freedom deserves note. All have policies aimed at requiring people with guns who are publicly employed--state police and federal agents--to pick through American's medical records (abortion) and marriage records (gay rights) as well as other people with guns employed by the state (our military service members & homeland security agents) to pick through birth and travel records (immigration), library/phone/internet records (war on terror), religious records (Islamophobia), and our homes and pockets (war on drugs), while shielding all of these surveillance and investigation acts from the full oversight of their fellow citizens.
Furthermore, there is the growing awareness of just how bad police violence inflicted in violation, or in grey areas of the law, is against people of color. To fail to see this as a Constitutional issue of equal protection before the law, and to fail to act to transform it completely and forthrightly in my view is all but unforgivable. That is just not at all what this country says it is nor is it what works, for anyone. And the Republicans have completely ignored this matter of direct state violence completely, and advocated for more police intervention in all the ways above.
Like the Emperor fiddling while Rome burned, this crop of Republicans would regulate social matters while America declines, including poisoning itself. So here’s a playful yet accurate word for all this: neroing (links to a whimsical and sad definition for this coinage I posted on Facebook). This poisoning has occurred already in Flint, Michigan, with lead in the water, and all around the nation in a heroin epidemic in rural and suburban communities, and a food system crisis that has the nation dying of heart disease, obesity and diabetes at unprecedented rates, and an economic system that doesn’t just hurt the American worker but requires us to instigate and go to war abroad to sustain the wealth-building of corporate powers abroad.
The attitude is common to all in the grip of a downward spiral: "We’re not succeeding at what we need to with ourselves, so let’s get angry and attempt to overtake and control and exploit others." Playing the nero is an expensive and dangerous proposition.
We need not go there again.
Freedom From / Freedom To
But the reactionaries claim all this expensive and unconstitutional intrusion on privacy and personal choice and dignity and warmaking that they advocate does not represent more government, that the intent is so that we can have unfettered capitalism and small government that allows us to keep our "freedom". The numbers however tell a different story -- fiscal history has been that for the last 75 years, progressive administrations have done better balancing the books and spending less than regressive ones. Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and 43 all consistently increased our national debt in a quest to materially reduce our freedoms domestically, while they quixotically spread out our military in service of spreading this same troubled notion of “freedom” around the world. This reactionary "freedom" now also includes being free to ignore scientists about the climate volatility and rising seas, which have already destroyed places I love here in the US and around the world, places I have been, spent time, loved. Gone.
Well, I don't want any more of that. Do you?
Further, none of the neroes speak of every American having “freedom from” the realities of inadequate water, food, safety, shelter, healthcare, public safety, transport, or education, and most importantly, nor having “freedom to” fulfill their God-given life potential in the ways they themselves choose.
The “freedom from/freedom to” framework is the brainchild of Nobel Economics Laureate Amartya Sen, and it’s how progressives could sensibly rebuff the freedom demagoguery of the reactionaries.
The obvious possibility that when we Americans can figure out how to do these things for our people, provide these real freedoms-from and freedoms-to -- that all this innovation and leadership will be badly needed by the rest of the world too and drive our economy and the world's to new heights. Instead, as a group, the Republican field is neroing -- fiddling while our nation stumbles into dysfunction, and I'm sad to say, through their ignorance and inaction making us all party to state-sponsored violence like the poisoning in Flint. It's tragic and I really believe they're bigger people than this but for whatever reasons, many on the right just can't see it. Still, to me it's not about party -- I'd happily vote for any Republican who had the progressive integrity of Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.
The Electability Fallacy
Next, I feel it's important to avoid the Democratic "Electability" fallacy. Since WWII, there has been a distinct tug-of-war between the progressives and conservatives within the Democratic party, and Sanders fits the profile of progressive winners about as well as Hillary fits the profile of the Democratic losers in Presidential campaigns. Anyone who is legally allowed to hold the presidency is electable (no air-quotes required), but "electability" (with air-quotes) is a construct of the pundit class, one that often is brought up either in a perhaps naive attempt at manipulation through fear, or perhaps more thoughtful misunderstanding of what has actually worked for Dems.
Every time in recent history Dems have chosen the "electable" one -- ie, the one that conservative political insider thinking said was the more nationally appealing candidate, we lost pretty badly. In 2000 & 1980 & 1968 we had referenda on Clinton & Carter & Johnson administrations, with VP Gore, Pres Carter or VP Humphrey being the apparently most "electable" choice instead of the truly exciting progressive candidates like Bill Bradley in 2000, Ted Kennedy in 1980 and, it's still hard to say, RFK, who was taken away from us in 1968. In 1984 former Carter VP Mondale won over Gary Hart, and in 1988 Michale Dukakis over Jesse Jackson, and in 2004 John Kerry over Howard Dean -- all are textbook cases of progressives losing out to notions of "electability", and getting the Democrats a big L -- not to say their challengers would have won, just that Democrats didn't.
