Bernie, His Army and the Historical Moment

 

By Ted Glick

Bernie Sanders finally announced that he is running for President this week. When asked what would be different this time around, he replied, “We will win.”

Can he win? Yes, there are lots of reasons to believe he can.

There’s the 6 million dollars he raised in the 24 hours after his announcement, most of it from his over-two-million-person list of donors from 2016. Of his competitors for the Democratic Party nomination, the second-best in this regard was Kamala Harris pulling in 1.5 million.

There’s the very important fact that after 2016 he and his supporters got themselves organized into an independent national organization, Our Revolution, with 600 chapters in just about every state. None of his competitors have anything close to that. When combined with the many millions of others not active in Our Revolution who supported him in 2016 and/or will be supporting him now, and remembering the massive, people-powered momentum built with his leadership in 2015-2016, calling it an “army” seems accurate.

There are the steps he has taken to politically strengthen both his message and his connections to important constituencies where he had weaknesses in 2016. An example is the fact that there are four co-chairs of his campaign, California Congressperson Ro Khanna, Our Revolution leader and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, San Juan, PR mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, and Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Three of the four are people of color, two are women.

Another example of how he has politically strengthened his positions is an In These Times article last month where he articulated a good analysis of US militarism and an imperialist foreign policy, without using those words.

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Source: tedglick.com