“Medicare for all,” “free college,” and a $15 minimum wage may come to mind when you think of Bernie Sanders, who just jumped in the 2020 race for the White House.
But these progressive policies weren’t the fuel that carried Sanders to his astonishing success against Hillary Clinton three years ago. The Bernie 2016 phenomenon wasn’t about a socialist wish list as much as it was about political empowerment.
“Real change,” Sanders says at the beginning of his 2020 campaign launch video, “never takes place from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up.”
That wasn’t a mere introduction to his policy proposals. It’s the heart of what Sanders offers: a promise to give political power to people who feel they have none. Sanders is pledging to fight not only inequality, racism, and climate change, but the underlying problem of disenfranchisement and political alienation.
“If this campaign is about anything,” Sanders said at a New Hampshire rally in 2016, “it is about revitalizing American democracy — making sure that every American knows how powerful he or she is to determine the future of this great country.”
This resonated with his base. “His message from the beginning,” Sanders delegate Tascha Van Auken told me at the Philadelphia convention, “is that no matter who is elected, the important part is that the grassroots becomes more active and builds networks, and builds a movement … ”
This is why new campaign finance restrictions and overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision were at the heart of Sanders’ revolution.
As a libertarian-leaning conservative, I don’t put much stake in campaign finance restrictions. But I came to appreciate what the Sanders folks wanted: They were desperately seeking a voice and some power in politics.
It’s easy to dismiss these folks as big government liberal busy-bodies, but there’s a more charitable reading:
Man is a political animal. Men and women live out their potential not only by running their own lives, but also by shaping the world around them. Modern America has left so many people — particularly young adults and the working class — impotent to shape the world around them.
We are far less connected to the institutions through which Americans used to exercise their political muscles. About 44 percent of all Americans are not active in any sort of religious, civic, hobby, athletic, neighborhood, or volunteer organization, according to a new survey by the American Enterprise Institute.
Other Democrats try to tap into the same sentiment. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., like Sanders, says the system is rigged in America today. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., promises to be a warrior “for the people” who lack one.
But the politician who best tapped into alienation in recent years — even better than Sanders — was Donald Trump. Sometimes spinning conspiracy theories to cast his opponents as illegitimate, sometimes pointing out fairly, like Sanders, how special interests have too much power in Washington, Trump rallied the alienated behind him in the GOP primaries, and then in the general election. (My new book, Alienated America, makes this argument at length.)
Conservatives early on were put off by Trump’s strongman-type promises, which were based on the premise that the president could “bring back” the American dream. Sanders has even grander visions, even more likely to undermine his overarching goal of empowering the disenfranchised.
You cannot empower regular people by empowering the central government. A powerful central government empowers the well-connected, who can afford the best revolving-door lobbyists. It strips power away from the local and voluntary institutions where ordinary individuals can actually have influence.
Sanders endorses a $15 minimum wage, and in his campaign video he points out that Amazon has embraced that wage. So he must understand that imposing such a wage on all employers would crush the mom and pop shops that form a part of cohesive neighborhoods, replacing them with alienating leviathans.
“The great paradox of progressive populism,” New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote aptly, in response to the “Green New Deal” that Sanders endorses, “is that it leads to elitism in its purist form.”
Truly “revitalizing American democracy,” to use Sanders’ phrase, requires restoring the active civic life where the regular guy and gal can have actual influence.
Sanders’ policy proposals are as far left as the rest of the Democratic vanguard. But at bottom, his overarching message and mission is one that conservatives — especially those who want to learn a lesson from Trump’s win — must take to heart: A real, healthy populism centers on returning power to an alienated people.