BUT every time Democrats chose someone who spoke with big-hearted, full-throated integrity for their version of progressive values like support for the middle class, working poor, and for civil rights in bold but practical ways, and people were straightforwardly excited about them without much regard for "electability" -- mileage has varied but actually not much -- 2008 & 2012 for Obama, 1996 & 1992 for Clinton, 1976 for Carter, 1960 for JFK, 1948 & 1952 for Truman were all real wins on these lines. LBJ in 1964 I think was a special case due to JFK's assassination but that didn't stop Hillary from supporting Goldwater. Which brings us to …
Standing For ...
Sanders has stood for progressive values literally all his life, while Hillary has been a well-intentioned and extremely well-connected but often ultimately (mis-)calculating political operative that has put her on both sides of most issues at some point. A Republican before she was a Democrat, for mass incarceration before she was against it, against gay marriage before she was for it, for the Iraq War before she was against it, now most recently against more Wall Street regulation until she was for it, for universal healthcare until she was against it. All that to me is the opposite of being an actual winning Democrat, and the heart of specious pundit's "electability" that loses. And, it's just too bad when people in your own party put together videos like "13 minutes straight of Hillary Clinton lying"... And that's exactly what the video is.
Je Ne Sais Quois (that I-Don't-Know-What)
Warning, this section is my completely personal and biased and human and imperfect perspective. I wish I could say I was a bigger person than to allow personality to matter, and mostly I am, but I also think this sort of thing really matters in terms of group dynamics and election outcomes. So here goes.
I met Hillary just once when I worked on the Kerry campaign in '04. A group of us Grassroots Campaigns Inc staffers were setting up the DNC field fundraising office out of the Morristown NJ Democratic HQ office space, and were invited to attend and work a high-dollar private fundraiser in the wealthy town of Highland Park in central New Jersey one Saturday afternoon in June. Clinton was being a Kerry surrogate that day, and, in person, I was initially impressed: she comes across as very smart, very articulate, and I felt I honestly learned a ton from her rather erudite speech. It was about the perils of bankrupting our country with a senselessly high national debt, which we have been (and still are!) selling to the Chinese and Japanese in ever larger quantities.
I felt reassured about her intellectual horsepower and insight into international affairs, but frankly I found myself wanting to like her more than I actually did. I couldn't help feeling she spoke over us & down to us. And this was a small group of people 200% on her side -- political campaign workers and $5000 and up donors -- and many extremely smart people, as the gathering itself was next to the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, and a few miles from Princeton in a very savvy, educated, liberal and wealthy pocket of the country. She spoke for about an hour off the cuff without notes but took few questions. It left me with this distinct impression: if you can't connect personally with your most enthusiastic supporters in a totally private setting, something is amiss. It's a human quality that makes no real difference for computer programmers or medical doctors or policy analysts. But it is non-negotiable in a publicly-elected chief executive. People *have* to really, actually like you, not your ideas or your record or your background, just *you*.
Even now, Hillary seems less than great at listening, being present in the moment like nothing but this moment matters. That to me is the heart of charisma, and she struggles with it a good deal. In speeches, debates and town halls, it's clear she has good policy people, good speechwriting, and fair delivery. But Hillary still routinely expresses cadence and body language that tell the audience she is just not listening to us and with us. So many times, when there's great applause line, a potential rallying cry or soundbite with obvious energy in the room that the audience is expressing—she will just charge ahead talking over applause instead of just stopping completely, and letting the audience clap it and be fully self-expressed -- listening and taking in that energy -- and using it to continue. After a lifetime of being on stage with Bill who is an all-time master at this, let's hope she has an "Aha!" moment of her own here. It would make her a better candidate, and for a better campaign.
It's concerned me that some of Hillary campaign's energy rhetoric toward Sanders this year and Obama in 2008 has suggested a kind of entitlement, like it's simply her turn or even that some young people or women are 'bad' to not feel more strongly for her. It's the gravest responsibility in the world to be the President of the United States; your voice is the single most listened to on the planet; even if you do win the job fair and square, there's absolutely no way you're entitled to it. It makes me feel there is an unmet potential in Hillary for developing a kind of radical humility before the bigness of the thing. Let's hope it comes too. To his great credit, his entire career, Sanders has won his own races fair and square, from Mayor to Representative to Senator, and now the Presidential Primary in New Hampshire in 2016.
Running Mate Prospects
In terms of running mates, I have no idea who Hillary would choose, but it wouldn't be Elizabeth Warren, who has gone on record with very critical perspectives on Hillary, and as another White woman from the South who moved North for work and marriage, and then won a Senate seat -- well that would be just a bit too weird. After a closely fought contest with Sanders, I doubt it would be him either. But Sanders on the other hand may well be able to draft Warren, who most progressives wish had run herself. It's my clear sense that a Sanders-Warren ticket wins. A Clinton-[Clinton loyalist] ticket I'm not so sure of at all.
