Who is Bernie Sanders?

This grumpy Brooklyn guy in his mid-seventies has rallied around him the old left and the expanding army of unemployed

Who is Bernie Sanders? He looks like our own Abid Hassan Minto of the Awami Workers Party. That certainly is an accident. What is surprising is that he also talks like Minto, despite being a hopeful for the Democratic Party nomination in the US presidential race. Out of the four candidates in the run, he is not only second in the opinion polls right now, he is also closing in fast on the e-mail infested, server-privatising Hillary of the Clinton dynasty. Bernie has thrown down the gauntlet at what John Maynard Keynes described as the “the astounding belief [capitalism] that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone”.



To divert attention away from the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in May, 1886, the first Monday of September was designated as American Labour Day. Bernie has called for a political revolution to resurrect the rights won by the trade union movement. These included ensuring a 40-hour work week, occupational safety, minimum wage law, social security, Medicare, Medicaid and affordable housing. The new ideas he has brought in are to do with paid family and medical leave, universal healthcare and free college tuition. Right now, all additional income and wealth generation is usurped by the top one per cent, while the workers and middle classes toil more for a lot less. Only seven per cent of the private sector workforce is now unionised. Bernie joined a picket line at a plant in Iowa to show what he means: “The surest path to the middle class for American workers is with unions.”

An independent senator from Vermont, he describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, something that the Democratic National Committee chairperson had no clue about when questioned in this regard in a TV interview. Bernie sees his platform as a people’s uprising through the ballot against the machinations of Wall Street and the pervasive financial penetration of the big corporations into the institutions of democracy. Class, corruption and greed degrade America. Public funding of campaigns is his solution to break the nexus between big money and elections. His own campaign is financed by very small donations. Following the path set by Keynes, he stands for a trillion dollar investment in infrastructure to create over a million jobs — a new New Deal.

Neither flamboyant like the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, nor a high flyer like the Democratic frontrunner, this grumpy Brooklyn guy in his mid-seventies has rallied around him the old left and the expanding army of the unemployed and partially unemployed middle class youth, to challenge the politics of the establishment in his party and an economics that bails out the inefficient rich and dumps those working hard for a living. He is promising “a government in which the American people and the middle class are represented rather than big money interests”.

What are his chances of winning the nomination of the Democratic Party, and eventually the presidency? The pundits expected Bernie to burn out sooner rather than later. Defying all predictions, though, he is still alive and kicking, drawing ever larger crowds and getting endorsements from an increasing number of civil society groups. Reputed intellectuals like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich are likely to be a part of his administration. He is beginning to take the lead from Hillary in regional polls. However, the party establishment is gearing to draft Vice-President Joe Biden in case Hillary’s ship runs aground. In so doing, the party would be failing to read the social democratic spirit that is prevailing, not only in the United States, but also in Britain and many parts of Europe.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th,  2015.

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