Why I Voted for Bernie Sanders

I voted absentee ballot back in January.  For me, it was an easy decision to vote for Bernie Sanders.  I also voted for him in 2016, and events since then have reinforced my belief in his candidacy.

Earlier in the year, I was planning to vote for Elizabeth Warren.  She seemed like the candidate most likely to unite the Democratic party against Trump.  However, in my view, she faltered in recent months, showing a lack of conviction in the face of attacks from the establishment.  Her attack on Bernie Sanders, seemingly made in desperation as she was sinking in the polls, for supposedly thinking a woman can't win in 2020, was the decisive factor.  I discussed the reasons why in this post.

Attacking Sanders from the left is usually a bad idea.  He is perhaps the most consistent politician I can think of, going back to his civil rights advocacy in the 1960s.

Attacks from center seem similarly flawed to me.  I just watched this 2/9/2020 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, and it gives a good idea of just how ridiculous some of the criticisms are.  As an example, he is criticized for being impractical with regard to health care.  His response that other countries cover everyone for half the cost per capita is unassailable.  As he tells Tapper, if Canada, Japan, and every country in Europe can provide universal coverage at a reasonable cost, so can we.

What Bernie has already accomplished is somewhat remarkable.  As Nathan Robinson says in Current Affairs,

The Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign has achieved a number of firsts. Never before in modern American history has a political movement been funded virtually entirely and directly by the working class...  Bernie has the most contributions of any candidate in 46 states, the most contributions ever by any presidential candidate at this point in the race... Sanders has actually out-fundraised all the billionaire-backed candidates, something many predicted confidently was impossible to achieve in U.S. politics... 

In 2016, Bernie Sanders promised to continue to build a popular movement, and since the narrow loss in that race, he hasn’t stopped. He’s helped Amazon workers secure $15 an hour, joined together with Walmart workers fighting for the same, helped Disney service workers win a contract, and has joined and boosted countless labor struggles in the past years... 

The first Jewish candidate for President ever to win a presidential primary in U.S. history, a man clearly deeply influenced by his Jewish origins, who spent time living in Israel on a kibbutz, has been absurdly pilloried as an anti-Semite in the media for the crime of recognizing the humanity of the Palestinian people... 

My impression is that the United States has been failing on a number of fronts.  Our economy has become overly financialized, with the marketplace becoming more of a counterproductive casino.  In addition, as the predominant global superpower, we have neglected international law and fairness in favor of bullying other countries. Our intelligence services are largely unaccountable and have captured both major parties and the mainstream media, with unfortunate effects on domestic politics.  Trump is a symptom of this state of affairs, more than a cause.

Reasonable people can disagree about this.  There is always a temptation to naively embrace candidates making unrealistic promises.  I have probably been guilty of this in the past.  On the other hand, I think it is a good idea to strive to make the world a better place, and not to be deterred by cynicism or vested interests.  As I wrote in Facilitating Travel Along the Arc of Moral Justice,

In the early days of our nation, societal decisions were made by a restricted class of white men.  Now other races and genders participate and have power more commensurate with their numbers.  This "arc of moral justice" was facilitated not only by trade and communications technology, but also by explicit efforts to expand the discussion to include underrepresented points of view.  Thus, abolitionists made visible the injustices of slavery and featured the African American perspective.  Suffragettes expanded democracy to more specifically consider the concerns of women.  The progressive movement and the New Deal elevated the concerns of manual laborers to a more visible platform.  Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela brought similar tactics to their respective movements, forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground.

In this, I was influenced by Ian Welsh's article entitled Does Bernie Sanders Know What He’s Doing?.  Quoting Welsh:

In peaceful social movements, “winning” means winning the hearts and minds of the majority of the society’s stakeholders to the point where they actively choose sides. First make them witnesses, then convert them into participants in the conflict. 

All Democrats, and Republicans for that matter, claim to be for helping the majority while protecting the rights of minorities.  Sanders has more credibility on this score than any of the other candidates, in my view.  Moreover, I like his slogan: "Not Me, Us".  Sanders is old and won't be around forever.  His candidacy is about a movement to address real problems more than it is about him as an individual, and that's the way it should be.