Bernie Sanders and the Power of the Word

• Sanders effective Use of Power of his Word — 8
• Sanders potential use of his word to win the nomination and presidency — 9
• Sanders likelihood of governing based on a World that Works for Everyone upon assuming presidency — 10
• Sanders grounding his Word in love, integrity, diversity and inclusion, accountability, caring–10

Since this is the first piece in the series to look at a Democratic challenger for president, let’s get clear on the charge I give myself.  Absent Trump dropping out of the race or being so weakened that a Republican challenger can beat him in the primary, let’s assume that anyone who enormously dislikes the president’s, shall we say “style of governance,” is likely to support the Democratic nominee for president.  Let’s further assume that the Democratic candidates share most of the same policy positions (affordable universal health care and education, pro civil rights, combat climate change, raise the minimum wage, pro gun control). There are plenty of other writers out there that will spend their time evaluating the nuances of where Democratic candidates for president are on these issues.  And most news forums will spend their time looking at the experience, the demographics and the charisma of the candidates, all of which play a role in whether they will win.

In this series, we confine ourselves primarily to the question of how effectively does the candidate work with the power of their word.  In other words, given how they marshall universal law to their favor through the power of the word, how much do they appear to be grounded in a vision of a world that works for everyone, how likely are they to win, and when they assume the White House, what are they likely to accomplish?

In this piece I evaluate how Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a leading candidate for the Democratic party nomination for president, uses the power of his word. Full disclosure: Bernie Sanders is the candidate I know best and like best out of the gate (and folks, it is early in the race).  He talks the most like the people with whom I used to work.   Before becoming a new thought minister, I spent years fighting (and mostly losing) the good fight as a lawyer and consumer rights advocate in Congress and the California Legislature.

In the early ‘90s, I was an advocate for Medicare for All (which we used to call “single payer health care”) and Bernie Sanders, then a member of the House of Representatives, was one of our biggest champions.  He was a great member of Congress to work with. He and his staff were people of their word. What they said, they stood by (not something to be taken for granted in a politician). He worked hard for Medicare for All even then.  He showed up where we needed him to show up. He was consistent. He was kind. He was more interested in shifting the parameters of the possible, than he was in conventional political wisdom. And he was humble. To us, he was never “congressman,” or “Mr. Sanders,” he was just “Bernie.”  So since he’s always been “Bernie” to me and he is now “Bernie” to millions, I am going to call him Bernie for the rest of this article.

In his 2016 campaign, Bernie Sanders powerfully demonstrated using the power of his word to shift the parameters of the possible.   Just as a hate-filled multiple offending misogynist liar was not supposed to win the Republican nomination, a Jewish politically independent self-proclaimed social democrat was not supposed to gather energetic crowds of thousands everywhere he went. He wasn’t supposed to raise millions of dollars a day through small contributions. He was certainly was not supposed to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary.

And while Bernie most assuredly did NOT win the Democratic nomination for president.  He did play a role in completely changing the parameters of the possible in American policy and politics. Bernie Sanders, using the power of his word on the stump in America, took Medicare for All, universal public college education and a raise to $15 an hour in the minimum wage from peripheral much dismissed “politically unviable” proposals to the policy centerpieces of virtually every Democratic candidate for president in 2020.  He both created and rode a wave of progressivism in America (it is hard to separate cause from effect but it is clear that he, unlike other Democrats running today, did not just have his finger in the wind, he was part of the wind).  Indeed, his candidacy made it as imperative for a Democrat in 2020 to be seen as “progressive” as it is for Republicans to be “conservative.”  Witness Minnesota Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar recently proclaiming in Iowa that she is “progressive” when she otherwise sounds like what we used to call a midwest centrist.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who started out as an organizer for Bernie Sanders for President 2016, went on to defeat 10-term incumbent and powerful Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley for the 14th Congressional District of New York.  AOC as she is widely known created the controversial “Green New Deal,” the possibility of which came out of what Bernie had campaigned for.

One of the ways in which Bernie uses the power of the word effectively is through repetition and consistency.  He does not try to be all things to all people. He answers almost every question with the same handful of statements he has made for years, “It is not moral, it is not acceptable, and it is not sustainable that the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.”  He always goes on to say something like “we can do better. Health care is a human right. Affordable higher education is a human right. A living wage is a human right.”  He says these things passionately and he says them repeatedly.  That is using the power of his word.