Outsider in the White House (33 page)

Spending days with Bernie Sanders in the small towns of Vermont in 2005 was the equivalent of signing up for a walking seminar on the real-life struggles of working Americans—as played out on issues ranging from protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, to preserving pensions, to expanding access to health care, to lowering drug prices, to raising the minimum wage, to helping small businesses get started and keeping family farmers on the land. The conversations were a mix of personal anecdotes and broad-sweep policies, always pulled back by the candidate to a discussion of the perils of corporate power and lobbying—and of the absolute necessity that poor people and working people come together to counter money power with people power. To be sure, Sanders took questions about the issues of the moment—such as the ongoing war in Iraq. (“When the president and the vice president were telling us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they didn't make the case to me. That's why I not only voted against the war but helped lead the opposition.”) But even then he steered discussions back to economics and to what could be done for America if resources were not squandered on military adventurism. Sanders did not avoid what are often referred to as “hot-button” issues; if anything he was more blunt and more precise than most candidates in his statements of support for a woman's right to choose, LGBT rights, some gun control (more than the NRA wanted but, to the lingering frustration of many liberals, less than what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence proposed). The issues he returned to, however, the issues he dwelled on with everyone he met, were the kitchen-table economic concerns of working Vermonters.

At a picnic on the village green in Rochester, a central Vermont community of 1,200, eighty-four-year-old Ethel Kingsbury, who explained that her family had owned the same farm since 1794, responded to a question about whether she liked Sanders by narrowing her eyes and exclaiming, “Like him? I love him! I'm worried about these prescription prices. This drug bit is just out of control. Bernie's the only one on our side in this whole mess.” That sense that “Bernie's on our side” on bread-and-butter economic issues provided the Congressman with a following even among Vermonters who might otherwise have been put off by his ardent support of reproductive freedom and marriage equality.

“Democrats are not as engaged as they should be on the economic issues that face tens and tens of millions of people,” explained Sanders after he finished up in Rochester that day. “That's what the Republicans have been playing off. The Republicans jump in and say, ‘OK, look. Democrats are not talking about your economic issues. We're not either, but at least we're telling you about the Ten Commandments, we're telling you about abortion, we're telling you about gay rights.' The biggest mistake Democrats make is to take economics off the table.”

In the House, Sanders kept issues of economics and corporate power on the table by using his Congressional franking privileges to send out newsletters that, rather than featuring self-serving photos and pronouncements, offered tutorials on the damage done to workers, farmers, and the environment by free-trade policies, the threat to democracy posed by media consolidation, and the workings of a single-payer health care system. From the beginning of his congressional tenure, Sanders held single-issue town hall meetings in some of the smallest communities in the state, where he brought in experts on international affairs, military spending and national priorities, poverty, children's health, pay equity for women, education and veterans' affairs for discussions that often ran deep into the evening. He even brought Denmark's ambassador to the United States to Burlington, Brattleboro, and Montpelier for discussions about the Danish social-welfare state. The crowds were always big, often packing the halls. People were invited to probe, to challenge, to complain, to disagree with the experts and with Sanders—and they often did, pressing him from the right and the left. But people also got something else—alternative views on how a fair economy and a civil society might be organized to favor their interests. This long-term, intensive education process really is the closest thing to the “secret” of Sanders's success. Vermonters came over time to associate their congressman, and now their senator, with serious discussions about complicated issues. They recognized where he was coming from—and that allowed Sanders to go places where most politicians fear to tread.

“Sometimes, Bernie's biggest critics are on the left,” explained Liz Blum, an activist with the Vermont Progressive Party and a former member of the Select Board of the town of Norwich, during the 2006 campaign. “Some people are uncomfortable when they see a yard where there are signs for the Republicans and for Bernie, but I see that as evidence that he has figured out how to talk to people that the Democrats just have not been able to reach.” At his best, Sanders has succeeded in separating policy from politics and getting to those deeper discussions about the role government can and should play in solving real-life problems—discussions that are usually obscured by partisan maneuvering.

As he prepared to seek the presidency in 2016, Sanders made the decision to run as a Democrat—arguing, to the frustration of at least some of his backers, that barriers to an independent or third-party run were simply too great. But as a candidate for the Senate a decade earlier, he made no apologies for refusing to be a party man. Yes, of course, he said he would like to see the Democratic Party be more progressive and, yes, he said he wanted third parties (like the Vermont Progressive Party developed by many of his backers) to develop the capacity to pull the political process to the left. But Sanders was not going to wait for the right political moment to arrive. What Sanders was creating in Vermont in the mid-2000s was a model for how an individual candidate might push beyond the narrow boundaries of contemporary politics and connect with voters in the same sense that Progressives and Populists of a century ago—operating within the shells of the Democratic and Republican parties and sometimes outside them—successfully advanced radical agendas.

