Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is in a unique position for a self-declared socialist in American politics. He has institutional power as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and influence in the Democratic Party on the back of his two close but unsuccessful runs for president.
The progressive movement that coalesced behind his primary candidacies in 2016 and 2020 has reshaped the Democratic Party platform. Much of this is owed to work that began long before Sanders ran, but his campaigns hit at a time when Americans were ready to look left for change.
With the ears of both President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer, Sanders is finally poised to deliver on key parts of his long-running agenda.
As Budget Committee chair, Sanders plans to hold hearings on wages, income inequality, taxes and climate, and aims to use his perch to push a large, ambitious infrastructure bill.
“We are going to be a very active and aggressive Budget Committee, which is going to explore what’s going on with the working class and the middle class of this country and how we can successfully address the crises that they face,” Sanders told the Washington Post earlier in February. The hearing Sanders has scheduled for tomorrow—questioning why taxpayers should subsidize poverty wages at large, profitable corporations—offers a taste of things to come.
Blue Tent talked to allies of the senator on their view of his position in the Democratic Party and the broader implications of his newfound power for the progressive movement in general. Sanders’s office did not provide comment for this article.
Mover and shaker
Sanders helped revolutionize the Democratic Party, said Center for Popular Democracy’s co-Executive Director Ana Maria Archila. The senator’s campaigns helped to mainstream progressive ideals like a higher minimum wage, a shift from funding war to funding people, and Medicare for All within the Democratic Party. For that alone, said Archila, Sanders can take credit for helping to fundamentally reshape the political landscape.
Today, Sanders has more mainstream credibility with the party, including those to his right. That’s in part because of his work to get Biden elected, Archila said.
“He’s a deeply principled, thoughtful person who told us every day that goal number one is defeating Donald Trump because he’s very dangerous,” said Archila. “And goal number two is making sure that … the government is working for people, that democracy works for people.”
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sanders compared the conditions around Biden’s rise into office to those that awaited Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, and said the 46th president understood the responsibility and opportunity in front of him.
“There is an understanding that if we’re going to address the crises facing this country, we’re all in it together,” Sanders said.
Archila described Sanders as fundamentally an “institutionalist” of the Senate who wants the body to function properly and help the American people. That doesn’t mean he’s losing his position as a movement leader, she added; it just means tempering expectations and keeping them realistic.
“Elected officials are elected officials; they are people who have chosen to be part of the institutions of our democracy, and the vast majority of them do not feel accountable to the movement,” said Archila. “And in fact, they are often not accountable to movements, or often enough to the communities they represent.”
Sanders is different, she said. “Ideologically, he’s been one of the most consistent electeds we have in the country. And that’s why people have placed a great deal of trust and expectations on him.”
Focused message discipline
The senator has worked hard to get to the position he’s in, said former Sanders staffer Carli Stevenson. After decades in Congress relentlessly pushing for progressive change, he’s finally on the cusp of seeing it realized.
“One of Bernie’s greatest strengths is his message discipline and his focus, and just relentlessly hammering the same few themes over and over again,” Stevenson said. “I think he has provided a model of that discipline for people to kind of rally around and for people to support.”
Stevenson added that Sanders is “one of, if not the, most focused elected leaders that I’ve ever come across in terms of what he wants to get done.” That leads her to have a lot of faith in him in the Senate, particularly atop the Budget Committee.
“I think I think he’s looking at this as, OK, how do we get as much done as possible while we’re in this position of having the trifecta?” Stevenson said.
Peace in the ranks—for now
The wide anticipation that the Democratic Party would quickly devolve into a circular firing squad has been met with a rather staid reality as members work together in Congress to pass Biden’s agenda. Internal tensions exist, of course, but there’s a mutual respect that, for now, is keeping things moving.
Biden “sees the progressive movement as a strong part of his coalition,” Sanders told the Times. “He is reaching out to us and is adopting some of the ideas that we have put forth that make sense in terms of today’s crises.”
Still, the nature of the Senate and Washington jeopardizes people’s lives as time stretches on with no relief, said Winnie Wong.
Among Sanders’s earliest supporters, Wong is today still active in the senator’s orbit. One of the founders of People for Bernie, the group that helped propel the senator’s unlikely primary candidacy in 2016 to mount a formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, today, Wong advises progressive groups in New York and nationally. She also served as senior advisor to the Sanders campaign in 2020.
