And Apart From Demonizing Trump And Musk?
I grew up in a not very political Democratic family in Brooklyn, although my political guru, my grandfather, a socialist who had come from Russia as a young teenager, taught me that “the one thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.” By the time I was in college— having been elected president of the Young Democrats— I realized I wasn’t a Democrat at all and resigned from the Young Dems and joined the chanting:
Hey, hey, LBJ,
How many kids have you killed today?
I still tended to support Democrats— John Lindsay’s mayoral campaign having been an exception, although he eventually switched from Republican to Democrat himself. The last time I voted for a Democrat for president was in 2008. But that was it— no Obama 2012, no Hillary 2016, no Biden 2020, no Kamala 2024. Looking at the list of potential Democratic nominees for 2028, I doubt that track record’s going to change.
I’m usually enthusiastic about independent-minded lower ballot candidates who identify with progressive issues rather than with the Democratic Party per se. Is the party a vehicle for progressive policy or is it a vehicle for personal careers? I’ve been big Bernie booster and the kinds of candidates who gravitate towards his policies— the ones we endorse at Blue America. Last cycle we were most enthusiastic about Dan Osborn, an independent populist who ran for the Senate in Nebraska. He held the GOP incumbent, Deb Fischer, to 53.3% on the same day that the other GOP Senate incumbent, Pete Ricketts, was reelected with 62.6% and that Señor Trumpanzee took 59.6%. Osborn won the 3 biggest counties in the state and was competitive in 10 others. He outpolled Kamala statewide (436,493 vs 369,995) and in every county in the state. He outpolled every Democrat, running for every office in the state. In the biggest (and bluest) county in the state, Douglas (Omaha), this is how the raw vote totals looked:
Dan Osborn- 157,317
Kamala Harris- 148,733
Preston Love- 142,256
Tony Vargas- 140,993
Bernie noticed; yesterday he urged other progressives not to run as Democrats. Reid Epstein reported that Bernie asked “Why don’t you shed the Democratic label and run as an independent, the way he does? Sanders’s admonition came in an interview with the New York Times on the eve of a three-day, five-city swing through Western states alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. He predicted that they would draw tens of thousands of people to rally against Trump, Elon Musk and the influence of billionaires on the American government.”
“One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” Sanders said in the interview on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of great leadership all over this country at the grass-roots level. We’ve got to bring that forward. And if we do that, we can defeat Trumpism and we can transform the political situation in America.”
…In 2011, Sanders said during a radio interview that “it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition” for his 2012 re-election. The Vermont senator said at the time that he could not do it himself because he was not a Democrat.
But that did not stop him from seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, when he emerged from relative obscurity to nearly topple Hillary Clinton, and again in 2020, when he was the last major Democratic primary rival to Joseph Biden. In each contest, Sanders’s lack of party affiliation bubbled beneath the surface and drew pointed pushback from his primary rivals.
Clinton, during an interview with Politico in 2016, described Sanders as “a relatively new Democrat, and, in fact, I’m not even sure he is one.” She added: “He’s running as one. So I don’t know quite how to characterize him.”
Four years later, Biden, days before his fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, took a similar swipe at Sanders.
“I’m a Democrat,” Biden told reporters outside a Dairy Queen in Pella, Iowa. “He says he’s not. He says— you know, he’s not registered as a Democrat, to the best of my knowledge.”
Sanders’s remarks this week come at a moment of rising anger toward Democratic leaders and a tarnished public image for the party. A CNN poll released this week found that 52 percent of Democrats believed their leaders were steering the party in the wrong direction. Among the public overall, the party’s favorability rating was just 29 percent— the lowest level since the network’s polling firm began asking the question in 1992.
Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, declined to comment on Sanders’s remarks.
During the interview on Wednesday, Sanders repeatedly criticized the influence of wealthy donors and Washington consultants on the party. He said that while Democrats had been a force for good on social issues like civil rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, they had failed on the economic concerns he has dedicated his political career to addressing.
“If there’s any hope for the Democratic Party, it is that they’re going to have to reach out— open the doors and let working-class people in, let working-class leadership come into the party,” he said. “If not, people will be running as independents, I think, all over this country.”
Does it make you said to think that Bernie isn’t wrong and the Democratic Party, as it stands, isn’t a vehicle for working-class politics— more a holding cell for progressives, a place where our energy is siphoned off into performative battles while billionaires and consultants dictate the real outcomes. That’s why I left. That’s why so many others are leaving.
Democrats like Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, failed DCCC chief Suzan DelBene and DSCC clown/crypto-cartel shill Kirsten Gillibrand may believe they can rely on the lesser-evil argument indefinitely, but numbers like the ones out of Nebraska should be a wake-up call. When an independent, no-frills populist like Dan Osborn can outperform every Democrat on the ballot, it’s not an outlier— it’s a blueprint. If the party refuses to open its doors to the working class, the working class will find another way. And if that happens, the Democrats won’t just lose elections; they’ll lose relevance.
Meanwhile, the Bernie-AOC Fight Oligarchy events yesterday went pretty well, as thousands of people turned out to hear them. You think Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries could draw crowds that size? AOC in Las Vegas: “We are here together because an extreme concentration of power and corruption is taking over this country like never before.”