Advice for Bernie
Now, Senator Sanders, President-Elect-to-Be (knock-on-wood) Bernie if you will, may I offer my unsolicited opinion on the three key things you have to do as a supporter and a citizen? Before I do, let me say this to you directly: I I’ve long been a fan of yours and my father really loved you -- he passed in 2004 but I remember him appreciatively watching your speeches on the floor of the House in the 90s. I do wish he were alive to see the day you won a primary against Hillary and started polling ahead of all contenders Dem or Republican for the Presidency. Yes, this is awesome. And I believe the political revolution you speak of is shimmering in the distance, waiting to be won. BUT, my dear sir, it could very much still be lost, and to bring us all to the mountaintop, you've still got some very serious work to do. Three basic things.
1. Be a socialist, not a Socialist
As you well know, the single biggest atrocity of the 20th century was perpetrated by a self-avowed German Democratic Socialist. The next biggest by a Russian Communist Socialist, and the next by a Chinese Communist Socialist, and the next by a Cambodian Socialist regime. Depending on who you count and how you estimate, north of 200 million dead. These were real people we’re all related to somehow. Now, we all get you’re a good-hearted guy and there won’t be another holocaust or pogroms or the like on your watch. But, really, a part of me wants you to pick a different word. Calling yourself an American Democratic Progressive is fine.
But use of the term “socialist”, openly, publicly and directly, holds historical and recent and real trauma for too many; it's just plainly ineffective to keep kicking it about. When you were speaking to a small state of mostly nice liberal White folks largely untouched by any of that history who had gone to college and read Marx and opted out of big-city capitalist life, and who you have had the chance to meet many of in-person, being a socialist was just fine. On a national stage, everyone under 45 who was never an adult during the Cold War barely remembers capital-S Socialists, and it’s not a problem, but for those over 45 who do remember, and also certainly on the world stage, the Socialist title wins us little and loses you much, and it just really gets in the way of getting the heart of the matter.
This doesn’t mean we disavow the political philosophy of class struggle inherent in socialist economic perspective or any of your actual beliefs or policy proposals or just really caring about everyone the way you do. It just means you, like you did with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, you come around to recognizing #VictimsOfSocialistMassMurderersLivesMatter too. And update lingo and messaging accordingly.
If you can do this, it locks the entire Democratic base in for you.
2. Shore up Progressive Independents
TRelatedly, and third -- this is really important right now -- reach out to, spend time with, really listen in person to Michael Bloomberg, and do whatever it takes to win him over ASAP. Yes, he's a Wall Street billionaire and has libertarian leanings, but he is a serious progressive who could defeat you in a general, or worse yet, split the progressive vote, giving one of the reactionaries on the right a victory by plurality which would potentially be devastating for the whole world. He's thinking of running against you because he is of that generation that just doesn't understand what you really mean by socialist, nor do they much want to.
Bloomberg is also an engineer, a brilliant, sensible and good-hearted man, and the financier of things like the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He's just not like any of the Republican candidates, and he's not like most of the billionaires you rail against either in some important respects. Fundamentally, he is a Progressive, though a libertarian-leaning one, and the two of you are not as far apart as you might think at your core. If at all possible, he is the kind of man you want on your side 110%, someone who can actually engineer the elimination of too-big-to-fail banks and who can win over main-street, socially liberal Republicans and libertarian-leaning progressives like the Ron Paul crowd. Take someone like Elizabeth Warren as a running mate, but I'd give Bloomberg literally any job he might be willing to do, including WH Chief of Staff, Defense, State, Commerce or Treasury, or like DHS, roll up a bunch of agencies and departments into a big one that makes sense to have him head up. You just won't find a better day-to-day executive willing and able to serve at that level, and it would make all the difference to execution.
3. Winning Open-Minded Republicans and Conservatives
First of all, Bernie, you have to shore up your international messaging—we pretty much kinda sorta know what you mean, but PLEASE stop using the phrase (and the thought process behind it) that the US is "the only major country" when you talk about how we don't provide universal healthcare, college, paid family leave etc. People like myself, and there are millions of us, voting American citizens, who hail from pretty major countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, etc with top-15 GDP and population -- who you are NOT referring to when you say -- "major country", and we find it confusing and awkward and weirdly dismissive. It's not a phrase you'll be using as President (can you imagine looking the Prime Minister of India or President of Mexico square in the eye and saying, “No, sorry, you’re not a major country” lol) — so it's not winning you much now. Have your staffers do the homework and come up with a short, straightforward and God-honest phrase you can stick with, like the US is "the only country in the top 50% by GDP per capita" or something like this. A mouthful at first, but people will get it soon enough. Or, really clean up what you mean by “major country" in a way that any professor of Political Science or International Relations can agree, and you won’t be embarassed when speaking to any head of state, and publish it on your website as the Sanders definition of a “major country” —harder, but acceptable. This wins you at least some of those looking for a strong international statesman.
