Why I’m Still Supporting Bernie Sanders Over Elizabeth Warren

Six months ago, as Liz Warren was beginning to rise to frontrunner status, I wrote a piece comparing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I demonstrated at the time, in my opinion, that Bernie Sanders’ plans were better, his political experience was more substantial and compelling, and his understanding of how to build power amongst the people was better.

We are in a very different time now. Bernie Sanders has had his moment at just the right time. He won the popular vote in Iowa. He won the New Hampshire primary. And he absolutely routed in the Nevada primary. As of this writing, Nate Silver gives Bernie Sanders a 2/3 chance of winning a plurality of delegates. He has secured the endorsements of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. He has the endorsements of pro-immigrant groups like Make the Road and Mijente, as well as the climate action group, the Sunrise Movement. Many prominent unions from the United Teachers of Los Angeles to National Nurses United to the American Postal Workers Union have gotten behind Bernie Sanders. This appears to be Bernie Sanders’ moment.

But Elizabeth Warren hangs on, and there are many that feel that she has not been given her fair shake. My totally scientific and anecdotal polling of my friends and family suggest that if y’all are not voting for Sanders, you’re still all in for Warren. And with the way that she absolutely–and oh so justly–bodied Michael Bloomberg in the last debate, there’s reason to believe that she might be back in the mix in this race.

So let me revisit this post and show why the last six months have shown that Bernie Sanders is the clear choice of progressives in this primary.

BUT FIRST… I want to make clear something I’ve said in the past: I love Elizabeth Warren. I’ve said in the past that if she were to somehow become the nominee, I would happily support her, donate to her, and volunteer for her. Her destruction of Michael Bloomberg on the issue of his treatment of women who worked for him demonstrated one thing to me: that Senator Warren is a friend to working people, and has a clear disdain for the people who have rigged our economy in favor of the wealthy.

And I should also say that I have nothing but love for her supporters, many of whom I know for a fact are good people who have spent their lives fighting against injustice in many forms. I’m assuming the best intentions of Warren supporters, and I hope that you do the same with me.

I’m voting against Warren, not because I dislike her, but because Bernie is better. And he has conclusively shown that in the last few months since my last piece. How so?

1. Elizabeth Warren blinked. Bernie Sanders did not

Trouble started brewing when Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders started facing tough questions and a concerted propaganda effort against Medicare For All. With of course the eternal question “hOw ArE yOu gOiNg tO pAy fOr iT?!” And everyone wanted an answer to the question of whether Medicare For All would raise taxes.

This is where I believe Bernie Sanders demonstrated superior instincts to Elizabeth Warren. Warren could not give a straight and clear answer to the question of Medicare For All. Her messaging was, simply put, not clear, and did not land.

Bernie Sanders understands something that a lot of Democrats don’t. Want a message to land? Say it crisply and clearly. It’s the bumper sticker test; can someone know what you believe in a bumper sticker?

Bernie Sanders, when asked about Medicare For All, has been quite clear: “Your federal taxes will go up. No premiums. No deductibles.” 

I’ve spoken at length about Sanders’ political instincts. This tells us a lot about those instincts. Sanders gets how to talk about issues so they’ll land with the people. Warren has not shown quite that same ability. When she was pressed and challenged, she couldn’t quite land on a message in a way she needs to to win over voters.

And then Elizabeth Warren blinked again. She proposed a confusing multi-step plan for passing Medicare For All. It included an oddly regressive taxation plan that would have harmed small businesses and workers, and stretched out over four years, which means that the plan could easily be quashed by a bad midterm. She broke the first rule of a negotiation: don’t reveal upfront what you’re willing to compromise on. She negotiated against herself in public view before she ever entered office.

Her plan for Medicare for All satisfied no one. For many leftist supporters, the plan seemed to confirm long held suspicions that Warren simply did not care that much about Medicare For All as a policy goal. Meanwhile, those that felt that Medicare For All was the wrong path were unimpressed with the plan and went with the candidate who seemed to fit their vision, Pete Buttigieg.

Bernie Sanders? He promised to propose a Medicare For All bill on Day 1.  As a matter of politics he has earned the fruits of sticking to his guns. This is perhaps why Congress’s most vocal advocate for Medicare For All, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for President.

2. Foreign Policy

There were two tests of foreign policy early on in this race, and on each, Bernie proved himself superior.

The first was on Bolivia, where Evo Morales was overthrown in an effective coup. Mainstream media went with the line that Evo Morales basically cheated to try to give the recent presidential election to himself. We knew at the time, thanks to reporting from Democracy Now, the Center for Economic Policy and Research, and the Grayzone, that this was not true and that trumped up allegations were being used to justify a right wing military takeover of Bolivia. Now that the Washington Post has gotten on board we can safely say that this was a lie.

Elizabeth Warren-despite much of this journalism being common knowledge- refused to call this a coup and to take a stern line against right wing violence in Latin America. You know who did immediately? Bernie Sanders.

This tells me a lot about Bernie Sanders’ policy instincts. He has a default distrust of many of the power centers of American foreign policy, and does not give in too quickly to their narratives about what’s going on in foreign countries. And that’s really important. The mainstream foreign policy community-from the news media to think tanks to the military, NSA, and CIA has given us disaster after disaster in the last 50 years: the Vietnam War, the Iraq War (which, lest we forget, Joe Biden voted for), the never-ending war in Afghanistan, the war in Libya. All of which Sanders opposed. Clearly and unequivocally. We need that sort of decisive leadership if we’re going to make America a force for good once again on the world stage. 

