[rad-green] Bernie Sanders Is the Unity Candidate

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/28/bernie-sanders-unity-candidate
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/28/bernie-sanders-unity-candidate>Common
Dreams          February 28, 2020Bernie Sanders Is the Unity
CandidateDespite the desperate smears from center-right opponents claiming
he is "divisive," the reality is that Bernie Sanders’ policies are all
about unity: common needs, mutual care, and a shared future.by Christopher
D. Cook*

[image: Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders addresses
his supporters at a campaign rally at the Charleston Area Convention
Center. The South Carolina Democratic primary will be held in three days.
(Photo: Paul Hennessy / Echoes WIre/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)]

*Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders addresses his
supporters at a campaign rally at the Charleston Area Convention Center.
The South Carolina Democratic primary will be held in three days. (Photo:
Paul Hennessy/Echoes WIre/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)*

As a Bernie Sanders nomination and presidency become increasingly viable
(if not downright likely), his widening popularity
<https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/479309-sanders-joins-biden-atop-2020-democratic-field-poll>
signifies
something bigger—a palpable yearning and movement across America for a
unifying politics based on universal needs that can bring Americans
together around common interests instead of dividing us through fear,
scapegoating, and radical inequality.

Despite the desperate smears from center-right opponents claiming he is
“divisive,” the reality is that Bernie Sanders’ policies are all about
unity: common needs, mutual care, and a shared future.

Ragingly divided as the Trump era has been, there is a remarkably strong
chance
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html>
that
Sanders’ politics of compassion and care can win the day in 2020. What this
politics means for America and the world cannot be underestimated. With
climate crisis and inequality bearing down on us with increasing ferocity,
our planet and humanity cannot afford the “options” of Trumpian carnage and
division or of woefully compromised centrist tweaks offered by Biden,
Buttigieg or Klobuchar that uphold the very same system that is crumbling
before our eyes.

"With climate crisis and inequality bearing down on us with increasing
ferocity, our planet and humanity cannot afford the 'options' of Trumpian
carnage and division or of woefully compromised centrist tweaks offered by
Biden, Buttigieg or Klobuchar that uphold the very same system that is
crumbling before our eyes."

The Trump era has ushered and emboldened so much hate, enmity, and
division, some may ask, how could we do a national about-face and elect
something so vastly different? In fact, tons of polling shows
<https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-trump-poll-election-2020-biden-bloomberg-1483423?fbclid=IwAR1m824xcGKMSxeOpSIH3pWylEhPa2PLpB8g5N_VrizWGEm5B2rNXypy368>
that
Trump’s Darwinian politics of winners and losers, based on voracious
venality and short-term plundering, can be soundly defeated by its
diametric opposite: a politics of compassion and unifying shared interests.

Bernie Sanders’ entire agenda <https://berniesanders.com/issues/> is about
unifying Americans by addressing the fundamental crises that sow division
and distrust. Medicare for All. College for all. Housing for all. Justice
and safety for all. Jobs for all. Not just some of us—*all of us*. Sanders’
politics and policies are a bold rebuttal to both right-wing and neoliberal
policies that create the very divides we now face.

Sanders has exhibited these politics in deeds and words for decades.
Combatting war and militarism is an act of love; standing up for civil
rights is an act of love; fighting for living wages and workers’ rights is
an act of love; leading the effort for single-payer universal healthcare
and a climate-healing Green New Deal
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/22099/greta-thunberg-climate-strike-green-new-deal-environment-change-crisis>
are
acts of love. These policies, and other social-justice initiatives promoted
by Sanders, are about ending and reducing harm, healing wounds, and
preventing pain and suffering by addressing root causes.

In a major speech in June 2019 defending democratic socialism, Sanders said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/us/politics/bernie-sanders-socialism.html>
America
must replace its current path of hatred and divisiveness, and “instead find
the moral conviction to choose a different path, a higher path, a path of
compassion, justice and love… And that is the path that I call democratic
socialism.” This politics is not only simply about government programs—it’s
about human rights and dignity, and an economy and politics that spreads
wealth rather than consolidating and privatizing it.

"Combatting war and militarism is an act of love; standing up for civil
rights is an act of love; fighting for living wages and workers’ rights is
an act of love; leading the effort for single-payer universal healthcare
and a climate-healing Green New Deal are acts of love."

Witness the nationwide upwelling of support for transformative, socialistic
policies based on shared common interests—policies based on mutual
compassion and universality over inequality and separation. Democratic
socialism is increasingly popular and non-controversial: in a recent Gallup
poll
<https://www.newsweek.com/76-percent-democrats-say-theyd-vote-socialist-president-new-poll-shows-1486732?fbclid=IwAR3llYBdfl-858RL7GFQDDMnmzvRlZu6FZVhRq7rXDBiEJPSsJ574Nm-DrA>,
76 percent of Democrats, 17 percent of Republicans, and 45 percent of
independent voters said they would vote for a socialist.