Wong told Blue Tent that Sanders is taking an active role in the Democratic Senate caucus and that the progressive Independent’s voice is being heard. But that is no excuse for the Senate not taking immediate action on progressive priorities.
“It’s a mistake for both Bernie and Chuck Schumer, as well as some of the other prominent progressive Democrats, so-called progressive Democrats, to not immediately demand that the filibuster be abolished,” said Wong, adding that such delay could be a mistake that could “set the stage for bad things to come in the spring.”
“The thing about Bernie Sanders is that he really respects the process and he is really an institutionalist at heart,” Wong added.”I think that there are misconceptions that Bernie is this sort of flame thrower on the inside.”
Wong said that Sanders has never been interested in that kind of explosive approach to politics; rather, the senator is an organizer and advocate who takes his job “very seriously.” An institutionalist, Sanders wants to come to consensus.
Progressive firewall
The desire from Sanders to work with the party that spurned him is frustrating, Wong said. The way the party, once again, circled the wagons around Biden, the establishment candidate, instead of Sanders still rubs Wong the wrong way, she said. Sanders fought hard, but it wasn’t enough to beat the party establishment.
“He couldn’t overcome the power of the ruling class,” Wong said. “He just could not overcome that.”
That still leaves Sanders as a progressive firewall, one last hope from the left that the Democrats won’t squander this opportunity. Archila said she’s hopeful.
Because Sanders is independent of the party’s corporate elite controlling class, he has the ability to speak truth to power. That hasn’t changed, said Archila. If anything, the senator is living up to the “high standards” CPD and other progressive movers and shakers have for him.
“We have high expectations for what he can do from that perch and a lot of well-earned trust that he will use this powerful role to continue to advance the agenda that is so deeply associated with him and with the progressive wing of the party,” said Archila.
Kenzo Shibata, a high school teacher and an executive board member of the Chicago Teachers Union, agrees that Sanders has earned the trust of workers and progressives. The senator came to a 2019 strike by the Chicago Teachers Union, giving them a needed national boost. After Sanders, every Democratic hopeful at the time—save Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard—expressed support for the action.
That shows the potential of the movement, said Shibata. Organizers and movement leaders need to see their role in the current moment as one with potential, said Shibata, and their struggles need to be in the mainstream. Sanders, who is susceptible to pressure from his base, is a key ally in that fight.
“Bernie, I think, could be our megaphone in that way here in the Senate,” Shibata said. “He’s connected to these movements.”
Given the senator’s credibility and message discipline, Stevenson thinks that Sanders can provide progressives with the tools to push a realistic left-wing agenda during Biden’s first two years. Focusing the strategy lends itself to success, which in turn begets more, she said.
“We have to look for opportunities to make progress and organize around our issues,” Stevenson said.
She added, “There are people that want to believe that, like, Bernie and the movement that he rallied around him were vanquished, and that the Biden victory shows that this isn’t really as popular as people think it is, blah, blah, blah,” said Stevenson. “And I think that that’s not true.”
A movement outside of the party
Translating rhetoric into policy, however, requires addressing the disparate groups that formed the Sanders coalition in the first place, many of which have splintered into factionalism over minor strategic disagreements. Stevenson said that she sees Sanders supporters and progressives in three general categories: those who are happy with Sanders, those who want more, and those who are more nihilistic about the entire process and see Biden as relatively indistinguishable from Trump. Stevenson said she falls in the middle camp.
“I know that the Biden administration is going to have to get pushed really hard, and I know there are a lot of things that they probably don’t want to do,” said Stevenson. “But I also just don’t believe in sitting back.”
Shibata told Blue Tent that he’d like the senator to take a firmer hand in directing his supporters toward positive change. That requires stepping in when former staffers in the movement take positions that are harmful to left principles, he said. “Bernie, with his experience, should know that he has a responsibility to step in and say something. He should be a megaphone for the people on the ground right now. This is obviously the end of his career. I don’t think he’s going to run again.”
The way the Sanders campaign worked with progressives in 2019 and early 2020—the senator used his email list to call for action on immigration and to support labor—is a sign of the way that he can be used by the movement.
“There was a seamlessness between his campaign and the progressive movement, the left movement, during that,” said Shibata. “I would love to see him continue doing that.”
Archila expressed hope that no matter what happens, the progressive movement will continue to fight and advocate for change.
“The movement lives outside of the electoral formation and the parties itself,” said Archila. “It’s an amalgam of organizations and people and communities that have a shared, lived experience and goals for changing laws and policies.”