The same held true for Iran. Elizabeth Warren accepted the conventional wisdom about Qassem Soleimani when he was killed; that he was a bad man, but we still shouldn’t have killed him. In terms of optics, this was not a smart move. If you’re going to call someone a “murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” the logical response from many would be “Wait, what? Why wouldn’t we kill that guy?”

You can’t water down your messaging if you’re going to stop a war. Bernie Sanders came out and strongly condemned the assassination. He was willing to do what Warren, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg would not, and actually call it an assassination. Again, clear and direct messaging that makes it clear that this strike was not just a minor strategic mistake, but morally unjustified. And then he worked alongside Democrats and Republicans like Mike Lee in the Senate and House to write bills that would limit the ability of the President to make war in Iran. In the middle of a busy campaign long before it was clear he was the front runner, it was Sanders-not Warren- who took the lead in organizing the anti-war factions in the Senate. That leadership matters, and it’s the type of leadership we need in Washington.

Sanders has taken other stands on foreign policy that we should acknowledge. As has been stated above, he voted against Trump’s military budgets. Warren voted for several of them, though not the most recent one to her credit. He voted against Trump’s latest trade deal, which does nothing to address climate change. Warren voted for it. (Think Trump won’t use that against her in the fall debates if trade comes up?) Sanders has called for the end of the Patriot Act and the end of the mass surveillance state. That one matters a lot because that’s a reform Sanders can put into action on Day 1.

On foreign policy, Sanders gets it done. Clearly and unequivocally. I want a commander-in-chief like that.

3. Warren’s campaign crashes on the rocks

The moves I’ve posted above reveal a lot about Warren’s policy preferences, but they also reveal quite a bit about her political instincts. And frankly they show that Sanders is a lot smarter politically. Sanders is consistent and clear in his messaging. His messaging has a moral core that resonates with voters.

I’ve often said that Sanders passes the bumper sticker test. Can an average voter (not a freak like me, but someone who follows politics occasionally and not obsessively) say what you stand for in a bumper sticker? If you want a policy to land with the people, you’d better be able to do that.

What’s Trump’s bumper sticker? Build a wall. Get tough on China. Fix NAFTA. Clear, simple messaging that has earned Trump a base of passionate supporters (and may well win him a reelection unless we can mobilize voters to vote for someone else instead of staying home.)

What’s Sanders bumper sticker? Medicare For All. Free College. No money from billionaires. Again, clear simple messaging. Every voter I’ve ever talked to knows a little of who Bernie Sanders is. Some voters hate him for sure. But everyone knows what he stands for, which is why he is the most popular active politician in the Democratic Party, according to a recent YouGov analysis.

Warren has not been able to settle on a bumper sticker. At first she was the plans person. She has a plan for that. Okay, but… I’ve got to get groceries, do my laundry, and just kinda go about my day, so could you maybe tell me the plans now? The closest she’s had is she’s the Wealth Tax person. Which is not bad but… a wealth tax? To do what? On who? What’s that got to do with me?

Instead of sharpening that message, Warren spent the last few weeks before the Iowa caucus getting bogged down in nonsense.

She attacked Pete Buttigieg over his fundraisers courting wealthy donors. A fair attack, but of course Buttigieg struck back, noting her own support from wealthy donors. Want to know who won that exchange?Bernie Sanders, noting rightly that there’s not a single billionaire supporting his campaign. (And note that he attacked Buttigieg, not Warren.)

She broke the truce with Bernie Sanders for next to nothing: a volunteer-written canvassing script that was likely never used and a conversation where Sanders allegedly claimed that a woman could not beat Trump (a claim he vigorously and consistently denied). The story died within a week; she sacrificed a friendly relationship with Sanders and support of many Sanders-sympathetic voters who might have been flipped for no benefit. She finished third in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire, and fourth in Nevada for her efforts. She just finished fifth in South Carolina.

4. The remarkable and unparalleled grassroots energy of the Sanders campaign.

In those contests, I believe Sanders firmly demonstrated that he is the candidate to take the hopes and dreams of progressives and bring them to fruition.

What Sanders did in these three states is nothing short of remarkable. The only other candidate who has done anything like what he did in my lifetime was Barack Obama.

Start with Iowa. Many observers, including myself before I went there, would like to write off Iowa as an all white state of corn farmers. Not Sanders and not his team.

Who pushed to organize the first ever caucuses in Mosques? Bernie Sanders. And Muslim voters voted for him in overwhelming numbers.

Who organized morning caucuses for the mostly immigrant workers who work at Iowa’s massive meatpacking plants? Bernie Sanders. And his supporters spent hours canvassing outside the doors of those plants to get working class voters to vote. Bernie Sanders’ campaign showed a unique ability in Iowa to go to the places where people weren’t going and turn them out.

Nevada was even more stunning. For months Sanders had people on the ground in Nevada, working in the Latinx community, talking to folks of all ages in both Spanish and English about what his campaign could mean for them. 50% of all Latinx and Hispanic caucus goers voted for Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren got about 7%.

Nevada’s largest union, the Culinary Union, refused to endorse Sanders, and criticized his stance on Medicare For All. Sanders-affiliated union members took their message directly to the people. A majority of union members voted for Sanders and Medicare For All.

I often have heard white folks (myself included) on the left discuss-often in eloquent terms- how they are wrestling with their own privileges and their own blind spots as white people in America. That’s been a good thing to see, and an important thing for the left in America. If indeed we care about that journey and we care about truly empowering underprivileged and working people in America, we can’t turn a blind eye when massive numbers of them choose a candidate like Bernie Sanders. We need to acknowledge our blind spots and say “Maybe someone else is delivering my message in a way that resonates more with my allies on the ground.”