During the course of his congressional tenure, Sanders has taken criticism for being too independent. Some progressive Democrats argued he should be working inside the party to move it to the left. Some progressive independents argued he should be doing more to build a third party that could compete consistently with both the Democrats and the Republicans. But Sanders said a determination to eschew party labels worked for him in Washington, where he proved to be a frequently effective coalition builder. Much of his House tenure was during a period of Republican control. It was difficult to pass major pieces of legislation, so the Vermonter focused his attention on writing and advancing amendments. “Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, no other lawmaker—not Tom DeLay, not Nancy Pelosi—has passed more roll-call amendments (amendments that actually went to a vote on the floor) than Bernie Sanders,” noted
Rolling Stone
writer Matt Taibbi toward the end of the congressman's time in the House. “He accomplishes this on the one hand by being relentlessly active, and on the other by using his status as an Independent to form left-right coalitions.” During George W. Bush's presidency, Sanders forged a left-right coalition in the House that dealt the Bush Administration a rare setback on privacy issues—attaching an amendment to a Justice Department appropriations bill that zeroed out funding for the use of the Patriot Act to spy on library and bookstore records. The amendment vote, which saw most Democrats and dozens of conservative Republicans break with the White House, inspired a threat by George W. Bush to veto the entire appropriations bill. Ultimately, Bush prevailed, but to this day Sanders and some of his conservative allies continue to work with the American Library Association and civil liberties groups on the issue. At the height of George W. Bush's political power, conservative Republicans such as North Carolina congressman Walter Jones were regular allies of then-Congressman Sanders on issues as diverse as trade policy, foreign investment, and setting timetables for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. “I suppose some people think it's strange that I work so well with a liberal,” Jones said in 2005, wrapping his arm around Sanders's shoulders as the two men shared a seat on the underground train that connects the Rayburn Office Building with the Capitol. (Informed that Sanders identified himself as a socialist, Jones smiled. “I know,” he said. “I was trying to be polite.”) “You can disagree with someone 98 percent of the time, but if you can find the 2 percent where you agree and get together, that's what matters,” Jones explained. “Bernie understands that better than some of the Democrats do.”

One of the reasons that Sanders said he wanted to go to the Senate was because he believed that, as an Independent, he could build unlikely alliances. “In the sense that we are trying to develop left-right coalitions, we are also trying to redefine American politics,” he explained. “You have the trade issue, which is very, very important to people who are worried about losing their jobs. You have healthcare issues, which are very important. You have war and peace issues, economic priority issues, which are very important when we talk about how this country is going to pay for all our domestic needs. And on those issues you can bring together coalitions that redefine the ‘normal' paradigm that a lot of the corporate media create when they talk about liberal and conservative.”

That dream has often been deferred. In 2006, however, Sanders succeeded in redefining the paradigm in Vermont. Democrats backed off the Senate; Sanders's old nemesis, former governor Howard Dean, who had recently taken over as Democratic National Committee chair, said, “A victory for Bernie Sanders is a win for Democrats.” Prominent players in the state party endorsed Sanders. He entered the Democratic primary, won it, and then declined the nomination. In the November race Sanders faced Republican businessman Richard Tarrant, a millionaire who poured more than $7 million into a highly professional and highly negative campaign against the Independent. Yet Democrats let Sanders run his own race—without negative ads (in fact with little TV at all) and with a heavy emphasis on visiting even the smallest towns in the most remote corners of the state.

There were no gimmicks, no easy answers, no quick fixes—just a stubborn faith that people want to talk about the issues that matter in their lives. And it worked. Sanders was outspent and crudely attacked in the 2006 race—especially for his lonely votes to defend civil liberties. Yet he secured the Senate seat that for a century and a half had been won only by Republicans, taking 65 percent of the vote to just 32 percent for Tarrant. Sanders won every county in the state by a landslide, and carried even conservative communities. All those town hall meetings over all those years, all that talk about kitchen-table economics, had forged a connection that could not be severed by big money and negative ads. “Maybe that's the lesson of Bernie,” explained Margrete Strand Rangnes. “He doesn't worry so much about winning one election. He's in it for the long haul, because that's how you build the awareness and the trust that allows you to get beyond the spin and talk to people about the real issues in their lives. I don't know if the Democrats have the patience to do that. But if they want to get through to the people they need to reach, they should be paying attention.”

Rejecting the Wall Street Consensus

As it happened, the Democrats did not feel much pressure to pay attention at the time. Sanders arrived in the Senate in January 2007, as Democrats retook control of the House and Senate. In 2008, the party would extend those majorities and elect a president. Democrats were on a roll and, while they accepted Sanders as an independent-but-aligned member of their Senate caucus, party leaders were not inclined to embrace the economic populism at the heart of the Vermonter's appeal. That was obvious in September 2008, when the Wall Street meltdown led to urgent moves to provide bailout funding to the financial institutions that had caused the crisis. Even though the crisis came in the middle of a campaign, Democratic and Republican leaders came together in support of the bailout. In the House, Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan found common cause. In the Senate, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama voted yes, as did Republican presidential nominee John McCain. So did Democratic leader Harry Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

But Sanders objected. Loudly.

“If a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, if we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from President Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation who should pick up the tab, not ordinary working people,” roared Sanders, as he announced his plan to vote “no” on the $700 billion bailout plan.

The fiery speech that Sanders delivered on the Senate floor on October 1, 2008, set the tone for his service in the chamber. While others were falling in line, Sanders stepped out, refusing to accept a consensus that he said neglected the real economic issues facing America.

Sounding themes that would become his mantra, Sanders argued that:

In our country today, we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth, with the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses. We have seen the incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could flourish. We have seen them play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand. We have seen the financial services industry charge 30 percent interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unsuspecting customers. We have seen them engaged in despicable predatory lending practices, taking advantage of the vulnerable and the uneducated. We have seen them send out billions of deceptive solicitations to almost every mailbox in America.

Most importantly, we have seen the financial services industry lure people into mortgages they could not afford to pay, which is one of the basic reasons why we are here tonight.

In the midst of all of this, we have a bailout package which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the “Masters of the Universe,” those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse. Now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces that they broke. That is wrong, and that is something that I will not support.