Bernie Sanders Gets Things Done

Dear Friends,

One of the many narratives that the Democratic establishment is using to attack Bernie Sanders is that since he is passionate and consistent about his positions, he cannot get anything done.  There are two prongs to this attack, one is that he will face a Congress controlled by Republicans who will not pass anything he is proposing.  With respect to this point, the real question is which candidate, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, will change the face of Congress more.  My contention is that since Bernie Sanders generates incredible enthusiasm that has motivated tons of first time voters, the face of Congress will change more with a Bernie Sanders victory than with a Hillary Clinton victory.

The second prong to the Democratic establishment's attack on Bernie Sanders is that he will never compromise and will not get anything done but by comparison Hillary Clinton's incremental approach will somehow permit her to get more done.  There are two big problems with this attack. The first is that Hillary Clinton will be just like Barack Obama for the Republicans.  They are certain to do anything to make her fail.  That may also be true for Bernie Sanders but given his favorability ratings it will certainly be less than for Hillary Clinton.  The second is that Bernie Sanders has a really great record of getting important progressive changes to legislation through the use of amendments, much of the time with bipartisan support.

Paul Krugman made the Democratic establishment's argument in a column a few days ago in The NewYork Times (here) entitled "How Change Happens".  He ends with the these rather arrogant and patronizing paragraphs.

The point is that while idealism is fine and essential — you have to dream of a better world — it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends. That’s true even when, like F.D.R., you ride a political tidal wave into office. It’s even more true for a modern Democrat, who will be lucky if his or her party controls even one house of Congress at any point this decade.
Sorry, but there’s nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends. Don’t let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence.

Bernie Sanders has had a long career as an effective legislator.  To say that he does not have "hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve" his goals, is just ridiculous.  This same argument, even citing Krugman is made in an even more obnoxious manner by John Avignone in an article entitled, "I have had it with naive Bernie Sanders idealists" with the subtitle, "Take a lesson from Paul Krugman: We don't have political revolutions.  This is a democracy of incremental change." on Salon (here).  Mr. Avignone claims that the Civil War was the last time there was fundamental change in the United States.

Bernie Sanders says he will bring about a political revolution to make his dreams of a democratic socialist society come true, which seems an unlikely proposition given that the GOP is sure to control one house of Congress and may well control both. Hillary Clinton advocates a pragmatic approach: protecting the progressive gains won under the Obama administration, taking what new gains may be possible in a divided government and setting the political table to back for more later.
Historically, it is this latter approach that has produced change. In any democratic system of government, progress is incremental. Only one time in our history as a nation have we seen such sweeping ideological change at a fundamental level happen in a brief span of time, and that change came at the price of five years of bloody civil war and some 500,000 deaths.

Apparently, Mr. Avignone does not think that Women's suffrage, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Roe v. Wade and marriage equality were fundamental changes in America.  All of those significant changes in America were the result of the people pushing Congress and/or the courts in what was at the time of each a radical change.  FDR, Truman and Johnson were not elected as radicals but as representatives of the values they held.  Until Bill Clinton, Democrats were Democrats.  Bill Clinton ushered in an era of Democrats trying to be Republican light.  The Democratic Party is just as responsible for the overwhelming increase in economic and social inequality in our country as the Republicans because we, Democrats, went along with the changes because the Democratic establishment decided after losing to Bush I and Reagan that the way to win was to become Republican light.  Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment is clinging to that strategy as they circle the wagons to protect Hillary Clinton.  It was the enthusiasm and energy created by Barack Obama's candidacy that broke the Republican reign.  Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment has not learned the lesson that Democrats win elections when we stick to our true beliefs and make sure that the voters understand the critical role that government can and should play.

The Democratic establishment's narrative that Bernie Sanders is an idealist who will not compromise and cannot get anything done has no basis in fact.  As I wrote in my post about the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by Planned Parenthood Action (here), Bernie Sanders has introduced, worked for and voted for many legislative actions for women's rights.  The list of his progressive legislative accomplishments is very long.  I commend to you an article at People's War (here) entitled, "What Bernie Sanders Got Done in Washington: A Legislative Inventory".  It is of necessity a really long piece because it lists all of his legislative accomplishments both in the House and the Senate.  If you don't read the article here are my favorite paragraphs.

Bernie Sanders is a progressive who likes to get things done and his record of legislative accomplishments in the House of Representatives and the Senate shows it. Despite being independent from both the Democratic and Republican parties, he got more done in his first eight years in the Senate than Democratic Party superstar Hillary Clinton did in her eight years there. Before the people of Vermont elected him to the Senate in 2006, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi dubbed Sanders the “amendment king” of the House of Representatives noting:

“Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, no other lawmaker – not Tom DeLay, not Nancy Pelosi – has passed more roll-call amendments (amendments that actually went to a vote on the floor) than Bernie Sanders. He accomplishes this on the one hand by being relentlessly active, and on the other by using his status as an Independent to form left-right coalitions.”

There is a shorter version of his legislative accomplishments in an article on Alternet by Zaid Jilani entitled, "Bernie Gets It Done: Sanders' Record of Pushing Through Major Reforms Will Surprise You" (here).  The article starts with the following paragraphs:

“I'm a progressive, but I'm a progressive who likes to get things done,” Hillary Clinton said at the first Democratic debate, in response to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper about whether she defines herself as a moderate or a progressive.
The implication was that progressive Bernie Sanders is too far to the left to accomplish anything—all of his ideas are pie-in-the-sky. You have to be able to find the bipartisan, “warm, purple space” as Clinton said earlier this year, to get anything done. Slate's Jamelle Bouie was super-impressed by this rationale, saying Clinton has “skilled use of bureaucratic power.”
The problem with this narrative is that it is completely false. Not only has Sanders gotten a lot more things done than Clinton did in her own short legislative career, he's actually one of the most effective members of Congress, passing bills, both big and small, that have reshaped American policy on key issues like poverty, the environment and health care.

Mr. Jilani then goes on to enumerate quite a few of Bernie Sanders' legislative accomplishments that he deems important.  He concludes his piece as follows:

It's easy for the establishment media and politicians to make the assumption that Bernie Sanders is not an effective lawmaker or executive. He has strong convictions and he stands by them, and we're often told that makes one a gadfly—someone who is out to make a point rather than make an actual change. But with Sanders we have the fusion of strong principles and the ability to forge odd bedfellow coalitions that accomplish historic things, like the audit of the Federal Reserve or the rejuvenation of Burlington that has served as a model for cities around the country. “Don't underestimate me,” Sanders said at the beginning of the race, words that anyone who knows his political and policy history take to heart.

Do not underestimate what a passionate person with great legislative skills can accomplish.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal