It is time we acknowledge the political realities before us, and align on the candidate who will not only win, but build the kind of multicultural, multiracial and working class movement that will enable the next President to take on corporate power and deliver justice for all.
By
As the executive director of Rights & Democracy (RAD) in Vermont and an organizer based in our state for more than two decades, I have had many opportunities to work closely with U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
I know what drives him, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right when she says, he is “the real deal.
As someone who once wrote off the whole political system as corrupt and broken beyond repair, my experience with Bernie has been transformative. The Senator has demonstrated time and again the importance of electing leaders who emerge from and work with people’s movements. He has been a steadfast champion for working people, and electing Bernie as mayor of Burlington then U.S. Congressman then U.S. Senator has resulted in key policy victories that directly improve the lives of the people of Vermont and people across this country. Electing Sanders as president will undoubtedly generate even more transformational change.
Many share my positive feelings about Bernie. So it came as no surprise to me when Rights & Democracy members from New Hampshire and Vermont voted overwhelmingly to endorse his candidacy for president, with Bernie winning over 63% of the first-place votes in our ranked choice vote. Our members’ second choice (who a majority said they would support if she were the nominee) was Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
While Elizabeth Warren is a strong, progressive voice in the Democratic primary, I believe Senator Bernie Sanders should be the candidate to support for president. For anyone struggling with who to choose, I offer three key reasons why:
1. Bernie is the best candidate to beat Trump and to begin transforming this country
Bernie Sanders is uniquely positioned to defeat Trump in 2020 and build a broad multiracial working-class movement to advance a transformative people’s agenda in this country.
Over my career I have been incredibly impressed by Bernie’s ability to get broad support from working people, including many Republicans, Independents, and those who had checked out of the political process entirely. In the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie won 22 states and over 13 million votes. He also smashed Obama’s 2008 fundraising records. Consider the magnitude of this achievement, given the fact that he took no corporate campaign bribes from Wall Street, Big Pharma, fossil fuels, or weapons manufacturers and that he started the race with a 1% name recognition nationally.
The 2020 Sanders campaign is similarly a fundraising juggernaut. He has already received over 4 million individual donations (a record amount) and his email list is one of the largest in the country. His social media prowess is also far and away the strongest of all 2020 Democratic candidates and he has mobilizied a “grassroots army” of a million volunteers.
In Vermont and across the nation, he has also galvanized young people in record numbers to support his past campaigns and current run for president. Contrary to the corporate media’s baseless narrative, Bernie also commands significant support—second only to Joe Biden—among black voters, particularly young black voters.
I believe Bernie has been able to build this diverse base of support because unlike the vast majority of politicians—he is not beholden to a small number of corporate and wealthy donors. He has been consistently fighting for the interests of his constituents his entire life. Bernie is unabashedly authentic and even people who may disagree with his politics trust him and respect the fact his message has stayed the same for over four decades. His commitment to economic, social, and racial justice is unwavering and enduring—and voters across the country know it.
Finally, when we hear the corporate media pundits go on about how only a centrist has the best chance to beat Donald Trump, we must remember that they got it wrong in 2016, when they paid no attention to the depth of anti-establishment sentiment in this country. It is not hard to imagine many potential Democratic nominees being tagged as elitists, à la Hillary Clinton 2016. That is a label they will never be able to credibly lay on Bernie.
Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/27/bernie-sanders-movement-candidate-we-need
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