Sanders has done the work in these communities. Elizabeth Warren hasn’t. He has done the work to get these communities on his side, and done so without compromising his core message. Elizabeth Warren-for all her strengths and virtues- has not. That kind of work matters, and we need to stand behind that kind of work if we have any hope of a progressive vision winning in 2020.

5. Warren scrambles… and sells her soul for a shot at the nomination.

Elizabeth Warren redeemed herself during the Nevada debate when she went after Bloomberg. I shouted at friends the next day, “GUYS! THE OLD LIZ WARREN’S BACK!” She found a villain worthy of the causes she espouses, and boy was it satisfying to watch her take the Mini Fascist from New York down.

(Sidenote: I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I’ve heard a lot of folks describe Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as “angry”. And say that we do not need an “angry” president. I don’t have time to write too much about this now, but I’ll remind folks that anger is an appropriate response to injustice. And it’s important to name the injustice. Mike Bloomberg has used his billions and his political power to silence women, organize a vast campaign of police violence against young black and Hispanic men, crush unions, and buy off opposition, while espousing some of the most vile viewpoints in American politics. That’s worth being angry about, and I’m glad Warren and Sanders are angry on my behalf.)

What happened the next day? She accepted the support of a Super PAC. Almost a year to the day after she swore to never use Super PAC money. Now she is. Worse yet, the Super PAC she’s taking is founded by an oil industry lobbyist, and despite her request, has refused to disclose its donors. Which is exactly what Super PACs do.

Warren’s message has been across her entire career, pretty simple: that the rich and powerful have a corrupting influence on our economy and our system of government. For her to take that money at this time in the race is a profound betrayal of those values.

Some folks have defended Warren. Hey, it’s a competitive race, and sometimes you have to make compromises to survive.And in any other election, I might have accepted that, because in any other election, Elizabeth Warren would have been the left’s best hope.

But in this election we have Bernie Sanders. A candidate who has raised more money from small donors than any candidate in history. How can we look at a candidate like that and refuse to accept that? How do we not rally behind a candidate and an organization who can do that? The money of the rich is inherently corrupting. You take it, and the wealthy will expect favors and concessions. That’s how that money works. It’s a poisoned chalice. Many candidates have to take that money to survive. It’s the nature of the game. But it’s impossible to take it without then taking their meetings. And being told that, “Hey, maybe you could go slow on that Medicare For All. Or that Green New Deal that will harm my business.” And anyone who has ever been in politics will tell you, it’s hard to say no to those pleas. And from what I’ve seen so far, I’m not convinced Elizabeth Warren will be able to do that. And even if I was, I don’t want to take the risk in an election that has Bernie Sanders

So why is that money ($12 million so far for Super Tuesday races)coming to Elizabeth Warren now so late in the race? Well, I think Krystal Ball put it best.

Elizabeth Warren has been increasingly open about what she wants to do in this race: stay in the race as long as possible. Get as many delegates as she can. And then use those delegates to contest the convention, and make a pitch to the super-delegates that she’s their preferred candidates.

I’ve heard a lot of discussion that basically amounts to, “Well see this was in the rules, so that makes it okay.” Some real moral high ground stuff. I want to get away from that sort of stuff at least for a minute and explain why this is an absolutely disastrous scenario for progressive voters:

1. First, let’s get this out of way: a contested convention that does NOT go to the popular vote winner is fundamentally undemocratic. Like, by definition. What moral high ground would we have to challenge the Electoral College if THIS is how we pick our candidate? Yes, the primary process is flawed and absurd. No one has been more vocal about that than Bernie Sanders and his supporters. But this is an absolutely ridiculous solution to that problem.
2. A contested convention will also virtually guarantee a Trump win in November. Trump will blast the message out of every bullhorn who’s got that the Democratic primary was “rigged.” If I were his campaign manager, I would blast out millions of dollars of TV ads saying exactly that. Bernie voters (if Bernie is the popular vote winner, which the odds suggest he will be) will stay home. But more importantly, swing voters and inconsistent voters (i.e. voters who don’t vote in every election) will either stay home or vote for Trump. The number one complaint among these voters? That democracy looks rigged.  What on earth will you say to them about this convention? How on earth will you explain that superdelegates represent the democratic will of the people?
3. A contested convention will NOT go to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or any other candidate who has made promises to go after the big money and the big financial interests that dominate our politics. I’m sorry, but it won’t. One of the leaders of the push for a contested convention is a lobbyist for the private insurance industry. Elizabeth Warren wants to go after the machine. This IS the machine. Superdelegates might vote for Joe Biden, especially if he does better than expected after his win in South Carolina. They might go for Mike Bloomberg, who is quite literally trying to buy them off. Or they might go for someone completely different. Anonymous superdelegates have pitched Sherrod Brown of all people.

In pushing for a contested convention, Elizabeth Warren is giving into a fundamentally undemocratic process that strips our voices as voters, one which will almost certainly go against the very priorities we have all been working hard to make a reality.

None of this is easy for me. I have admired Elizabeth Warren for years, going back to when I first started to dip my toe into leftist politics. There was a time when I thought she was as far as we could possibly go left in America. Thanks to Bernie Sanders, that has changed; the world has changed underneath our feet, and we need to embrace that change. Bernie Sanders is better on policy, better in his political experience, and better in his understanding of how to get working people to the polls. And right now he’s our best shot at having a true left nominee for President, and heading off a contested convention that will not go our way.

To my friends supporting Elizabeth Warren, I ask you to remember this: We’re not fighting for one man or woman. We’re fighting for a movement. We’re fighting to make America a place that fundamentally values human life, and does not place greater value on the lives and desires of the wealthy and well-connected. I’m not in this fight for Bernie Sanders; I’m in this fight to make the vision of a better America a reality. Right now, the only people I believe represent that vision are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And right now, our best shot at making that vision a reality is Bernie Sanders.

Get on board now, folks, before Super Tuesday, and let’s make that happen.

Why I’m supporting Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren

Alright we need to talk about it. It can’t be avoided folks.

 Here’s why you should support Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren.

I’ve avoided posting this for a while, because I like Elizabeth Warren, and I like the people who like Elizabeth Warren a lot. I’ve been putting little pieces of this together over the last few weeks and well… it’s gotten to be a pretty long beast. And I’m going to cut it up into at least two parts and maybe more as issues come up. So if you don’t have the time to read the whole thing  here’s the TLDR version of it:

• I like Senator Warren. But Senator Sanders is better on policy, on politics, and on power. Senator Sanders has the policies that we want to see passed, an understanding of how government functions that can get those policies passed, and an understanding that the power to force those bills to be passed must come directly from working people organizing in government.

BUT FIRST: Repeating for emphasis, I like Elizabeth Warren a lot. She was my first choice back in 2016 and she’s the only other candidate I would consider volunteering for and donating money to in 2020. This is not a hit on Liz Warren; unlike many of the other Democratic candidates (e.g. Pete Buttigiej, Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris), I view her as a respectable person with good ideas and the right enemies.

I simply like Bernie more. And it’s because he’s better on policy, politics, and power. Let’s get into them:

POLICY: Okay so I already know what a lot of people will say. “Liz Warren has such great policies. She’s got a plan for that!”

So firstly, let’s just say that while Senator Warren has several terrific plans on some issues. She’s also been frustratingly vague on other things. Take Medicare for All. You might think she’s for Medicare for All, based off her fantastic tag team performance with Senator Sanders during the debates so far. (I’ve heard John Delaney is still running for President, but I’m reasonably confident Warren and Sanders buried his body in the Everglades after owning him so much in the 2nd debate.) And yet, she’s also at other times said she’s in favor of keeping private insurance. She’s also said she’d support a public option. She only very recently posted a “framework” for Medicare for All on her website. One which does not actually support Medicare as the “single payer” for health care. That’s… pretty odd for the candidate with all the plans.

Senator Sanders, by the way, has consistently favored Medicare for All. Full stop. For decades.

Similarly, let’s talk education, which strikes me personally as a teacher. Bernie Sanders’ Thurgood Marshall education plan is quite simply, fantastic. It triples funding for Title 1 schools (the poorest schools in the nation), institutes a universal free lunch program, and comes down hard on private charter school chains whose mission is to profit off our education system. 

Elizabeth Warren has… no education plan. 

Meanwhile, her education advisor is a former TFA grad with 1 year of teaching experience and a lot of experience in the “education reform” (aka grifter) industry. Now hey, it’s a busy campaign, and there’s a lot of issues that could be covered. But if your message is “she has a plan for that,” then you’d damn well better have a plan for how you will educate millions of children across this nation.

Finally, there’s her anti-corruption plan. It’s a pretty good plan, but her actions are not consistent with the plan she presents. She says she’s against big money in politics and has a plan to get it out… yet she accepted huge donations from wealthy people to fund her 2018 Senate campaign and is using that money to fund her primary. She says she won’t accept big money now, but asserts she will take big money in the general election. This does not suggest that she is a consistent and principled opponent of big money in politics.

Bernie Sanders has been clear: No big donations from Super Pacs. His plans target the oligarchy in America, and his actions show he will follow through on his plans.

Moreover, there are areas of policy where our limited understanding of her is pretty concerning, particularly foreign policy. She’s been oddly hawkish on Iran, and voted to ramp up sanctions against them in 2017. (Bernie Sanders, wisely voted against She’s also been far too sympathetic to the government of Israel. (An area where Senator Sanders has lapped the entire field by expressing some form of sympathy for the Palestinian people.) She voted for 2 out of 3 of Trump’s military budgets, and has a long record as a pro-military public servant. (Senator Sanders voted against all three.) 

I grew up in the cauldron of the Iraq War and the War on Terror. We need to get away from this era of endless war. We need a President who will make a strong and firm break with that past. I don’t have a sense that Senator Warren will do that. While Bernie Sanders is imperfect, I trust him more. I know he voted against the Iraq War. I know he opposed Trump’s military budgets. I know he has worked alongside Republicans to end the war in Yemen. I can’t say the same about Elizabeth Warren.

But finally, if your concern is who has the best plans, Senator Sanders is better. He’s bolder, more ambitious, and his plans cover more people. He has put forward detailed proposals with methods to pay for them. Before anyone else, he led the way on free college, on minimum wage, on Medicare for All, on criminal justice, and most recently, climate change. He’s even got some juicy, wonky stuff like his work with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce postal banking and create federal supports for small business loans. He has taken, by far, the strongest stance in opposing not just the opioid crisis, but the companies that started the crisis in the first place, calling on his future Attorney General to prosecute the CEOs who started the crisis in the first place.

If we get all of Bernie Sanders plan, we will radically transform America. We will make America a place where the poor and middle class will never be saddled by medical debt and student loan debt, and where we can recreate an America where everyone has access to a happy life. 

I hear some people say that Elizabeth Warren’s plans are more practical and will gain more support. After all, Republicans won’t support a President who wants plans so ambitious as Sanders. The trouble is this: they won’t support Warren either. The people that oppose Sanders won’t come around to Warren on policy.

