The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders served as a red pill moment for progressive Democrats who saw their party’s true colors for the first time in 2016, so when the progressive champion returned to New Hampshire to deliver a speech entitled “The Agenda America Needs” at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics there was something surreal about it.
The populist independent senator challenged the corporate-controlled Democratic political establishment to campaign on a concrete agenda that speaks to the needs of long-neglected workers as if the wealthy megadonors supporting President Joe Biden are not the same people waging a class war against America’s middle class.
“Frankly it is absolutely absurd that, given the anti-work ideology and policies of the Republican Party, that that party now has more working-class support than Democrats,” said Sanders. “It should be deeply worrying that, according to recent polls, Democrats are losing support within the Latino communities and even among African American men. That has got to change, not just for the well-being of the Democratic Party, but for the future of our country.”
“The Democrats, once and for all, must reject the corporate wing of the party and empower those who will create a grassroots, multi-racial, generational, working-class party in every state of this country,” Sanders said. “Democrats, through words and action, must make clear that they stand with a struggling working class, a disappearing middle class, and millions of low-income Americans who today are barely surviving. They must make it clear that they are prepared to boldly take on the powerful corporate interests that have so much power in Washington and in state capitals across the country.”
“Bernie’s criticism of the corporate wing of the party is meaningless when he literally endorsed that wing of the party in Biden,” said Birrion Sondahl, of Dillon, Colorado, a delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention who has said the political establishment “is kind of leaving the progressive wing behind and not addressing our concerns.”
“I believe that good public policy is good politics but I am terribly disappointed in the Biden administration’s policies and I believe Democrats will lose if he is the nominee,” said progressive New Jersey Democrat Lisa McCormick. “The American people are disgusted by the growing levels of income and wealth inequality in our country, rampant corporate greed, and bumbling incompetence of the politicians who only care about campaign fundraising when they could replace our system of legal bribery with meaningful reform.”
Sanders, who won the 2016 and 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primaries in the longtime first-in-the-nation presidential primary state, spoke at a venue that has been a must-stop for White House hopefuls for more than two decades.
Arguing that Democrats must ignore the corporate wing of the party and instead put forward a bold agenda that addresses the needs of America’s struggling working class, Sanders may generate plenty of political buzz but he has said that he is solidly behind President Joe Biden in next year’s presidential primaries.
Biden – whose floundering approval ratings have remained in negative territory for nearly two years – appears to be keeping his distance from New Hampshire after the Democratic National Committee approved a presidential nomination calendar change suggested by Biden which moves the Granite State from its longtime and cherished leadoff position.
With the state likely to hold an unsanctioned contest to keep its first-in-the-nation position, it’s doubtful that the president will step foot in New Hampshire until after the end of the primary schedule.
“We invited him, but he’s coming here for a reason,” New Hampshire Institute of Politics executive director Neil Levesque told a local newspaper as he discussed the Sanders speech. “I think it opens the door for a lot of other sorts of thoughts about whether or not Biden’s going to be the nominee, whether or not Biden is going to be running in next year’s presidential election.”
Sanders, 81, has repeatedly said that he’s backing Biden as the president seeks a second two-year term in the White House.
Longtime Sanders supporters in the Granite State told the Monitor that the speech is another example of the senator continuing to push the issues he has always pushed and that it’s not about another presidential run in 2024.
They also suggest that the address may be an avenue for Sanders to try and “rally the troops” behind Biden’s re-election.
“Bernie Sanders has made it crystal clear that he is supporting President Biden in 2024. His visit to New Hampshire is simply to remind Granite Stater voters that President Biden has delivered on many of the issues that they value,” said Joe Caiazzo, a Boston political consultant.
Perhaps more than any other politician, Sanders’ policies compare with those of former Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who is the campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The environmental lawyer who is mounting a campaign to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination is the son of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Both were assassinated in the 1960s.
“I’m seeing Americans live at a level of desperation, of depression, that I never thought I’d see in this country,” said Kennedy in front of a large crowd at the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox.
The post-war period he grew up in, Kennedy said, was a time of great prosperity for the middle class, where American-made products had powerful worldwide appeal, as evoked history and childhood memories of his father and uncle.
Marianne Williamson, the other Democratic challenger to Biden, also spoke about the need for a mass mobilization to transform from a dirty economy to a clean economy.
“We have allowed the economics of corporate greed to overpower the principles as well as the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and it is the responsibility of our generation to rescue them,” said Williamson, who often sounds as if she is channeling President Franklin Roosevelt.
“A person dying from lack of health care due to an insurance company’s recalcitrance is hardly guaranteed the right to life,” said Williamson. “A child raised in a domestic war zone is not at liberty to play safely in her front yard. A person having to work two or three jobs to make ends meet; or struggling to feed their children; or being poisoned by environmental toxins spewed into their neighborhood because it’s a “sacrifice zone,” are hardly free to pursue happiness.”
“America’s economy is not doing well for the one in four Americans who carry medical debt or have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, or struggle to feed their children. In fact, the rate of poverty in America is higher than in any other advanced democracy,” said Williamson. “The plight of the poor, the near-poor, and the afraid of becoming poor, is a national crisis largely ignored by the political elite in this country. Tweaking things here and tweaking things there might disturb the monster of economic despair, but it does not slay it.”
“People’s job or career choices are too often determined not by a natural passion or proclivity, but by their need for health care benefits, enough money for child care, or an ability to pay off their college or medical debt. Quite simply, that is not the way to have an abundant or a prosperous life,” said Williamson.