Consider two immensely popular and urgently necessary policies: Medicare
for all and the Green New Deal. There are entirely rational, dollar-driven
reasons to support and enact both (preventative care and economics, pay now
or pay later, save money and save lives over the long term). In fact, a
major recent study published by *The Lancet
<https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext>*,
one of the world's most esteemed medical journals, shows that Medicare for
all could produce up to $450 billion in savings annually, reducing current
health care costs by about 13 percent.

Beyond any units of progress they deliver, these policies provide a
foundation for societal transformation by uniting mass common interests and
equalizing conditions.

Decades of deepening socioeconomic divisions, entrenched by neoliberalism,
capitalism, and corporate-friend policies, have led us to today’s
crucible—a choice between fake “populism” and separatist nationalism on one
end, and a unifying democratic socialism that transcends liberal tinkering.

The obstacles to this politics of unity and love are immense: corporate
power; money; entrenched industrial and wealth interests in both political
parties. Capitalism’s multitude of economic and political tentacles and
well-heeled apparatchiks, embedded throughout politics, business, and
mainstream media.

The “Third Way” politics of Clinton-Blair-Bush-Obama—characterized by
neoliberal privatization, band-aid social welfare systems, regulatory
rollback, and expanded transnational corporate power—have failed us
profoundly. With its impoverishing blend of public austerity and lavish
private riches, this “new” way (three decades of center-right shredding of
old FDR-style liberalism) deepened divisions of wealth and power, paving
the way to today’s entrenched and emboldened enmities, and Trumpian
politics based on fear, scapegoating and division.

Bernie’s unifying politics diverge from these bipartisan paths based on
concentrated profits and power, blazing a fresh trail that’s uniquely vital
for navigating the chief crises of our times. As the climate crisis and
inequality widen and deepen, only a politics of universal care can meet the
needs of people and the planet. The politics of profits-over-life, of
trickle-down, of corporate power and a hyper-militarized fossil-fuel
economy are burying humanity and the planet. These politics of inequality
and unsustainability—of both the Trumpian and Third Way varieties—are
killing us and must end.

"The politics of profits-over-life, of trickle-down, of corporate power and
a hyper-militarized fossil-fuel economy are burying humanity and the
planet. These politics of inequality and unsustainability—of both the
Trumpian and Third Way varieties—are killing us and must end."

Unlikely as it may once have seemed, Bernie’s transformative politics can
win in 2020. Polling consistently shows strong majorities supporting his
policies. Sanders may resonate due to his authenticity, but he’s also
soaring because his policy agenda rises to our immense challenges rather
than tinkering timidly at our system’s rapidly eroding edges.

We’re facing a climate crisis threatening all of humanity; a nightmare of
personal debt, poverty, and homelessness crippling millions; a healthcare
and education divide that is both inhumane and untenable as a society;
racial injustice and a war on immigrants that betrays our promise and
potential as a species and a nation. Being unapologetically bold in the
face of deadly crises is an act of love and compassion.

More than two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All
<https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all-health-care>
and
single-payer healthcare, surveys show, while only 15 percent “strongly
oppose” this egalitarian shift. The Green New Deal, meanwhile, received 80
percent support
<https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/421765-poll-majorities-of-both-parties-support-green-new-deal>
among
registered voters in 2018; a 2019 survey
<https://grist.org/article/poll-the-green-new-deal-is-as-popular-as-legalizing-weed/>
found
63 percent support for the Green New Deal—“a higher approval rating than a
wealth tax, a semi-automatic assault gun ban, and free college tuition.”

The answer to this plethora of crises is a new politics that directly
challenges corporate power, our vast and unacceptable wealth divide, a
politics that dares to confront the root causes of inequality. This means
policies like universal single-payer healthcare and free college access; a
wealth tax that spurs living-wage job creation; an aggressive and
far-reaching Green New Deal
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/22099/greta-thunberg-climate-strike-green-new-deal-environment-change-crisis>
that
tackles climate-wrecking emissions by creating millions of jobs to expand
renewable energy and to transform low-income communities; policies on food
and energy production that regenerate our dwindling and endangered natural
resources rather than expropriate and expire them; policies that sustain
our future rather than ravage the present for every last dime.

While some other Democratic candidates offer a liberal or moderate respite
from Trumpian hell, our deeply unequal and climate-ravaged world requires
something different—a direct challenge to the power structures that are
causing these crises. If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination and presidency,
the unifying—and universalizing—politics of mutual care and a shared common
future will at last have a powerful seat at the table.
<https://www.commondreams.org/author/christopher-d-cook>

Christopher D. Cook <https://www.commondreams.org/author/christopher-d-cook> is
an award-winning journalist and author of *Diet for a Dead Planet: Big
Business and the Coming Food Crisis
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595580840?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1595580840>*.
Cook has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian
Science Monitor and elsewhere. See more of his work at
www.christopherdcook.com.

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