Bernie Sanders (L) and Elizabeth Warren (R)

I was disheartened as I watched the latest round of Democratic presidential debates. I’m sure a lot of people were. For every shining example of a policy that might genuinely improve the quality of life for ordinary American workers, there was a ‘moderate’ voice telling us all that we shouldn’t even try.

That’s why it was so cathartic to see progressive Elizabeth Warren ask John Delaney, the former Representative from Maryland calling himself a “solutions-oriented moderate”, why he has gone to all the trouble of running for President “just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.” The Representative had little in the way of an answer. In the battle between moderates and progressives, the progressives are breaking through. Joe Biden is still in the lead, but a CNN poll today (07/08/19) has put Warren at just eleven points behind his 31% support. Not far behind is the more radical Bernie Sanders, coming in at 17%. That same poll ranks Warren as a strong second for the candidate viewed as the best leader and puts her in the lead as the one with the best policy ideas. Considering how the ‘outsider’ candidate Donald Trump secured both the Republican nomination and the Presidency, both defying the statisticians’ odds, these are promising results for those who reject the inefficient methods of the moderates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se4qX4vhmKw

From the outside, then, it looks like left-wingers don’t need to worry. Sure, Bernie Sanders won’t get in, but a progressive still might take the nomination. If that were the case, however, I wouldn’t need to be writing this. The joke about ideological purity among the left is a long-running one, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore it. The battle between progressive and moderate is important, but we also need to focus on the battle between progressives who offer window-dressing, and those who offer real, substantial change.

Put side by side, Warren and Sanders look quite similar in terms of policy. They both support proposals for universal healthcare, they support the cancellation of student loan debt, and they’ve proposed a new type of foreign policy that, unlike their predecessors for this entire century, as well as much of the previous one, is not predicated on forcing smaller countries to bend the knee and do exactly as America demands. The idea, Warren’s supporters claim, is that she would be much the same in the White House as Sanders, minus his populism, something liberals are often, as Prospect.org politely phrases it, “wary of”, often associating it with Trump-style nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric that appeals to the very lowest, basest instincts of hate with people. Warren is more collected, more “professorial”, to use the words of an article from The Cut. She is what the journalist JJ McCullough has called the “thinking woman’s social democrat.”

Warren’s supporters often tout her history as an academic. She specialised in bankruptcy law for many years

What plagues Warren, and many like her, who claim to be progressive but are weighed down by a misplaced faith in bipartisanship, gradual approaches and working within what people consider to be the ‘proper channels’ of politics, is that she cannot possibly hope to challenge the well-oiled machine that is the Republican party and the right-wing media. Her opponents are those who wish to protect themselves and their friends in the banking and debt collection businesses, as well as anyone willing to appeal to the anger felt against migrants and refugees to get ahead in the polls, and a whole host of others too numerous to mention. These people have money. An incredible amount of it, too. In 2018 alone, $3.42 billion were spent on lobbying. We can’t know exactly where that money came from, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t from down-trodden workers in the Rust Belt.

To stand up to that, you need to be offering change to the systems in American politics. Sanders believes in what he calls a “revolution”, in which the money that has corrupted all aspects of political life must be cut out, and where the norm of Americans suffering and dying from preventable causes cannot be allowed to go on. Warren, naturally, opposes these things too, but her plans to combat these issues, such as the 2018 Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, is lacking. The aforementioned bill would only place full bans on lobbying for former and sitting politicians, and not on private businesses.

The polling agency Gallup shows that concerns about corruption have been largely on the rise, and will likely become a defining issue in any future presidential campaigns

Warren’s supporters might argue that this is part of her image, as a professional, erudite, hard-working politician with a knack for the little details. Dig a little deeper, and you see that her motivations are not quite so pure. OpenSecrets.org, the website dedicated to keeping politicians’ information out in the open, tells us that while about 50% of donations to Warren’s campaign come from individuals, the rest is dominated by contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs), large fund-raising organisations that handle the sort of money most ordinary Americans have no chance of earning in their lifetimes.

The truth is, Warren doesn’t have a good reason to want to change the system of politics. It’s certainly done well for her. It’s worth noting that alongside PACs, the other main source of funding for her campaign comes from what OpenSecrets.org calls “other” sources, typically meaning businesses. Besides that, she calls herself a “capitalist” and believes that the solution to modern-day problems involves corrective measures rather than fundamental shifts in the way the economy works. Such thinking was normal twenty years ago. Her rhetoric smacks of Gordon Brown’s belief in left-wing parties being not just parties “of social justice, but of markets” as well.

During Gordon Brown’s tenure, the illusion of New Labour’s centrist politics began to unravel

Faux-progressives such as her demonstrate a total unwillingness to learn from history, which has told us very plainly that social justice and the market do not go together. They are fundamentally opposed. In Britain, it was Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour government that started the creeping privatisation of the healthcare system that was dialled up by later Conservative governments. In America, it was the ideologically similar Clinton Administration that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which laid the groundwork for the financial crisis of 2007–8. If you want social justice, you need a radical approach, and you can’t give the markets any leniency.

