Bernie Or Elizabeth-- How Do You Choose Between Two Such Awesome Candidates?

I think we can all agree that Status Quo Joe, Kamala and Mayo Pete are suitable replacement for Trump. We deserve someone as good as he has been bad. And there are just two 2020 candidates that fit that description: Bernie and Elizabeth. I pray they form a ticket. If they don't, I'll be voting for Bernie in the primary. If Elizabeth wins I'll be celebrating almost as much as I would have been for Bernie. Blue America will endorse her immediately, I'll contribute to her campaign and I'll work as hard to elect her as I would if Bernie were the nominee. Not everyone I know sees it the same way. One of my friends called from his home in Oregon Sunday and told me he's the mirror image-- he likes Elizabeth and Bernie but plans to vote for her in the primary, not for Bernie this time. I don't know a single person backing Biden-- except for one friend's sister-- but I suspect more of my friends are for Elizabeth than for Bernie. I didn't want to argue with my friend from Oregon but I may send him this Bernie v Elizabeth piece in CounterPunch by Eric Draister.

Draister is a proud Socialist and an independent journalist. He does not recognize Bernie as a comrade in arms. He didn't vote for him in 2016 and wrote in CounterPunch yesterday that back then he "saw him as part of an effort to rope the left back into the Democratic Party and its neoliberal Catherine wheel... I’ve noted that Sanders is not only not a socialist, but in fact is closer to mainstream FDR-style liberalism than anything resembling socialism." I think Bernie would phrase that differently but agree wholeheartedly.

Yet, despite all that, Draister, wrote that 2020 feels more urgent than 2016, "as if every day brings with it another mass slaughter, another crime against humanity. In fact, every new day does bring with it another slaughter, another affront to human decency and civilized society. The Fascist-in-Chief has activated the darkest, most reactionary, most dangerous elements of American society, bringing them out of the shadows and into the light of the mainstream. Trump is the fascist smack mainlined into the body politic; crystal meth huffed from the billowing smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and fracking methane plumes.

Draister sees what we're going through as a condition from which "Americans, especially progressives, are desperately searching for treatment. Some look to the celebrity rehab retreats of Malibu neoliberalism, hoping that if we could just get past the withdrawals in an exquisitely furnished room with silk bedsheets and an ocean view, that somehow things will return to normal. This is the fairy tale propagated by that powerful publishing house of Harris, Biden & Buttigieg and its billionaire shareholders. But their stock price is way down. Sales are plummeting as customers are increasingly turning to smaller, more independent [providers] whose content is more aligned with the national mood."

So, we look to these indie leaders for a new story, a narrative arc as inspiring as it is exciting. We want Bernie Sanders to slay the dragon and ride in on a white horse to save us. We long for Elizabeth Warren to reassure us that the story we’re living is just make-believe as she kisses our foreheads and tucks us in. We need a heroic daddy; a smart, stable mommy.

This is what it feels like being on the left in American politics today, to say nothing of us Marxists, anarchists, and other political runaways hitchhiking on the road to climate perdition. But, unfortunately, feelings aren’t going to stop fascism. Rather, we must stick to the facts. We must allow the material reality of this political moment to guide our analysis.

And it is from that perspective that we must understand that the real separation between Sanders and Warren isn’t man versus woman, heroic daddy versus nurturing mommy. It isn’t electability or likeability. No, what separates them is class: which class supports them, which class’s aspirations and needs they represent, and which candidate has a class-based movement behind them.

...[T]oday in Summer 2019, there is no doubt about the class nature of Bernie’s movement. This is a working class movement, not simply a campaign, and Sanders has risen to become unquestioningly the most powerful and resounding voice of the American working class. Attend any Sanders event and you see this in action: working class immigrants, broke students and recent graduates, disabled and/or elderly pensioners, union workers, etc.

This is not simply a matter of representation. This isn’t Trump getting a few brown and black faces in front of the camera to obscure the sea of fascist neanderthals at his rallies. No, at Bernie’s events this is genuine and represents an accurate snapshot of the working class in America which is majority non-white.