Here’s a lesson we should have learned from the Clinton and Obama administrations: You start your negotiations with EVERYTHING you want. Not 90% of what you want, not 50% of what you want. EVERYTHING! And you push for EVERYTHING, and you compromise only when you have to. Warren is compromising with herself long before she has any power. That’s a problem on policy, and it does not bode well for her personal beliefs or political instincts.

Now there’s a more serious critique which is that do we really want the rich to get free college? Do we really want to wipe out the debt of rich kids who like went to Haverford and majored in art history or whatever? Do we really want the rich to get free healthcare?

Yes. Yes we do. For two reasons:

First, if something is a right, then you don’t make people pay a fee at point of service before they use it. Is publicly funded education a right? I’d say it is. Should we require the rich to pay a tuition before they send their kids to public school? Absolutely not! Your public school takes every kid who walks through the door with proof of address, regardless of whether their parents have been paying their taxes. And that’s how it should be, because education is a right. 

But hey if that’s a practical concern, then there’s a solution: raise taxes. Raise taxes on wealth, on stock dividends, on property, and on income so we can afford these programs. That’s how you pay for it and insure no one is getting a gift.

Meagan Day describes the difference between Sanders and Warren perfectly here and I think we need to pay close attention to this difference: 

Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist and Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones.” These aren’t just labels. They’re distinct approaches to the fundamental problems facing our society.

A socialist tries to liberate the things people need to survive from the clutches of capitalist markets, which is why Sanders has taken the lead on Medicare for All, transforming it into the most popular working-class demand of the moment. A capitalist respects the superior wisdom of capitalist markets and tries to restore them to optimal functionality, which can help explain why Warren is so frustratingly noncommittal on Medicare for All. A socialist pursues decommodification through universal social programs that enshrine new social rights for all, which is why Sanders has proposed to eliminate every last penny of existing student debt. A capitalist of the liberal or progressive variety is seduced by means-testing, which is why Warren needlessly introduced eligibility requirements and caps into her student-debt forgiveness program.

Okay so we’ve shown that Sanders’ policies are better: they’re universal, more anti-war, more comprehensive, and Sanders has been more consistent in advocating for them. Glad you asked! Kyle Kulinsky lays out these policy differences well here.  But maybe you’re not convinced. After all, Bernie Sanders can have the best plans in the world, but what’s his record? Elizabeth Warren has such a great record and is so well respected in Washington! Well that gets us to point #2:

POLITICS: Bernie Sanders is actually far more experienced in the practice of government than Elizabeth Warren. He’s been in government for a longer period of time, and his work reveals that he has a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how government works than a lot of people realize.

As mayor of Burlington-an economically diverse city and more and more, a racially diverse one as well- he played a major role in keeping the beaches of Lake Champlain public and focused on the housing crisis by creating more public and community-owned housing through the Champlain Housing Trust. Whereas other mayors in this race–ahem Buttigiej, ahem De Blasio- have mostly focused on wooing private developers to bring in more rich people into New York, then-Mayor Sanders focused on assuring that the average people had as much economic power and access to the resources of their city as possible.

While most of the Democratic AND Republican Parties villified LGBTQ peoples at the peak of the AIDS crisis, Bernie Sanders publicly supported a gay pride paride (in 1983!!) and supported prohibitions on discrimination ordinances. Learn more about his record here and here. When most of the nation was wrong, Bernie Sanders was right! That tells me a lot about who this man might be as President. While the bulk of the Democratic Party mobilized against him (and while Elizabeth Warren was still a registered Republican), Bernie Sanders put his career on the line to campaign for Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition; he was one of the few white Democrats to do so. For that choice, Democrats fiercely opposed him in Vermont, and one even slapped him across the face after a speech.

Some people have ridiculed the idea that we should focus on what someone did as a Mayor, particularly of a small town like Burlington or well… South Bend, Indiana. I disagree. I think you can learn a lot about how someone will govern based on how they act in a position that is small and relatively non-glamorous. Do they spend that time supporting the needs of common citizens? Or do they spend that time wooing the rich and powerful so they can fund their campaign for higher office? Bernie Sanders did the former, and Burlington is a much better city today because of him.

As a Congressman, Bernie Sanders developed a well-earned rep as the Amendment King, attaching amendments to bills that had meaningful consequences for government. At a time when Congress was run by the Newt Gingrich-era Republicans, Congressman Sanders pushed into law a variety of significant progressive pieces of legislation through the Amendment process, including (according to a list pulled together by Alternet) an amendment guaranteeing greater rights to victims of corporate fraud, programs to reform pensions, increased funding for free health care, and a federal government ban on purchases that used child labor.

This is a small number of hundreds of Amendments that Congressman Sanders pushed into law. And he did so as Congress’s only open independent and an open Socialist at a time when that was even more of a dirty word than it is now.

Again, this record shows that Bernie Sanders understands how power works and how to use the levers of power to get things done.

Finally, as Senator, Bernie Sanders has continued to play a significant role, far beyond what he should as an open Socialist from a tiny state. He worked with Republicans to overhaul the VA, worked with Republicans to get a Senate resolution condemning the current war in Yemen, and worked behind the scenes in Obamacare negotiations to get increased funding for programs both small (increased funding for community health centers) and big (the Medicaid expansion). 

This record simply put, far outpaces, the comparatively paltry record of Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren deserves immense credit for being the intellectual light behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Otherwise, however, her accomplishments as a one term Senator have been limited. They don’t compare to the extensive record of accomplishments (Not just years of service, but meaningful accomplishments) that we see from Senator Sanders.