As much as Warren promises to put forward a universal healthcare plan that, unlike Biden, Delaney, or their fellow moderates trying for the nomination, would involve extensive surrender to the private sector, does anyone believe that she can put it through? For all her skills as a legislator, and let it go on record that she is outstanding, she lacks the ability to rile up popular support for her ideas. She, like most Democrats, is left playing the catch-up game with the truth, as the facts go in one end of the right-wing press machine and come out the other looking like impending Stalinism.

Ideas such as universal health care are popular, but they need to be championed by forceful leaders if they are to become reality

Bernie Sanders is different. It’s not just blind faith that has drawn people to his cause, nor is it youthful naivety about the cruel world of politics. If we start by looking at his funding sources, we can see that unlike Warren, over half of his campaign contributions have come from small individual donations. In fact, they make up over 95% of his total funding. His personal funding towards his own campaign is higher than Warren, and funding from PAC’s is just 25% of what Warren’s is. Bernie Sanders is beholden to no interests other than ordinary people, most of them working-class, in debt, and struggling to realise the American Dream that they were promised they would see come true. He doesn’t just lack a reason to promote the status quo, he has the motivation to tear it up. If he fails that, he betrays his entire voter base.

People will cry out for a more restrained candidate. Sanders was mocked at the debates for his performative style of speaking, and there are those who would argue he is the opposite of Warren — where she has great ideas but poor delivery, he can deliver well but has no realistic ideas. That is, however, far from the truth. In fact, Sanders has detailed policies of his own, and he has personally authored a great many bills addressing issues ranging as far as taxation, environmental protection, clean energy, improving the education system, healthcare and more. The debate between Warren and Sanders is not about their abilities as legislators but as performers. They are both exemplary politicians when it comes to crafting bills to put forward to Congress.

Elizabeth Warren speaking in Congress

Trying to save face won’t work for the Democrats. They don’t have their own Fox News, an organisation pretending to show people ‘the news’ despite really serving as the propaganda wing for the Republican Party. You can say you support the private sector, but they’ll still call you anti-growth, if you argue for a two-state solution in the Middle East, they’ll say you’re anti-Israel, and if you try to tackle the very real threat of domestic terrorism from the far right, no matter how you go about it, they’ll say that you’re on a mission to destroy free speech.

Fourth-place nomination candidate Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of a small town in Indiana who shot to quick and unexpected fame recently, had something to say on that same night. No matter what agenda the Democratic Party embraces, the Republicans will call them “crazy socialists.” No matter how centrist, or co-operative, or bipartisan the candidate, whether it’s a technocrat like businessman Andrew Yang, a hopeless ‘growth-oriented’ classical liberal like John Delaney, or an out-and-out radical like Bernie Sanders, from day one of their nomination the Democratic presidential candidate will be called a communist, a socialist, a fascist, and a danger to American society.

A typical reaction from Fox News to any policy announcement from progressives

Accusations and insults will come forth from every right-wing hack that can be found, on Fox News, on social media, and from President Trump himself. If that’s going to happen, the party might as well nominate a radical. They will win, not by reaching across the aisle to Trump voters that were never moving over to the left anyway, but by riling up their own base. A Democratic victory in 2020 is entirely possible if they only choose someone who can speak to common people, understand their struggle, and fight for them. It will be populist, but that will be the means to a positive end, one where insulin costs don’t double in the space of four years (which has killed at least seven people since 2017 by forcing them to ration out their medication) and children fleeing violence in their home countries are separated from their parents at their border, left to go hungry and possibly even die.

The left needs to be angry, and it needs an angry leader. A moderate, we know, won’t be able to do that. The fact is, a non-committal progressive would hardly be more competent. Bernie Sanders is the only viable candidate for a 2020 win. If Elizabeth Warren wants to take the nomination, she’ll have to start making real threats to the system. She should not, however, be counted out by the left. Far from it. When the time comes for Sanders to pick a Vice-Presidential nominee, she could well provide a straight face for the administration to contrast with Bernie’s dynamism. Mike Pence did much the same for Donald Trump, playing the role of the serious part of the candidacy, appealing to evangelical voters who were not already brought entirely on-side by Trump’s arguments. If the VP role is not for her, then Warren would serve as an excellent member of the Cabinet, preferably in a position where she could pursue the issues she cares about most, like restraining the banking industry.

Sanders is more competent as a public speaker and has proven himself capable of controlling the political narrative

When it comes to choosing a President, however, Americans need somebody who can perform. They need someone who can fulfil the role of a head of government, to deal with the serious details, but also a head of state, someone who can speak emotionally and passionately, and be a figure to rally around in times of crisis, and nobody can fill that role quite like Bernie Sanders.