My Senator Bernie Sanders, whom I greatly admire (and even briefly worked for as an organizer during the 1996 campaign), has asked Huffington Post readers "where do we go from here?" It’s a question he poses to America in general, and the progressive movement in particular, given the compounded list of disappointments from the Obama administration on human rights, civil liberties, war policy – and most recently culminating in the many layers of disappointment over health care reform. It’s a good question, to be sure – depending on who is asking it.
Bernie Sanders is, without a doubt, one of our strongest progressive voices and finest Senators. He is also well-loved in our home state of Vermont. Despite the fact that he virtually owns his seat for life, he has not wavered on his beliefs since ascending to the US Senate. That’s because its clear to anyone that he holds these beliefs deeply. This has never been a politician to pander to his constituents just to accumulate personal political power.
Nevertheless, I must take issue with much of the content of his commentary on that site yesterday.
My Senator Bernie Sanders, whom I greatly admire (and even briefly worked for as an organizer during the 1996 campaign), has asked Huffington Post readers "where do we go from here?" It’s a question he poses to America in general, and the progressive movement in particular, given the compounded list of disappointments from the Obama administration on human rights, civil liberties, war policy – and most recently culminating in the many layers of disappointment over health care reform. It’s a good question, to be sure – depending on who is asking it.
Bernie Sanders is, without a doubt, one of our strongest progressive voices and finest Senators. He is also well-loved in our home state of Vermont. Despite the fact that he virtually owns his seat for life, he has not wavered on his beliefs since ascending to the US Senate. That’s because its clear to anyone that he holds these beliefs deeply. This has never been a politician to pander to his constituents just to accumulate personal political power.
Nevertheless, I must take issue with much of the content of his commentary on this site today.
Bernie looks to address much of the frustration the left is feeling over the progress of health care reform, as well as many other priorities. While he does a good job enumerating and qualifying progressive concerns and complaints, his prescription for a solution, I believe, misses the forest for the trees.
The Senator’s first suggestion for turning the policy tide is that we "let Obama be Obama," waxing hopeful that the President’s policies can find a path back to the inspirational rhetoric he is rightfully praised for.
But how is this any kind of a strategy, let alone the "most important," as Sanders suggests? This is an explicit call for passivity, which – by my account – is the very quality from the Democratic caucus that got us into trouble, not simply over health care, but on many critical issues stretching back through the Bush adminstration.
Standing back and "let(ting) Obama be Obama" is a call for inaction, and there has been no time in the history of progressive change where inaction has been a successful strategy. While this is perhaps a telling window into the political pathology that currently grips the Senate Democratic caucus, it is the Senator’s next point which is the most troubling of all.
All of his prescriptions that follow – passing a major jobs bill and the Employee Free Choice Act, and addressing the fundamental structural problems to our economic institutions – all of these require, as he states "bold" action. But it’s that very boldness that was ultimately absent from the health care debate. Speaking bluntly to Republicans is not bold. Challenging major corporate campaign contributors when they present no threat or challenge to you is not bold.
Standing up to your own caucus’s leadership? Taking a stand that could put you in conflict with a popular president because it’s the right thing to do? That’s bold. And it’s a boldness many hope we still may see from Senators like Sanders, because the only people we saw it from in the Senate health care reform debate were Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.
And yes of course, the Senate rules could stand to be reformed, but as Sanders himself states "there was a procedural route which would have required only a simple majority." At the end of the day, the Senate rules on filibusters were a challenge to reform, but not a roadblock. And that challenge could have been met with bold action to force the issue.
But if progressive principle itself isn’t enough to motivate that kind of legislative boldness in the health care debate and the other policy battles to come, the Senator should also consider his own advice from the piece; that one doesn’t "win elections by ignoring the ideas of the progressives who have worked hardest at the grass-roots level for your political victories." He is absolutely correct, and I’m confident that we progressive activists will continue to do our part to keep the pressure on.
But we are not US Senators, and the bold action Sanders prescribes for the Senate floor is simply not something we can do, nor can it be accomplished by "letting Obama be Obama." If that is our strategy, one wonders what the point of the legislative branch is.
Now it must be said that Senator Sanders and I do have an honest disagreement on whether or not the Senate bill that he ultimately supported does more harm than good. The Senator puts a lot of faith in his well-fought and successful effort to include unprecedented money for rural health centers. While I laud this victory (I myself am a patient with chronic health conditions at one of those rural health centers). Sure, if everything goes just right, it could be an improvement. If the fee for service structure is actually reformed, the subsidies are sufficient for those who can’t afford the mandated insurance, the cost of health care doesn’t continue to rise so dramatically and expose the chronically ill or elderly to the excise tax and cause them to become underinsured – and, of course, if the insurance companies (despite the lack of regulatory oversight and cost controls) choose not to take the most greedy options, instead choosing, let’s say, just the second or third greediest option – if all these things play out just right this could well, as Bernie argues, do more good than harm (assuming they play out as such in time to prevent electoral catastrophe, of course).
Call me a cynic if you like, but I’m just not optimistic. And I suppose I simply have less faith in the goodwill of the insurance companies than even my democratic socialist Senators (which, yes, does come as a bit of a surprise to this more vanilla style Democrat).
We progressives should be asking "where do we go now." Senator Sanders, I’d like to believe you would be among those the rest of us look to for help answering, as we don’t really need for you to pose it on our behalf. We know the problems, but we need legislators with your vision to lead on the solutions. Even when (especially when) that means making some of the hardest choices a politician can make, such as standing up to a popular President and the leader of your own caucus.
(Crossposted at HuffPo, FDL)