In short, Senator Sanders’ record reveals that he is a skilled progressive thinker, someone who understands how to take radical ideas and translate them into pragmatic action. If that’s your concern, then you want Senator Sanders as your next President.

But you’re not convinced, right? After all, Senator Warren just seems so much more electable than Senator Sanders, right? And don’t we need someone who will beat President Trump?

So now let’s get to the most important aspect of Sanders’ strength.

POWER:  Okay so I’m going to sort of talk about electability here, but the truth is I really don’t trust electability arguments or arguments about “who can beat Trump” because they are too often based around a superficial understanding of polls (e.g. “My candidate is leading at this moment in time in this specific state or among this specific demographic, which PROVES they will win a national election six months from now!), vague intuitions that don’t have evidence to back them up (e.g. “I like X candidate, because he just seemed so strong in that one interview I saw, you know?”), OR vague intuitions about how people vote that are not based in reality. (I heard a lot of people early this year claim that black voters would swing to Kamala Harris, because you know… she’s black. These people are completely at a loss to explain why the top 2 candidates for black voters are currently Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.) If people really want an analysis of why I think Bernie Sanders is more “electable” based on how the race is going right now, I can write that later, but you should be extremely suspicious of anyone who claims to know whose “electable” in a post-Trump universe.

This argument is more about the fundamentals of a campaign and how it operates.

If you look at recent history one thing is clear: the Democrats are not going to win this election by being the party of big money. And if they do, they certainly won’t be interested in pushing the sort of radical change that America desperately needs. Big money does not vote for big change. If money is an inherently corrupting influence, you have to be really careful about where your money is coming from.

Successful progressive Democratic campaigns, then, are going to be built from a foundation of small donors and people power. And beyond that, a progressive movement that has legs and can force real change will stay organized even when there isn’t a national election around the corner.

Barack Obama got that at least initially. His early campaign was powered at the local level by volunteers and small dollar donations. For the general election, he abandoned that strategy, and his Presidency was, as a result, constrained by the very corporate interests his supporters had elected him to oppose. 

As I’ve already mentioned, Senator Warren, by the way, has not ruled out taking large corporate donations during the Presidential election, a troubling turn as doing so would put her in the same bind that President Obama was in.

The thing that I find most remarkable about Bernie Sanders as a politician and as a public figure is that he’s never lost sight of his north star: the idea that while he can speak and sometimes move mountains, power only grows when the people themselves are organized. He’s used his platform to speak on behalf of Walmart workers at the Walmart shareholder’s meeting. He’s spoken on behalf of workers at Amazon and McDonald’s as they fight for living wages and union rights. He’s spoken on behalf of teachers in Chicago looking to gain a fair contract, and on behalf of coal miners in Kentucky looking to recoup stolen wages from their coal company. 

He became the first ever Presidential candidate to unionize his campaign workers. (Elizabeth Warren, to her credit, followed suit.) His volunteers have gone onto organize campaigns at the local, state, and national levels through organizations such as Justice Democrats and the DSA. Lest we forget, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes was a former volunteer for Bernie Sanders.

Why does this matter? 

Here’s the tough truth: Every great progressive plan that any Democrat can propose is dead on arrival in 2021. Unless progressives (not just moderate run of the mill Democrats, but firebreathing lefties, an army of AOC’s and Ilhan Omar’s) win 60 seats in the Senate, we aren’t getting anything in 2021. The only way that we can attain these priorities in the long term is with a sustained and powerful progressive movement. Bernie Sanders has demonstrated that he knows how to build such a movement. Elizabeth Warren has not. He has more volunteers and more small dollar donations than any other candidate, and that includes Elizabeth Warren. I trust President Sanders to keep his base fired up in the way that Trump has far more than I trust President Warren to do the same.

Nathan Robinson put it best in his own critique of the two candidates.

“What I see in Elizabeth Warren is a law professor: someone who focuses on devising good plans, and then tries to get elected to carry out those plans. What I see in Bernie Sanders is a movement-builder: someone who understands that unless the president has millions of people behind them, ready to take to the streets, they won’t be able to cajole Congress into passing anything. And I think one of the fundamental problems with Barack Obama was that he was a law professor: He came up with a plan, and if he didn’t have the votes in Congress to pass it, that was that: The plan was dead. The law professor accepts political reality as “fixed,” while the movement-builder tries to get millions of people to act politically in order to alter that reality. 

It’s very clear that Bernie Sanders thinks the “political revolution” he’s talking about involves building the power of unions. His “workplace democracy” plan contains a dozen ways of making it easier to join unions and giving unions more leverage. This is because once a much greater percentage of working class people is unionized, unions will once again become an important political force. Their endorsements or non-endorsements will matter, which will give the left greater power to reward or punish Democratic politicians based on whether they support a left agenda. This is critical to actually getting our plans through.

It’s not clear to me that Warren has a theory of how to build power. While her website says she wants to put power “back in the hands of workers and unions,” there is no plan for union-building, suggesting she considers it secondary. If you have released a plan for “promoting competitive markets” before a plan for making unionizing easier, your priorities are woefully skewed. At every turn, I see worrying signs that Warren isn’t thinking about how to build a “mass movement.” Bernie’s slogan “not me, us,” and his constant use of “we” language means he understands that political power isn’t about electing a single person president…”

So in short, Senator Sanders has the policies that we want to see passed, an understanding of how government functions that can get those policies passed, and an understanding that the power to force those bills to be passed must come directly from working people organizing in government. His policies are better than Senator Warren’s. His understanding of government is deeper than Senator Warren’s. His army of donors and volunteers is larger, more diverse, and more engaged than Senator Warren’s. For those reasons, I volunteered for Senator Sanders in 2016, and I’m doing it again in 2020. I hope you will, too!

