For those who aren’t just repeating Clinton talking points when they worry that Sanders’ push for political revolution makes him naïve if not un-American, The Washington Post has an op-ed piece that thoroughly undermines its own editorial calling him aggressively unrealistic.
Guest writer Yoav Fromer, a professor of politics and history, offers the reassurance of actual US history. For example,
Some of the earliest organized challenges to the dire social, economic and political consequences of industrial capitalism in the late 19th century originated with the disgruntled agrarian forces of the Midwest and South. These revolutionary tides mobilized the Populist movement and eventually led to the short-lived People’s Party, a national organization with radical economic and political ideas but reactionary cultural ones (including xenophobia, anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism). At their formative convention in Omaha in 1892, party officials issued demands that came to be known as the Omaha Platform.
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The opposition was fierce: A plutocratic alliance of Northeastern financiers, railroad corporations and their political allies in both parties painted the Populists as dangerously radical. The New York Times called part of their plan “one of the wildest and most fantastic projects ever seriously proposed by sober man,” while an influential Nebraska newspaper labeled their leaders “shiftless, lazy and improvident” and grumbled that “it is a sin and a shame that these pests are permitted to beslime the state.” Mounting criticism of the Midwest-based movement led the influential newspaper editor William Allen White to famously first pose the question: “What’s the matter with Kansas?”
Within a few years, the answer was clear: nothing at all.
Political revolution is a long American tradition, rooted in our better nature. Far from threatening our republic, it has kept it alive.
It’s fair for Democrats to press Sanders on how, exactly, he intends to achieve his “political revolution.” What is unfair is to dismiss his policies outright because they seem too far from the mainstream. Concepts from the left fringe have, throughout American history, served as corrective rather than destructive devices.
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There is little doubt that Clinton’s pragmatic sensibility is invaluable for getting things done. But the revolutionary tradition in which Sanders stands can make sure they get done for the right reasons. In this way, the center and the fringe are symbiotic. Ideology is a terrible tool for governing but a necessary reminder of what government is for. Next time Sanders talks about revolution, skeptical mainstream liberals should hold their tongues and recall that the most exceptional quality of the American political system is its ability to absorb and implement so many revolutionary ideas without ever having had an actual revolution.
In other words, if you want an authentic example of American exceptionalism, look no further than Bernie’s political revolution.