How Bernie Sanders Is Challenging a Downsized Politics of Excluded Alternatives

How Bernie Sanders Is Challenging a Downsized Politics of Excluded Alternatives

How Bernie Sanders Is Challenging a Downsized Politics of Excluded Alternatives

Why we need a grown-up conversation about taxes.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

During the 2008 primaries, Hillary Clinton criticized Barack Obama after he cited Ronald Reagan’s presidency as an example of the impact he hoped to achieve. Reagan “changed the trajectory of America,” Obama told a Nevada newspaper, adding, “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” Obama’s point was not that he admired Reagan’s policies but rather that, like Reagan, he wanted to redefine what is viewed as possible in our politics.

Eight years later, with primary season officially in full swing after Monday’s Iowa caucuses, another insurgent candidate has upended the Democratic nomination contest by promising to take the nation down a different path. Campaigning on bold, progressive ideas such as free college tuition and Medicare for all, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has prompted a backlash from not only Hillary Clinton and her supporters but also a posse of centrist and liberal pundits who have charged that such ideas are left-wing fantasies—popular, yes, but also politically impossible. In the past week alone, for example, The Washington Post’s editorial board published two negative commentaries on Sanders, arguing that his campaign is premised on “fantastical claims” and “overpromising.”

Even more problematic to some critics is how Sanders vows to pay for his plans: by increasing taxes, even on the middle class. Despite professing his adoration for Sanders, Post columnist Dana Milbank recently declared, “Democrats would be insane to nominate him,” in part because he has “admitted he would seek massive tax increases.” He went on to ask: “Are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.” Leaving aside the question of Sanders’s “socialism,” the upshot of this argument is that openly calling for higher taxes, even to fund popular government benefits, is a surefire political loser.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x