Endings and Beginnings

Bernie Sanders, with his endorsement of Hillary Clinton this week, admitted that he will not be the Democratic nominee for president this year. By pledging to work for Hillary Clinton’s victory, he also signaled to his supporters that he does not want to run as a write in or third party candidate. This is a message that some of his most vocal supporters are finding hard to accept. I have been expecting and bracing for this moment for a while now, but I am not going to gloat or say I told you so. I have been where these “Berners” are now, and I feel your pain. It’s just that I went through this a long time ago.

My parents grew up in the Great Depression, when capitalism had failed, and great changes were possible for the liberal cause. Eugene V Debs was a Communist Party candidate who received one million votes in the 1932 election, at a time when that was a much higher percentage of the electorate than it is now. Following that, Communists could and did visit the Roosevelt White House and had a chance to influence the shaping of the New Deal. My parents met because of their activism in the years following World War II, and they were ready to change the world. By the time I came along, the great cause was the protests against the Vietnam War. We were a politically aware family, and the first presidential election I remember was in 1968. I was eight years old, and I understood the election as a simple fight between good and evil, with Eugene McCarthy being the agent of good. Four years later, I could have described in much more detail why George McGovern was the good guy, and Richard Nixon the villain. I also felt McGovern’s landslide defeat much more strongly than I had McCarthy’s loss. By 1984, I was the avid follower of politics that I remain today, and I could tell you in great detail why it would be a disaster if the nation had to endure another four years of Ronald Reagan, but I watched Walter Mondale suffer another landslide defeat. Somewhere in the ashes of these three losses especially, I learned that most American voters do not think like me. By extension, I also learned that a liberal candidate could not become president unless another disaster on the scale of the Great Depression occurred. Barring that, the best outcome would be that we could show enough strength to influence policy.

Bernie Sanders is roughly a generation older than me, and he learned these same lessons. His candidacy this year was that show of strength that I mentioned, and it won him major concessions in the Democratic platform. Despite the noise about her, Hillary Clinton is exactly the kind of candidate who is most likely to be influenced by all of this. She practices the politics of the possible, and Sanders has shown her that more is possible now than she thought. Her incrementalism is a reflection of the fact that American voters fear changes that come too quickly, and that is the simplest explanation of how she beat Sanders for the nomination. But the American people were ready when gay marriage arrived, and Sanders showed that they are ready to build a new set of paradigms regarding the economy.

The most encouraging thing I have seen from Sanders supporters since the endorsement is a discussion of how to use the momentum this campaign has generated. People who were brought together in support of Sanders are talking about staying in touch, and using their numbers to influence elections at state and local levels. They have had their first taste of activism, and at least some want to do more. Bernie Sanders knew when he started this that even the election in November was not the end of the fight. To maintain pressure, the followers he gathered would have to gird themselves for a long siege, and learn to celebrate a series of small victories instead of one large one. There will be those who feel betrayed right now, and will fade away after the election, never to be this involved again. But there are also signs that some will stay around and continue to work for change. They are the ones who will have a chance to show present and future Hillary Clintons what is possible.