Read Carefully

There has been two cynical attacks on Bernie Sanders’ second bid for the presidency. In the first, Mr. Sanders’ ideas have already become mainstream, so he doesn’t need to run. Best to let a younger female or African American take the Democratic nomination since we all believe in the exact same things. In the second, Sanders ideas are too out of the mainstream to ever have a chance in Congress and, while we’d love to see the big reforms Sanders is proposing, they’ll simply never come to pass.

These two attacks are, of course, completely contradictory. Are these policies mainstream and boring or too idealistic? Hillary Clinton tried to straddle this divergence in 2016, labeling herself a “progressive who likes to get things done.” Voter weren’t sold.

Both attacks also happen to be wrong. The argument that Sanders is unnecessary because Democrats all believe the same thing is laughable. Bernie has a stunningly consistent record in Congress advocating for redistribution, single-payer healthcare, cutting military spending, free postsecondary education, transitioning to green energy, and guaranteed paid family leave. That alone is an assurance he’ll fight for these programs once he’s in office and pharmaceutical companies and fossil fuel lobbies break the bank trying to stop him. But even further, the argument that other candidates have the same agenda is just empirically false. Cory Booker advocates for charter schools and voted to block Canadian drug importation. Kamala Harris immediately backed down on eliminating private insurance companies and explicitly refused to prosecute the financial crimes of some of the most predatory banks. Beto O’Rourke voted to weaken Obamacare and co-sponsored a bill to strip the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from pursuing charges against voracious auto lenders.

The other argument, that Bernie Sanders is unrealistic and idealistic, is more plausible. Unless you’ve been reading the news. Reporting in just the last six months has revealed the dire need to radically shift our economy to stop climate change from causing massive destruction, the Trump family’s tax evasion to the tune of $400 million, and the unearned righteous indignity of the corrupt ruling class when having to be held even moderately accountable (Brett Kavanaugh).

Most recently, a college admissions scandal has rocked the political world. Television pundits across all the networks have been stunned – stunned! – to learn of an admissions scam involving at least 50 students and millions of dollars in bribery. Charges ranged from cheating on the SAT to faking acceptance to athletic programs in order to get entrance into schools like USC and Wake Forest.

To reactionaries and media elites, this shows the failures of America’s foundational ideology of meritocracy. In this country we are exceptional because those who work hard and play by the rules can get ahead. Ignore the fact that we rank near the bottom of OECD in economic mobility and the top three positions are filled by Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Here’s the secret: America is more meritocratic now than it’s ever been. Black people and women have been legally excluded from America’s institutions for the majority of this country’s history. Title IX, giving women opportunity in college education, wasn’t passed until 1972. Before such time, there were very few women in academia. Elite institutions like Yale explicitly banned female applications until 1969, and many more simply didn’t accept any. Affirmative action for black applicants to universities wasn’t upheld by the Supreme Court until 2003.

If there has ever been an opportunity for someone who wasn’t a white man to get ahead through merit, it is today! And yet, what we see a system completely dominated by wealth and connections. The aphorism “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” sounds trite on first listen but contains a deeply sinister truth. It is about who you know, and people who come from white families with money happen to know all the right people.

This is Bernie Sanders message in 2020. It was his message in 2016. It has been his message since he was fighting to desegregate housing at the University of Chicago in 1964. He has only become more convinced of his convictions as time has passed. The United States is much more meritorious in 2019 than it was in 1964 but remains a completely uneven playing field. This reality was well encapsulated in a standup routine by the late George Carlin.

They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

This is why proclamations that we don’t need Bernie anymore or that his message is unrealistic ring hollow. As invaluable reporting continues to peel back the centuries long façade of the ultrawealthy and the way they shape institutions to their will, and then pass those same institutions on to their failsons who had every opportunity in the world and couldn’t get into USC, reality comes into focus. Our government, economy, and private sector are being run by people who only achieved their position because of their last name and the number of zeros in their parent’s bank account.

Joe Biden and politicians of his ilk are beneficiaries of these systems, and unsurprisingly don’t see their incipient depravity. To Biden, life has continually gotten better in a linear fashion. He doesn’t feel bad for millennials! They live in a world with affirmative action and without world war. What are they bitching about? From Biden’s perspective, we should just keep tinkering at the edges and steering this ship in the right direction.

Biden is the one who is unrealistic, not Bernie. In a world run by Joe Biden’s, and I’m using Biden as a stand in for the Democratic establishment, one of two things will happen. Either the population will finally get tired of the 1% hoarding all the wealth and rise in revolt, a history littered with examples too numerous to list, or climate change will cook the planet and end life as we know it. There are no other options. There is no American empire with a meager social safety net and rampant inequality that survives the next 100 years.

Two groups have come to terms with this reality, while the great centrist establishment remains blissfully unaware.

On the one hand are the Trumpsters and the paleoconservatives who suggest we retreat into isolation, lock our doors, and accept our nihilistic fate. Fuck immigrant and Muslims and minorities and women. We’re not helping anyone. Fend for yourself. If you make it, you make it. If you don’t, tough luck.

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are trying to build an international socialist movement built on solidarity. They understand capitalism can’t solve the problems capitalism creates, and that our only hope is a complete revolution that reorders the way we extract resources, exert military power, and engage in global economic production.

Every other candidate in the Democratic primary woefully understates the problems we face and the scale of the action we need to take. The recent college admissions scandal is a microcosm of a world that has simply isn’t working for the 99 percent and cannot continue. Radical problems take radical solutions. Not only has Bernie Sanders’ movement been validated, he’s the most realistic candidate in the race.