Bernie Sanders and "Movement Politics"

[MineralMan]

6. Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Yes, there was a time when I thought only a revolution would bring change. But, that didn't happen. What the revolution, such as it was, brought was a reactionary result that, as you pointed out, gave us Nixon and Reagan and Bush. Each of those men set things back during their times as President. Despite that, we have moved forward, one step at a time, in some areas. In others, we have not moved forward at all.

Dissent Magazine still exists, and so does the Democratic Socialism it has always championed. I have no doubt that Bernie Sanders has been reading that publication all along. I used to read it regularly, back in the 1960s. I put it aside, though, because what it was advocating never seemed to gain traction or establish itself as part of American political reality.

I'm not famous. I don't even write about politics, except on discussion forums. I have never run for office. I have, however, campaigned actively for Democrats I believed would work to make change happen in ways that could actually work.

While I was deeply involved in revolutionary, radical activities in the late 1960s in the Washington, DC area, I moved on from that when I saw that it was not helping to cause change in itself. It was too unbending, unable to work cooperatively with actual legislators, nor able to see beyond a narrow window on society.

Bernie Sanders is still trying to put in place things that couldn't work in the 1960s and will not work now, either. He has not moved on. He is stuck in a past that is familiar to me, but no longer any more relevant than it was then, in terms of actual impact on society.