BERNIE 2.0 — Amid the glut of speculation about whether Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg is Joe Biden’s political heir, another important succession story in Democratic circles has gone almost entirely undiscussed: Who will inherit Bernie Sanders’ ideological mantle? During the past two presidential cycles, the Vermont independent mounted captivating, extremely well-financed bids. He lost twice. But he reshaped the Democratic Party. The size and contents of Biden’s domestic agenda have been directly affected by Sandersism. He has compelled Democrats to embrace government intervention rather than hide their faith in it from public view. But Sanders, like Biden, is old. No one in his orbit imagines him mounting a third run should Biden call it quits — something, to be clear, the president and his team have explicitly said he isn’t doing. This has left a void in the party’s left wing. And it is causing anxiety among progressive operatives who believe Sanders’ great discovery was that, in the era of online politics, a presidential campaign was an effective tool to push unapologetic liberalism. “Bernie was the first real progressive to play that role in a long time,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, the deputy campaign manager for Sanders’ 2020 campaign. “Bill Bradley was a good guy, but he wasn’t a progessive leader. Howard Dean represented the left in ’04, but he wasn’t a progressive leader. And, so, a lot of the time we’ve been looking at progressive leaders in presidential races who haven’t been progressive. That does raise the expectations that whoever fills that lane actually be a progressive.” Ask veterans of Sanders’ world who they think could fill that lane, and you get a host of recognizable, but not necessarily national, names. The most common are a band of House progressives: Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Waah.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and the members of “The Squad.” But others imagine a new type of Bernie-ism that isn’t necessarily defined by Beltway influence. “I think the next chapter is Bernie 2.0 in color,” said Chuck Rocha, a former union organizer who served as Sanders’ senior campaign adviser. The next Sanders, as Rocha sees it, will follow the path laid out by one of Bernie’s major influences, Jesse Jackson, whose “rainbow coalition” presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 fused worker rights and multiculturalism into a potent political force. Jackson had his missteps, including one fairly infamous one. But the Democratic Party also went into abject panic at the prospect of him winning. Rocha thinks the party’s in a new place now, having seen obvious slippage with white working-class and Hispanic voters. And he surmises that politicians like Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Austin Council Member Greg Casar, a self-avowed Democratic socialist who is running for Congress, are the clearest embodiments of the Jackson vision. “You are going to have some massive, massive changes happening in the next two or three years,” said Rocha. “The only way to really be successful has to be rooted in almost a Donald Trump/auto-worker/person of color working-class narrative of economic populism. This is what the Democrats have walked away from at their own peril and one where they are getting their ass handed to them.” There is, of course, a massive, massive gap between running as an all-inclusive economic populist and mounting a successful Democratic presidential candidacy. As Rocha surveyed the coming generation of Democratic populists, he conceded a problem: They lack the political infrastructure to capitalize on the void Sanders will be leaving. There are a few candidates who won’t have that problem. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) could choose to run again. Khanna has invested in list acquisition. And Porter is a dynamite low-dollar fundraiser and a grassroots star. Perhaps more important, not everyone thinks having a currently unsophisticated operation would be that big a deal in three years. “If someone captures the imagination, then the infrastructure can be put in place,” said a prominent Democratic digital operative. Still, there is one lawmaker who Rocha and several others said did have the ideological makeup and infrastructure already in place, and a Sanders connection to boot: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who turns 35 (the legal age to be president under the Constitution) on Oct. 13, 2024. “Bernie is no different than when he was a crazy white-haired congressman,” said Rocha. “What legitimized him was when he could raise tens of millions of dollars. That made him real to every power broker in America. And no one beyond AOC has been able to do that.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at sstein@politico.com, or on Twitter at @samstein.
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