Warren too has a dynamic campaign that hits all the right notes. Even her events, as any video will show, have a more diverse crowd than many other candidates from the past and today. But it isn’t working class, and it isn’t a movement. Let’s look at the numbers.

According to recent polling data from Morning Consult (one of the best, most reputable along with Pew and Quinnipiac) regarding Democratic primary voter support:

• Voters earning less than $50,000 (Sanders- 22%; Warren- 12%)
• Voters without college degrees (Sanders- 22%; Warren- 10%)
• Voters with college degrees (Sanders- 16%; Warren- 15%)
• Voters with postgraduate degrees (Sanders- 12%; Warren- 19%)

Just from these numbers one clear fact jumps out: Sanders supporters are less wealthy and less privileged on the whole. Looking specifically at income and education, two key indicators of class orientation and access to social mobility, it’s clear which candidate is supported by the poor and working class. Moreover, because access to education is directly correlated to wealth and privilege, these numbers reflect a broader political tendency among those most economically marginalized, seeing Sanders, not Warren, as the voice of the poor in America.

But you don’t actually need these numbers to reach this conclusion. Just monitor the campaign events, the venues, the attendees. While Sanders goes to Skid Row and snubs liberal kingmaker rituals like Netroots Nation, Warren passes the collection plate among the Forever Hillary liberal crowd. The faces and voices you see at Sanders events from California and Michigan, Ohio to Vermont speak volumes about the class character of the movement behind Bernie. People living paycheck to paycheck, seeing in Sanders a voice of their plight. Moreover, in Sanders they see a movement of themselves, not simply faith in a Democrat politician. Warren does not enjoy a similar movement. She is, at best, the face of a very good political campaign. But a good campaign does not a movement make.

Let’s look a little further.

Sanders also dominates Warren with young people, another indication of class, though perhaps less obvious than income and education. According to Morning Consult:

• Support from 18-29 voters (Sanders- 33+%; Warren- 11%)
• Support from 30-44 voters (Sanders- 25%; Warren- 13%)
• Support from 45-54 voters (Sanders- 17%; Warren- 12%)
• Support from 55-64 voters (Sanders- 12%; Warren- 13%)
• Support from 65+ voters (Sanders- 8%; Warren- 13%)

The numbers paint a fairly obvious picture: Sanders has huge support among the young, those who must look forward to decades of life to be lived in this country. The older the voter gets the less they like Sanders and more they like Warren. But let’s look a little deeper at what this actually means.

Increasingly, America’s educated youth must be considered largely working class as tens of millions are already, or soon will be, saddled with so much debt that they are likely to have no wealth at all despite years of working. Sanders call to cancel all student debt, as opposed to Warren’s half-measure that would reduce debts by a maximum of $50,000, is predictably popular among these key demographics. It should be noted though that student debt is also held by many middle-aged Americans who are either still paying their loans or are paying those of their children.

Naturally, young people from underprivileged backgrounds are much more likely to have less access to education and are more likely to get caught up in the prison-industrial complex, social ills which Sanders’s free public higher education and criminal justice reform proposals speak to. Warren may “have a plan for that” but the data says that its Sanders who they’re listening to.

Perhaps we can most clearly define what we’re witnessing on the progressive end of the political spectrum as something akin to Rosa Luxemburg’s 120-year-old question: reform or revolution?

I’m the first to say that Sanders isn’t exactly my ideal communist revolutionary…hell, he’s not even really a socialist in the true sense of the word. But for this moment, after three years of Trump-addled political fog, he represents the revolutionary upsurge in American politics. Warren represents a moderate, reform-oriented tinkering with the system, Sanders is for upending it.

Warren is praised by analysts on CNN and MSNBC while Sanders is marginalized and maligned. Why?

Because while Bernie rides his white stallion to defend workers, it is Warren who is being tapped to ride in and save the ruling class from Bernie and the Sandernistas that are propelling his candidacy.