Dear Senator Sanders,
Yes, I know you’re not actually reading this, but it’s a perspective that I think needs to be shared, so let’s just pretend for a moment that you are.
Anyhow. I’m a somewhat lukewarm registered Democrat, not always in agreement with the party line, but consistently bewildered by the slow-motion train wreck that is today’s Republican Party and frankly terrified by the prospect of somebody like Trump becoming President. I’ve come to consider myself a “socialist,” or at least a social democrat, on economic issues, partly in frustration over the party’s unwillingness and/or inability to make economic populism a winning message and with all the built-in obstacles to basic fairness that seem to come with neoliberal capitalism. Sometimes I can’t help but look with envy towards voters in countries where voting for a Green, Labor, or Social Democratic party isn’t simply a protest vote. Your campaign for the presidency inspired me in large part because it has demonstrated that the appetite for such an agenda, both inside the Democratic Party and outside of it, is stronger than most would have thought, and I voted for you in the Rhode Island primary on April 26 as a way of contributing to that movement.
But here’s the other side: in all honesty, I never thought that you were going to be President or that you’d have much luck getting your agenda passed if you did somehow manage to win. Because, much as I might wish it were otherwise, I don’t think your brand of left-populist democratic socialism yet commands the support of a majority of the American public (at least once the inevitable spin, scare tactics, and negative attacks take hold), nor is there enough of it in the Democratic Party’s DNA just yet. Moreover, as long as we’re stuck with this frustrating, undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, the only way to *make* democratic socialism a winning or influential message is probably to build support for it within the Democratic Party. (After all, it’s not likely to catch on within the Republican Party.)
So how do we do that? Well, for starters, someone like you needs to run for President as a Democrat. Bravo for doing so, and for wildly exceeding any expectations anyone had for how much support you’d gather along the way. Furthermore, the party establishment needs to see that the grassroots support for an agenda like yours is large, energetic, and growing. I think your campaign has proven that with flying colors. Again, job well done. But realistically, building this kind of movement — especially when support among the general public is still somewhat lukewarm — probably means running and losing at least once first.
And here’s the final piece of the puzzle. Democratic politicians also need to see us as people that can generate the kind of organization and activism that benefits them, and that it helps them — rather than threatens them — if we’re on their side. Democrats thinking about running for their state legislature, for Governor, for House or Senate, need to look at your campaign and think, “Hey, maybe I *can* run as an unabashed economic left-wing populist and build support from the same people who supported Bernie Sanders.” Even if your agenda doesn’t yet command sustainable support from a majority nationwide, there are certainly districts and states where it could or perhaps already does, and the more “Bernie Sanders Democrats” we have in politics, the more the media will have to treat your ideas as a legitimate part of the conversation.
Moreover, if the movement you’ve built is going to survive and grow, it is essential that we *not* be seen as a bunch of kooks, sore losers, and crackpots. That might well prove to be the path towards fruitless civil war within the Democratic Party and more wishy-washy Third Way centrism from the party establishment. It could reinforce the notion that instead of growing the left, the path to winning elections is to throw the left a few bones so that we’ll just keep quiet and vote. Ralph Nader attempted a confrontational path for the Green Party, and I think we can all see where that landed both him and the Green Party.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You could, instead, be remembered as the William Jennings Bryan of democratic socialism. Bryan never got to be President either, of course, and while we’d probably all rather forget his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial, can there be any doubt that he helped to change politics for the better and that the influence of his ideas was felt long after his campaigns for the presidency ended? Yeah, it sucks for you and your supporters. After all, our whole political system pretty much sucks. But it’s what we’re stuck with, and the reality is that after June 7, Hillary Clinton will have the majority of both votes and pledged delegates. And that means that, according to any reasonable principles of a democracy (even one as flawed as ours), she’ll have won and you’ll have lost. Asking unelected superdelegates to overturn a result like that should be antithetical to any movement for genuine equality.
So, Senator Sanders, after the votes are counted and Hillary has the majority that we all know she’ll have, please concede — for the sake of democratic socialism.
Sincerely,
Some random clown on the internet