For Bernie to Save the Future, He and We Must Look to the Not-So-Distant Past
It’s not a coincidence that Joe Biden is winning right now. In times of crises, people are more apt to grab onto what they feel is “safe.” Or, as the corporate media like to call it, “electable.”
But it’s also not a coincidence that the same corporate media and corporate Dems alike are falling all over themselves to scream how Bernie needs to drop out AT ONCE even though nearly half the states have yet to have their say and have postponed their primaries in light of a raging pandemic.
Biden’s claim to fame is all about his supposed electability. Sure, he won’t embrace popular policies most Americans want, even during a pandemic that underlines the need for such policy prescriptions, but he can beat Trump! Sure, billionaires fund his campaign, but by God, he’ll restore the soul of our nation! He might keep telling voters who disagree with him to choose someone else, but we need a return to normal, not a revolution!
But this claim to electability Joe’s primary success depends on in is little more than a house of cards founded on the seat of a fast-moving unicycle. And it’s one Bernie can rip right out from under Joe’s nose in the blink of an eye — and with it, perhaps even the Democratic nomination and the keys to the White House.
How? By fundamentally returning to and hammering at every chance he gets a sales pitch that right now is only more appropriate than ever — that in these extreme crises, what we need in order to return to normal is, in fact, a return to the economic governance of one Franklin Delano Roosevelt, rather than to the governance of 2009.
This speech serves an excellent (re)starting point — so much so, a Fox News host even admitted at the time the arguments could be convincing to more than younger voters.
Even many older rank-and-file Democrats harbor at least some respect for and familiarity with the legacy of FDR and the New Deal. By clearly drawing the parallels between the crises of today and that of the 1930s, and framing his agenda as a return to and extension of the New Deal legacy (a lofty Democratic legacy, I might add), Bernie can position himself as the more moderate and electable choice with a familiar agenda that best suits the dire moment.
As in this speech, Bernie can further draw the clear parallels between the opponents he and we face and those FDR had to contend with in his time, along with their out-of-touch and radical efforts to stop moderate ideas that happen also to be popular. He could even hook in his line about ideas once considered extreme now being the mainstream with the added note that it turns out it was those who argued against, say, healthcare as a human right who are the extremists.
If there were ever a moment in which Bernie should position himself as something of a new FDR set to topple a new Hoover and corporate socialist in Donald Trump, right now truly is that moment.
FDR even warned during his Second Bill of Rights speech:
One of the great American industrialists of our day — a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop — if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s — then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
It should also be made clear that Trump is a symptom of a broader problem. Neoliberalism, political corruption, and undercutting of New Deal objectives instead of completing the economic securities needed (and now more clearly than ever are needed) are the disease. Trump is but an exposed end-stage face to the rightist reaction FDR warned about long ago.
To restore the soul of the nation, you must first restore the soul of the Democratic party. To return to normal requires a political revolution, in that the people fight to be finally heard and represented again, as should have been normal all along.
Biden does not meet this moment — not by a long shot. His refusal to embrace even the most obvious tenet of FDR’s Second Bill Of Rights (right to health care) in the middle of a pandemic, let alone right to a job, home, and education, and his past interest in cutting Social Security are all just a few of the million testaments to this.
To stop the rising spirit of Fascism and our modern-day Hoover requires nothing less than a modern-day FDR. The good news is, to quote Nathan J Robinson, “we’ve got just the guy.”
So let’s spread the word, welcome their hatred, and mount a comeback while we can.
After all, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
