Sanders officially throwing his full support to Biden has freed him to become a fierce advocate for workers in this crisis without anyone fearing he is stepping on the presumptive Presidential candidate’s campaign. It instead contributes to the sentiment that we need a Democrat in the White House. It also frees Biden to start making decisions the President must make.
“I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse,”
-Bernie Sanders
This is the last rodeo for both Sanders and Biden. Biden doesn’t need to worry about corporate donors in Delaware or his future career as a politician. Sanders won’t be running for President again. What Biden and Sanders do now is their legacy to the future and how history will remember them. They seem, despite their vast ideological differences, to have a genuine collegial affection for each other to build on.
I can see Sanders having a very positive effect on Biden’s policies and a very positive effect at rallying the troops not “to vote for the lesser of two evils” but to vote to protect and advance the cause of the 99% within a Democratic majority. A way to advance and build the movement for a Political Revolution within the vehicle of the Democratic Party coalition. Biden and Sanders could become the odd couple of politics that only a crisis like this could bring together. I am not suggesting Sanders as VP. Biden has plenty of talented woman to choose from. That has nothing to do with what I am saying. It’s rather these two old war horses can build a bridge between the parties past, its older generation and the future, its youngest generation in a powerful and fierce coalition to smash Trump and the monster the Republican Party has degenerated into.
Maybe I am being overly optimistic and just looking for reasons to support the candidate we got even if its not the candidate I wanted. But I think there is reason to believe that thanks to the current crisis and the experience of the campaign and the influence of both Sanders and Warren, that Biden the President will be different policy wise than Biden the Senator. No doubt the big money donors will still have more influence than we want and there will be plenty that we will not be happy with. But if Sanders and Biden work together effectively during this crisis, this is a coalition the young and disaffected can get behind enthusiastically. Not as a sh*t sandwich they need to swallow to get rid of Trump but as a way to truly advance the cause, advocate for their policies and build the movement within the big tent that is the Democratic Party.
Dissing the young voter, lecturing, moral hectoring about who they have to vote for and petty partisan score settling over perceived slights real and imagined would be political suicide right now for the Democratic Party. It looks like Biden and Sanders are showing the way forward as you would expect of leaders in a crisis. Let’s take their lead and get to work.