A word on the UCSB shooting from a former “nice guy”

Thoughts go out this morning to all of Elliot Rodger’s victims this morning.

There are just no words to describe the sense of despair and hopelessness I feel after a mass shooting.  Because for all the talk that we will engage in- some good, some bad- our national politics are so paralyzed that it seems impossible that we will get the sort of measures that we need to reduce the number of guns in our society or increase the number of mental health facilities that all our people need and could use. Our leaders should respect the words of someone like Richard Martinez, and it’s just painful that so many of them won’t.

Still, the story of Elliot Rodger merits discussion and a difficult one at that. We’ve learned a lot about Elliot Rodger, more than we ever knew about the Newtown shooter. And we’ve seen that he has a more coherent world view than the Colorado shooter or the Phoenix shooter. His videos and 140 page manifesto reveal that this man had a lot of hate in his heart, geared mostly toward women who would not pay attention to him. We’ve learned that Rodger was, if nothing else, a very extreme version of someone we all know: the “nice guy.”

A quick note: I was once a “nice guy” myself. You all know “nice guys.” “Nice guys” are, well, nice to women. Not like all those mean guys who abuse them, neglect them, then break their hearts. A “nice guy” will hold the door open for a woman, be friends with her, support her when she’s hurting. If “nice guys” dated those women, they would be so good to them. But of course, because women don’t actually like “nice guys”, they will never date them. So runs the personal narrative of the “nice guy.”

I am by no means the first person to talk about “nice guys.” I’ve been hearing about them since at least high school. I remember earlier than that hearing about the “friend zone” courtesy of… well… Friends. Basically the “friend zone”, it appears is bad. You don’t want to be in the “friend zone” with a lady you’re attracted to. You want to be sleeping with that lady.

I am also not the first person to criticize the “nice guy.” Some of you may remember the Tumblir “Nice Guys of OkCupid.” It was shut down by OKC itself, but these Nice Guys live on courtesy of posts from sites such as Buzzfeed. The blog had this handy chart explaining what is so wrong with this breed of man.

I still maintain that they were a little harsh on fedoras, but otherwise on point.

To sum up, here’s the basic problem with the “Nice guy” mentality: If you’re expecting sex in exchange for being nice, then well…  you’re probably not that nice. If you’re only friends with someone because you want that friendship to lead to sex, then you’re probably not a great friend.

Hang out with “nice guys” enough, by the way, and you’ll notice a seeming contradiction in their logic. At the height of my “nice guy-ism” I found myself judging a lot of women around me for being sexually promiscuous, wearing tight jeans or short skirts, or whatever else, all while convinced I was still fundamentally a decent guy who loved women. Looking back now, I realized that women’s clothing or behaviors wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t mad at the way women dressed or the amount of sex women had, I was mad that they weren’t with me. “Nice guy-ism”, you see, is a fundamentally selfish worldview. It’s not about valuing other people, but about valuing what worth they have for you, how they fit your personal wants and desires. It’s about valuing what their attention means for you, how their attention raises your status over those mean guys that are not you. And here’s where this turns into dark and twisted thoughts and behaviors: when other people don’t fit your wants and desires, that makes them worthy of your judgment, resentment, and hate. Carry that logic far enough, and you get to Elliot Roger and thousands of other men who commit violence against women.

Just to be clear, Elliot Rodger is clearly more than just a nice guy. He has already been described by those who knew him as someone with a whole host of issues. Also, most “nice guys” will never be violent towards women or anyone else. Most of us will never send out messages like this one from a white man to an Asian woman, which to me demonstrates perfectly what can cause “nice guys” to become not so nice:

It’s going to be easy to say “I’m not Elliot Rodger, I’m not violent, I’m not mean” in the next few weeks, but the truth we all need to watch out for the “nice guys” in our midst and even at times in ourselves. Because violence aside giving in to “niceguy-ism” is a recipe for a sad, lonely, and bitter life. It’s a worldview that virtually guarantees depression, bad relationships, and bad friendships. And the scary part is as miserable as that disposition can be, it can also be comforting. Being a “nice guy” means that when people don’t want to be around you, it’s their fault, not yours. You don’t have to change or evolve or reflect in any way. You get to be the hero of your own story, which in this case is a tragedy. Sometimes, that can be easier than admitting that maybe some things about you just suck and you need to change.

Personally, I’d like to think I grew out of my “nice guy” phase. Partially I just got older and more self reflective. I learned that friendships built around something other than the future possibility of sex as a goal were pretty neat, and I wanted to have more of them. I also had some relationships and friendships of my own that I screwed up, and figured out that I wasn’t as “nice” as I thought I was. That I could at times be passive-aggressive, neglectful, or rude, and that I needed to change those things about myself. With each passing year and every new experience, I see that “nice guy” I knew when I was 17 disappear further in the rear view mirror. Not everyone leaves that person behind, though, and our society and culture does not make it easy to do so.

Once again, thoughts and prayers should go out to the victims last night, and victims of “nice guys” everywhere. Some thoughts should go to the “nice guys” as well who have yet to grow out of their misery and sadness. They deserve better, and we all deserve better.

They’re back! My Bloody Valentine!

Our song of the day: Could it really be anything else? My Bloody Valentine basically picks up where they left off 23 years ago on M B V. The songs are clearer and less ambient, but beyond that, it’s the same band that you knew once upon a time. Welcome back, lady and gents, and here’s hoping the comeback is a long and productive one.