But to really do that, to become President-to-be Sanders, you have to connect the dots--your domestic agenda and international one have to find a self-reinforcing narrative that makes the world make sense, and is credible. While international affairs is one area where Hillary really does have a lot more experience and knowledge than you, her perspective is skewed by being a hawk and by being rather conservative at her core. Yes, you voted against the war in Iraq. Key. But so did Obama. We’re just about past that. So it's vitally important you to connect the dots for us between what you are proposing domestically and the impact globally so that fear doesn’t win out.
Hillary’s worldview, like the neocons, is an extension of Kissenger’s, and you did a great thing taking him down against her in the February 11 debate. Now you need to really see what it is go in the other direction, and frankly, this is where a revolution is possible, and no one has really gone in the last 50 years in America, really since JFK and RFK.
How does it really work on the world stage for all Americans to have healthcare and free college and less aggressive corporate institutions? What difference does it make? The story reactionaries will spin is that our world will go to hell. For example, my stockbroker cousin says he'll have to quit his job to make sure you're not elected because he won't have a job to come back to. You and I know this is crazy, but how are you really going to convince him of that? And he's a very sharp guy by the way so what you're selling really has to work on a heart and a head level. Here’s my answer to that for you, and you can feel free to run with it.
Winning the New World
More than territory, natural resources, strategic positioning, military size, income distribution, stable currency, style of government, or any other factor--it is innovation that drives the world economy today and into the future. And the policy changes you are proposing require massive innovation. Innovation on a scale that frankly far dwarfs first the moon landing.
It will be expensive. It will be difficult. There will be setbacks. But we must succeed. And we will.
Bernie, you have the enviable position of being free to challenge and inspire a generation of scientists, engineers, technicians, health workers, educators, strategists, and other leaders to create something incredible: a more perfect Union that ensures domestic Tranquility and promotes the general Welfare. Globally.
If America can figure out how to sharply improve health outcomes while radically lowering costs, which we will HAVE to do to provide a high standard of care to everyone, then we can EXPORT this expertise and related training, services and technologies. Doesn’t every country have room for improvement in this regard?
If America can figure out how to afford to restructure our higher education system so that EVERYONE fulfills their potential to be of service to their community and the world, which we will HAVE to do to meaningfully provide everyone college, then again we can EXPORT this expertise and related training, services and technologies. Doesn’t every country have room for improvement in THIS regard too?
If America can figure out how to restructure our public safety, criminal justice and behavioral health systems so that again, EVERYONE fulfills their potential to be of service to their community and the world, which we will HAVE to do to meaningfully provide real public safety, racial justice, and an end to mass incarceration and the war on drugs, then again we can EXPORT this expertise and related training, services and technologies. Doesn’t every country have room for improvement in THIS regard too?
If America can figure out how to realign society's resources, work income and saved wealth to ensure no one is the victim of economic exploitation, and has the fact of their neediness preyed upon to enrich others, then again doesn't EVERY country need that too?
If America can figure out how to repurpose our Defense forces to protect and promote not just physical and natural resources, but our virtual resources -- our capacity for communication, connection, knowledge-gathering and innovation--then again doesn’t EVERYONE need that, and can’t we EXPORT that too?
Every major policy change we need to have Americans better off leads to us leading the rest of the world to being better off. This is a tangible, inspiring, human social and economic strategy.
And it’s ONLY if we can provide adequate water, food, shelter, public safety, healthcare, and education, to the world--if we can do our part to not just lift up Americans but all people out of fear-for-survival mode and into creative-collaboration-action mode--that we have real shot at coming together to address climate change…
Bernie, it falls to you now. You saw as a young man, JFK challenge a nation to redress racial injustice and to go to the moon. He famously said,
It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.
A few years later, you marched on Washington with MLK, and after 1968, began to witness the arc of history that ensued after RFK was shot, where we saw five decades of increasingly corporate consolidation and evisceration of the bonds that link us all.
Now Senator Sanders, it falls to you to remind us of what it is to link our destinies together, the magic and possibility of living into a shared vision of a better world, and to work us toward it, one day at a time. JFK, MLK, and RFK were why my family came here in the 1970s. Now, please Bernie, for all our sake—step up to be the man who restarts their work, who reconnects us to real progressive values and action, who leads us to win a new world.
I #feeltheBern, and my prayer for all of us is that it grows as big and bright and steady as the Sun, and that you remain in good health and up to the task at hand so you can see it through.