Guest Author
Much is made of the rise of the Tea Party and its continued hold on Republican politics nationwide, particularly after former GOP House leader Eric Cantor of Virginia was defeated.
But just as much as the success of the Tea Party in converting the disgust of conservative voters with American politics into wins in primary races since 2010, there’s a corresponding, if not greater anger, on the American left. Some liberals feel abandoned by President Barack Obama and entrenched “liberals” in the Democratic Party.
So when Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders starts to make noise about running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton and other mainstream Democrats should be worried — particularly when Sanders plans to exploit the same 1 percenter arguments that were used by Obama to defeat Mitt Romney.
Sanders, who at age 72 is the longest sitting Independent to hold office in Congress, made a number of statements this week indicating that he was considering a bid against Clinton.
He told Yahoo News that he had a “damn good platform” to campaign on and that Clinton shouldn’t be handed the Democratic nomination without a fight.
“I’m not quite sure that the political process is one in which we anoint people,” he said when asked about Clinton in a Yahoo News interview with Jeff Zeleny published Monday.
Saunders is proud to call himself a “Democratic Socialist.” He indicated that he would build a platform centered on the growing wealth of the rich and the steady decline of the American middle class.
“You have today in America more income and wealth inequality than any time in this country since 1928 and more than any major country in the world,” Sanders said, outlining an issue he would highlight on the stump. “You got the top 1 percent owning 38 percent of the wealth in America. Do you know what the bottom 60 percent own? 2.3 percent.”
The economy continues to struggle. The IRS and VA have been marred by scandal. And foreign policy failures continue to plague the Obama administration.
In such an environment, Saunders could develop traction in the early going of the 2016 Democratic primary season.
By making Wall Street and Clinton’s connections to Wall Street a key issue in early caucus and primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire, he can replicate the Obama success of 2008.
Questions already are being raised about the Clintons’ newfound wealth and their ties to Wall Street. One writer recently wrote in the Nation that Hillary and Bill “are essentially 1 percent’s hired guns, well-paid servants of the ultra elite.”
Much like the Tea Party, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is hungry for alternatives. Besides Sanders, first term liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is already being touted as an alternative to Clinton.
The key to Sanders may lie in New York. There’s talk of upset there.
A good showing in the upcoming N.Y. primary by progressive newbie Zephyr Teachout against Gov. Andrew Cuomo would indicate big problems for Clinton and the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.
With the mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, owned by the oligarchs Sanders plans to run against, he won’t have the same messaging support that Obama had in 2008 and 2012. Sanders’ only hope to gain traction with voters is to build a significant grassroots campaign that embraces a coalition of disgusted supporters that includes Tea Party free-market voters.
America is ready for a debate about saving the middle class and limiting the power of Wall Street and the “ultra elite,” and if there’s one guy who is smart and savvy enough to bring it on, it’s Bernie Sanders. And in the process, despite the odds, he’s capable of knocking off Hillary too.
Steven Kurlander blogs at Kurly’s Kommentary (stevenkurlander.com) and writes for Context Florida and The Huffington Post and can be found on Twitter @Kurlykomments. He lives in Monticello, N.Y. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
