What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like - The possibilities of an ''organizer-in-chief.''

[Donkees]

JANUARY 7 | JANUARY 2020 ISSUE

BY DANIEL DENVIR

Excerpt:

Sanders is the only presidential candidate who has put forward a genuine Green New Deal, a plan to radically remake the economy to serve ordinary people rather than just “greening” the economic system that threatens to end human society as we know it. His Green New Deal would dismantle the fossil fuel industry and put a renewable energy system under democratic control, working with governments around the world to achieve what the science demands.

Sanders’ proposals go beyond piecemeal liberal solutions by targeting the unjust economic system that fuels climate change and pushing an agenda that simultaneously empowers workers and saves the planet. This agenda would help millions of workers join unions, give workers an ownership stake in major corporations, provide universal healthcare and tuition-free higher education, build millions of affordable homes and protect (rather than target) immigrants.

Though President Sanders could execute parts of this agenda on his own, much of it would require Congress. How could it pass, given Republican extremism and likely pushback from even a Democrat-controlled House and Senate? The question poses a serious problem for any program that meets our challenge. And it is one Sanders is uniquely positioned to solve.

Sanders understands that change at this scale will require mass movements to pressure Congress and every level of government—and to change their composition. Americans isolated and atomized by cutthroat capitalism must engage in massive collective action. His political program isn’t just about policy, then, but about the capacity of ordinary people to participate in democracy. This disruption includes, critically, his plans to facilitate direct participation in decisions from our workplaces to our energy systems, shifting the balance of power in our society. No one contends that Sanders alone will spark, let alone be, a mass movement. The Sanders campaign slogan, “Not Me. Us.,” conveys precisely that. Sanders, as he puts it, is “gonna be organizer-in-chief.”

The world quite literally depends upon a political revolution. And only Sanders has a plan for that.

This story was produced in collaboration with Jacobin.

DANIEL DENVIR is author of All-American Nativism (forthcoming from Verso) and host of The Dig on Jacobin Radio.

https://inthesetimes.com/features/Bernie-Sanders-presidency-climate-mobilization.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Donkees.

[The Valley Below]

2. Look at his staff now.

Not the folks I want running our country. No way. No how.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Agree...far to rash and impulsive

[beastie boy]

4. So Bernie's brilliant solution to everything is to create a mass movement to pressure Congress...

He's been trying to do this for years, and the most evident consequence of his efforts is the Trump presidency. He is still fighting for the #2 spot in the DEMOCRATIC primaries.

Sorry, but the US is no banana republic. Mass movements don't work here in the way Bernie pictures it, nor do they influence Congress or topple governments. So far, the most notable things to come out of Bernie's mass movement are impressive crowds in carefully cropped photographs.

[booley]

7. Sure.. I ean except for al thos emass movements that did chnge things

Like Civil rights
And the environmental movement
And women's suffrage.
And Unions
And child labor laws
ending the Vietnam war

But we totally can't do that again. Just because this is part of the values of the Democratic party, why would we do that again?

the most notable things to come out of Bernie's mass movement are impressive crowds in carefully cropped photographs.

Oh that is very ironic.

[beastie boy]

8. So which US president created any of the movements you listed?

Bernie's brilliant plan is to create a movement so he, as President, can use it to pressure Congress. This smacks of a populist autocracy that goes against separation of powers mandated by the US Constitution.

No, the job of a US President is not to create movements but to reconcile them.You either do one or the other. Bernie's reliance on a populist movement as a cudgel against Congress makes him ill suited to be a US President.

[The Valley Below]

11. Correct. The potential use of organized "mass movements" by populist political leaders is precisely

why what the founders feared might happen, which was part of their rationale for dividing powers in an effort to avoid autocracy and mob-rule.

Embracing populism is deeply troubling.

[LongtimeAZDem]

9. Exactly; he thinks a mandate will solve everything. He has no strategy, and he has spent decades

attacking nearly everyone he would need to pass legislation.

[highplainsdem]

5. Won't happen.

[booley]

6. Sanders said he's building a movement

The key to winning for Democrats will be getting lots of people enthused to vote and active.

Hard to do that on a policy of "Let's go back to what we were doing before"

[brooklynite]

10. "Sanders understands that change at this scale will require mass movements to pressure Congress"

Has he shown any experience in such organization previously?

[LongtimeAZDem]

12. What is far more terrrifying is what could happen if successful; Robespierre and Stalin come to mind