 

Song of the Day: Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East-> Featuring Allman Brothers and Peter Green!

So I’m a big lover of great jams, but I’ve honestly never been a huge fan of the jams of the Grateful Dead. I think American Beauty is one of the great albums ever- and particularly love some of Jerry Garcia’s solo work with David Grisman’s- but I’ve found their extended workouts to be meandering and dull.

So what could change that? Why add members of the Allman Brothers and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and put them in the Fillmore East, of course!

Take a listen to Turn On Your Lovelight and enjoy one of the great guitar jams in history: Jerry Garcia, Duane Allman, and Peter Green are three of the great guitarists in American history and playing with each other pushes these men to dazzling new heights. (And leads me to wonder what might happen if Garcia had someone at that level in his own band pushing him in the way that Danny Kirwan pushed Green and Dickey Betts pushed Allman.) These guitarists play and compete and collaborate without ever stepping on each other’s toes, and effectively mix the laid back earthy style of Garcia with the fiery blues of Allman and the (by this point) otherworldly heavy rock of Green. (One of the forgotten greats who suffered a Syd Barrett-style fall from grace and should get his own Song of the Day sometime soon.)

The rest of the concert has some major highlights (Including another Allman cameo on the Dead standard, Dark Star), but that finale with everyone on stage is the real highlight.

Song of the Day: Trombone Shorty’s Do to Me (Feat. Jeff Beck!)

Whoo that flu really does knock you out. Been out of commission the last few days, though it’s given me a chance to catch up on new music listening, including the latest from jazz phenom Trombone Shorty, who’s putting jazz together with hip-hop and R&B in exciting ways. This latest track shows off his talents as player, arranger, and producer, while also showing that everything is wonderful when accompanied by Jeff Beck.

But the real winner here is Ledisi’s soulful turn on “Then There Was You.”

 

Song of the Day: The Continued Life of “John the Revelator”

Very few musicians have attempted to combine the holy and the sinful by trying to play the gospel and the blues together. Perhaps the most prolific gospel blues musician was the somewhat filthily named Blind Willie Johnson. Johnson started life as a street performer and corner preacher; why he decided to try to play the devil’s music, we’ll never be quite sure, but he nonetheless played it better than most. There are many great slide guitar players, but few who capture the raw and mournful potential of the style like Willie.  His most famous song, though, emphasizes that gritty and guttural voice that Tom Waits seems to have made his career trying to emulate. The song, popularized by Harry Smith on “Anthology of American Folk Music, is “John the Revelator.”

Maybe it’s the rhythm, maybe it’s his voice, maybe it’s the basic story, but this song has become a surprising standard in the blues and rock worlds. It has been covered by Son House, Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave with the Blues Brothers backing), Gov’t Mule, Dave Matthews, R.E.M., Beck, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, to name a few. Each band has brought their own spin to it.

Perhaps the most surprising version I’ve heard is by Steve Vai. Vai has veered between being Frank Zappa’s sidekick, David Lee Roth’s Van Halen replacement, and finally a gifted composer with a knack for futuristic and creative compositions. (For the skeptical, see his collaborations with the Metropole Orchestra on Sound Theories.) All of which is to say I never imagined that he’d visit this gospel blues classic. Yet here he is at his Hendrix-fueled best, supported by the fiery  Beverly McClellan, a hammond B-3 organ, and a full gospel choir. It’s a version that pays homage to gospel and hard blues, while never losing sight of everything that Vai has built his career on. If you’re an old blues listener whose open to change, you just might appreciate this.

Mr. Vai, TAKE US TO CHURCH!

 

Happy 45th Anniversary to “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”

So I missed the song yesterday, so let me leave you with a classic. Otis Redding was gone far too early, but he closed his career with one of the most passionate and sensual catalogues in music history. His final and most famous single came out 45 years ago yesterday, back in 1968.

Here’s a particularly warm and sexy version courtesy of Sara Bareilles.

Song of the Day- Diablo Swing Orchestra “Kevlar Sweethearts”

Wow! So apparently when you take a metal band that recruits few bandmates from the local college orchestra, you get this concoction, a band that’s got all the changing time signatures of a Dream Theater, the horns of your local ska band, and a slight operatic touch for good measure. Naturally they are from Sweden.

This is the sort of experiment that could easily make for a real life Spinal Tap. Luckily, this 8 piece lineup is far too skilled to let this become cheesy schlock; they’re also just having too much fun, and you are as a result. A true blast for fans of symphonic metal.

Song of the Day: Flogging Molly’s What’s Left of the Flag

Oh man we’re going back for this one. No, Flogging Molly is not that old, but they are one of the bands that, for me, fit a very specific time and mood in my own life. I remember finding this album at the most boring of places: a Borders in suburban Connecticut after spending months wondering what they were when I would see their shirts in Hot Topic. Yep I was one of those kids, though without the dog collars. You were cool in my high school if you knew who these guys were. Sure, most of these guys were from L.A. and some of their most famous songs were lifted from the Pogues. Still, Dublin-born veteran singer Dave King has one of the great world weary voices in rock, and his sincerity and passion never lets the band become a cheap schtick.

Happy Sunday everone!

Skunk Anansie- I Will Break You

The heavy metal world has relatively few women, and even fewer black women, which makes lead singer Skin a welcome outlier in the genre, and a welcome one at that.

Skin’s band, Skunk Anansie has been around for quite some time, and has been for a long time putting together a sound that is equal parts Iron Maiden and Sleater-Kinney. It’s distinctly British and often political. After a 9 year break, Skunk Anansie reunited in 2009, and released their latest album, Black Traffic, this past September.