Was Sander's effort all for Naught?
It’s difficult to reverse climate change when big energy companies dominate politics. It’s hard to achieve equal opportunity when big corporations and Wall Street pay for special privileges and corporate welfare.
We can’t have a sane foreign policy when military contractors hold sway. There’s no way the nation can get health care costs under control when big pharmaceutical companies and giant insurance companies have so much influence in Washington.
It’s impossible to enlarge the typical worker’s paycheck when more and more of it goes to pharmaceutical companies, Internet service providers, banks, food processors, airline carriers and health insurers — all of which raise prices because they have the market and political power to do so.
Sanders helped America see the vicious link between big money, political influence and the rigging of the American economy.
And he put before the public bold proposals that would not otherwise receive the attention they deserve: single-payer health care, free tuition at public universities, a $15 minimum wage, busting up the biggest Wall Street banks, taxing financial speculation, expanding Social Security, imposing a tax on carbon, and getting big money out of politics.
These proposals will shape the progressive agenda for years to come. Many will ultimately be enacted.
Just as progressive leaders at the turn of the last century — the “prairie populist” presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, Wisconsin’s “fighting” Bob La Follette, and California’s Hiram Johnson – laid the foundation for Teddy Roosevelt’s era of progressivism — Sanders has laid the foundation for a new progressivism.
That new progressivism is as relevant to today as was the older progressivism a century ago, when America was similarly burdened with wide inequalities of income, wealth and political power that threatened our economy and democracy.
Finally, Sanders’ courage in taking on the political establishment has emboldened millions to stand up and demand that our voices be heard.
He has ignited a movement that will fight onward. It will fight to put more progressives into the House and Senate. It will fight at the state level. It will organize for the 2020 presidential election.
The millions who supported Bernie will not succumb to cynicism. They are in it for the long haul. They will never give up.
(c) 2016 By Robert Reich; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
