Reading the papers this morning, it seems that Hillary Clinton may have the nomination in the bag after a group of superdelegates pledged to support her at the Democratic convention in July.  Though technically not yet a victory, the timing of the announcement was undoubtedly aimed at suppressing voter turnout among supposedly disheartened Sanders supporters.  This message of Clinton’s inevitability is further echoed by a panicky liberal punditocracy fearful that Sanders’s commitment to staying in the race through the convention is only going to hurt Clinton in the general election.

It is absolutely vital that Trump lose.

It is also absolutely vital for Sanders to stay in the race.

A victory for Sanders in California today sends a clear message just how large Sanders’s base is within the Democratic Party. It’s highly unlikely that Sanders can overcome Clinton at this point, but thinking about politics as if they begin and end with presidential elections is short-term thinking. The real long-term goal is to shift the political landscape to the left and this primary contest has proven to be a surprisingly useful vehicle for doing that. So what, if Clinton wins? Depending on what Sanders’s supporters do today and continue to do over the next several years, this could be the last hurrah of the Clinton-wing of the Democratic Party.

Clinton will tack to the right once she’s convinced she’s got the nomination secured. The Democratic Leadership Council, the Third Way, the Blue Dogs, the New Democrats … all of these poll-driven folks who back Clinton sincerely believe that the center of the country is somewhere between her and Trump. That may well have been true in the 1980s, when Bill Clinton and gang began their takeover of the Democratic Party, but it’s not true now. It’s long past time to end the politics of triangulation.

A win for Sanders today – especially in California – will prove the triangulators wrong and show where the sympathies of the Democratic electorate really are. A large enough win will hopefully prevent Clinton from abandoning the next generation of Democratic voters in the general election. These folks are much further left than either Sanders or Clinton and they are the future of the party.  And today, I hope they make their voices heard.

If they do, the future is ours.

 

Last night’s Democratic debate at Brooklyn Navy Yard has put the contest between Sanders and Clinton into pretty stark relief.  Setting aside all the fretful hand-wringing about the “tone” of the campaign, what we are seeing are two distinct visions for politics.  To borrow a Weberian distinction brought to my attention by Michael Weinman over at Public Seminar, the difference between Clinton and Sanders is a difference between practical competence and moral competence.

It seems to me that the difference between Sanders and Clinton is that Clinton views politics as a series of successful compromises, while Sanders views politics as progress towards a broader vision or a bigger goal. For Clinton, the compromise is the goal, what you strive for.  Practical competence.  For Sanders, compromise seems to be something you get to once you’ve pushed your opponent as far as you can. And, then you gather forces and push again when you have the opportunity.  That’s moral competence.

This was really clear in the discussion over climate change. In that phase of the debate, Clinton listed off a long series of compromises that she was a part of – regardless of whether those compromises were sufficient to address climate change at all. For her, evidence of success was that she got China and Russia to the negotiating table. For Sanders, evidence of success was mustering the national will to actually address the ecological toll the past century and a half has taken on the planet – a Manhattan Project for addressing climate change. The point was to reverse – or at least mitigate – the effects of climate change and keep the planet livable. It’s not to secure a series of ineffective compromises and call that success.

There’s definitely room for compromise in politics and it’s really important for any sort of progress. But, if compromise is your goal – and not ultimate victory, however you define it – the terms of the debate will always be set by your opponents whoever they are.  The stakes are simply too high to limit our politics solely to what is practically achievable.  We must strive to attain what instead for what is morally imperative.

Are we fighting to compromise? Or are we fighting to win?

There’s a reason why a less jaded younger generation finds Sanders so appealing. They haven’t yet lost the will to dream and the hope to transform the world that was beaten out of an older generation by the decades of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Gingrich.

Let’s not squash that. Let’s vote our hopes and not our fears.

 

 

I’ve got a face for radio!

Earlier this month, Dr. Beth English of Princeton University interviewed me for the inaugural episode of Working History, the new podcast sponsored by the Southern Labor Studies Association. Our topic is my new book Schooling Jim Crow: the Fight for Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School and the Roots of Black Protest Politics. The conversation centers on how respectability politics has shaped black protest for the past century and what becomes possible after that politics is rejected.

You can listen to that podcast here.