So....Bernie is ancient, but he also is probably the one guy who can rally the progressive wing and mount a solid offensive against the centrist wing of the party. A lot of progressives are asking, if not Bernie, then who? Who can pick up the torch?
I'm gonna be honest, I feel like the left flank of the party is fracturing in this "post bernie" environment. You got some who are becoming more and more socialist. Some who are not quite socialist, but seeming to be just anti democratic party in general to a cynical degree (see: Jimmy Dore) and who might be willing to go over to the right after a while as they seem to agree with them on stuff like COVID. Some are not socialist at all and are loyal to the democrats and becoming more and more absorbed back into "Bidenworld" and the toxic democratic party politics. And then you got me, who is going in a more Yang direction.
That's kind of the thing about party alignments. You normally get a guy who can bring together all of these different factions, and after that guy leaves, the coalition automatically starts falling apart. After Lincoln, the republican party quickly went into decline and got taken over by corruption and machine politics. After FDR, the popularity of the new deal coalition waned under the Truman administration, and eventually fractured under Johnson. After Reagan, Bush Sr. was seen as far less popular, and then George W. Bush led to the death of that wing of the party. And the same will likely occur to the post Trump GOP. I imagine its successors will be far weaker than "the man" was, and that you might have republicans well into the 2040s or even 2050s going on about how great Trump was and the good old days. After all, I saw the GOP doing this during the Obama years with Reagan, and honestly, a huge issue I have with progressives is they still seem stuck in 1930sesque politics, not knowing how to move forward, rejecting the neoliberal post Clinton party, and seem to look backwards at FDR than forward (hence why I prefer the "forward" party).
So....while Bernie could likely unite the progressive wing, he is one step in the grave, and again, I'm kind of groaning over this.
Honestly, it's quite clear who I want. Andrew Yang. But, the progressives seem to hate yang because they think he's one of those yuppie professional class guys who doesn't understand the labor politics of old. So they crap on him for every break from left wing orthodoxy and treat him like he's Mike Bloomberg or something, when no, if anything he's a disaffected professional class guy with the best interests for the working class. He just has different ideas, and the progressive wing is just intolerant of anyone who doesn't think exactly like them at this point.
Marianne Willamson has been thrown around, and I feel like her progressive chops have grown since 2020 where people don't just see her as "orb mommy" any more. I mean, having listened to her on yang's podcast, it seems like both Yang and Williamson have progressive street cred in my opinion, with Williamson more popular among the progressive base. I could see a run of hers doing well, but I'm not sure it would do as good as Bernie. Williamson, on yang's podcast, has also shown a willingness to undercut the dems if they try to screw her with underhanded tactics, and would be willing to run on a third party ticket, potentially even the forward party.
Nina Turner was, for a while, my go to successor to Bernie's movement, and had a close association with Bernie's 2020 campaign, but honestly, after she lost her primary in Ohio, and the progressive caucus recently snubbed her, I'm not sure she could draw the support Sanders did.
To be fair. maybe that's the problem. No one can really unite that wing like Bernie could. I have cooled on Bernie since 2020 I think but I could still back him if I saw him as the best option again. And that's the thing. So would everyone else too. It might be starting to look like Expendables 3 with the old crew well past its prime coming back together for one last job AGAIN, but maybe it would work.
Or maybe not. I was going to discuss this separately, and maybe I still will when I complete the book, but reading Thomas Frank's "Listen Liberal" is really kind of reinforcing for me that the old school progressive politics are dead. And while there is a resurgence among SOME democrats, the fact is, the democrats simply represent the professional class, its interests, and there will never be enough organized democrats to take over the party, given the nature of its primary process and the relatively unorganized nature of independents.
What we really need is a party realignment. And if you can't do it from within the party, you need to do it from the outside. A splitting of the democratic coalition that cripples it, in hopes that is causes the two major parties to reorganize their coalitions and realign in ways more conducive to working class politics. Because we we are, and where we're going, we're screwed. As long as the republicans are a bunch of angry far right reactionaries, and democrats are the party of educated elites who don't care about the real issues plaguing this country, nothing will change.
Again, for me, it's Yang. I don't know if he can really draw enough people in to make a difference. But I like his politics, and he's the only one with the party machinery and willingness to see the democrats for what they are and leave. People might hate on him because he isn't a true "progressive". Well...as I said, I feel like progressives these days are too rigid and purity testy, and their politics is stuck in the 1930s. Seriously. FDR was great for the time, but his politics are that of dinosaurs at this point. If there's anything I agree with the "new democrats" on in "listen liberal", it's that New Deal politics are a thing of the past, and while there are some aspects of it we can bring back, there's also a lot that can be left behind. They're quite frankly too dated at this point and the world isn't what it was 90 years ago. Less labor and more UBI and I would like them a lot better, but honestly, they need to expand their aspirations beyond simply trying to make wage slavery slightly less crappy.
But that's just me. And I understand I have a minority of a minority opinion at this point, with like 2% of the country maybe agreeing with me.
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