Millions of people responded to Bernie Sanders’ call for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.”
Bernie Sanders and the End of Neoliberalism Tom Crean
O
n April 8, Bernie Sanders “suspended” his campaign for president. In the weeks since, Sanders has turned a defeat into a rout through wholesale capitulation to the Democratic Party establishment. He has given a fulsome endorsement to Joe Biden, the incredibly weak corporate presumptive nominee. He even criticized his press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, for failing to immediately do likewise. The latest report is that some of Sanders’ closest advisers are forming a super PAC to back Biden. This outcome is deeply disappointing to millions who saw Sanders as the authentic voice of a “political revolution” against the billionaire class. Of course, most of Sanders' supporters will accept his argument that Trump must be defeated at all costs, even if that means voting for Joe Biden. But a significant minority, especially of young people, will not be persuaded to vote for a loyal servant of Wall Street whose 45-year political career includes advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare; supporting mass incarceration policies; allowing Anita Hill to be humiliated on national television when she called out Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment; and enthusiastically voting for the Iraq War. While
we completely agree about the need to get rid of Trump, to back Biden is to back the failed neoliberal policies that got us Trump in the first place. Sanders ended his campaign at a point where working people in the U.S. are facing the most serious crisis since World War II: on the one hand, the coronavirus pandemic -- made a hundred times worse by the failures of capitalism and the Trump regime -- and, on the other, an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression. It is true that Sanders faced a steep uphill climb to the nomination after Super Tuesday. But as a candidate he had a powerful platform to build the mass movement which will be needed to defend working people from chaotic and dangerous “re-opening,” the threat of mass unemployment, budget cuts to essential services and mass evictions. Instead he has essentially told people to put their faith in the Democratic establishment. This abdication of leadership leaves a dangerous vacuum which can disarm working people in the face of the attacks of the right since we know the leadership of the Democratic Party will do nothing to protect us. Nevertheless the Sanders phenomenon has also had a profoundly positive impact on mass consciousness, especially among young people and sections of the working class who
