The Case for Bernie: Part One........... DSA [View all]

Should he decide to run, socialists need to play an active role in building his campaign, but we also need to think carefully about why a Bernie candidacy is important and how socialists should best support and shape such a campaign.

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The real benefit to building a viable campaign for Sanders in 2016 is the possibility of uniting burgeoning social movements and newly radicalized youth into an organized force. With the help of thousands of grassroots activists, Bernie could run an effective and inspiring campaign. It would be a chance for leftists to flex our electoral muscles and for millions to see that there is an alternative to the policies of neoliberal capitalism. If we’re smart, a Sanders presidential campaign could help us build DSA nationally while uniting coalition forces at the local level that could be mobilized for future socialist campaigns. Using Sanders as a mouthpiece and tribune, we could promote socialist analyses and bring issues like income inequality and workplace democracy into national political debates – and we could do all this not as good liberals but as socialists.


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That analysis is of course a narrative of class struggle, and Bernie could help to popularize it on a national level (as against moralizing narratives about greed and cruelty). Not only is this refreshing but it would help millions of working-class Americans make sense of their situation and the condition of the US economy and democracy. It would also serve to change the terms of the national political debate from one about more-or-less-government to one about class forces and class struggle.



http://www.dsausa.org/the_case_for_bernie_part_one_dl