{"id":376,"date":"2016-03-04T20:59:59","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T20:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=376"},"modified":"2016-03-04T20:59:59","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T20:59:59","slug":"whats-in-a-name-the-rhetoric-of-bernie-sanderss-political-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Name? The Rhetoric of Bernie Sanders’s “Political Revolution”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sanders\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming off a solid Super Tuesday, the Bernie Sanders campaign is not going down without a fight.\u00a0 Championing a platform premised on economic justice and corporate power, Sanders\u2019s rhetoric resounds with that of Progressive reformers of a century ago.\u00a0 Yet, despite these similarities, he carries significant differences as well.\u00a0 Perhaps most notable is Sanders\u2019s rhetorical positioning of himself as the leader of a \u201cpolitical revolution\u201d rather than a reformer.\u00a0 However, what about his campaign is revolutionary?\u00a0 Can politics be revolutionary?<\/p>\n

If we can think of revolution as a populist, non-institutionalized movement that seeks to bring fundamental change to the current political system from outside of the established political order, then can electoral politics be revolutionary?\u00a0 Can something that exists within the system bring about revolution? Or, to cast Audre Lorde\u2019s famous words into a question, can the master\u2019s tools bring down the master\u2019s house? Can something that is inside also be outside?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin by looking at Sanders\u2019s positioning of himself as a political outsider.\u00a0 Many in the Clinton camp have questioned how Sanders can defend such a position.\u00a0 After all, Sanders has been a congressman for nearly thirty years in the State of Vermont, and before that he was the Mayor of Burlington.\u00a0 Rather than being opposed to the establishment, Sanders looks much like a part of the system he condemns.<\/p>\n

However, refusing to take money from corporations, PACs, Super PACs, or vested political interests, Sanders\u2019s campaign has been fueled by primarily small, individual donations to his campaign.\u00a0 This is one of the most impressive facts of the campaign and certainly unprecedented in an electoral system that is largely pay to play<\/a>.\u00a0 By highlighting this aspect of his campaign, with its clear relation to his policy platform, Sanders justifies this label by portraying himself as outside of the political status quo.<\/p>\n

This raises an interesting dynamic.\u00a0 In this light, both positions seem to be correct to some degree. While Sanders is the consummate career politician, he is also refusing to be bound by the structures of the current campaign finance system. Thus, Sanders is both insider and outsider, being at once within and exterior to the political establishment.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s dig a bit further.\u00a0 On February 28th<\/sup> of this year U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, the now former vice chair of the Democratic National Convention, resigned her position in order to endorse Sanders.\u00a0 When interviewed about her decision Gabbard claimed that she was warned by DNC officials not to break from Clinton<\/a> in support of Sanders. Resigning her position and feeling pressure to back Clinton raises interesting questions regarding Sanders\u2019s outsider status, and his claims of a political revolution. Not only is Sanders outside of the current campaign finance system, he also appears to exist outside of the DNC official position. While Sanders has long been allowed to exist as an independent voice in the senate, there is now hesitancy on the part of the Party to allow Sanders\u2019s particular brand of democratic socialism (a topic worthy of its own essay) to the be their official platform.\u00a0 His views clearly seem to differ from a majority of those in the Party. This is Sanders\u2019s establishment.<\/p>\n

Coming to the larger question of revolution we now need to understand the attempts to rhetorically align politics proper with revolutionary aspirations. Many in the media have questioned the viability of Sanders\u2019s \u201crevolution,\u201d pointing to its colorblind policies<\/a>, overwhelmingly white voter base<\/a>, and sexist supporters<\/a> (certainly all interrelated problems) as inherent limitations to his vision of socialist politics.<\/p>\n

While there have been ardent critics of Sanders on his relative silence on matters of racial inequality, from Black Lives Matter protestors at the Net Roots<\/a> conference, as well as in Seattle<\/a>, and also after the alleged \u201cEnglish only<\/a>\u201d comments at a recent rally, others have found in his platform room for a more inclusive revolution.\u00a0 With individuals such as rapper Killer Mike<\/a>, Cornel West<\/a>, Michelle Alexander<\/a>, Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a> (who has been quite critical of Sanders), and Erica Garner<\/a> all endorsing Sanders, while continuing to push him on race, his history of activism<\/a> for civil rights, coupled with Sanders\u2019s condemnation of the Bernie Bros<\/a>, seem to demonstrate attempts to craft a revolution across multiple axes of identity including race, gender, and class.<\/p>\n

Through the debates regarding Sanders\u2019s platform, I think we may begin to draw out an understanding of political revolution as occupying a paradoxical position that seeks to reshape established political institutions from both within and without. I believe that it is this liminal space that is the site of Sanders\u2019s political revolution. By fundamentally altering the current structure of campaign finance and the DNC itself, as well as seeking to craft a coalitional movement across identity and difference, Sanders seeks to change politics from within while playing outside the bounds of the norms of political culture.\u00a0 Sanders seeks to be within their world but not of it.<\/p>\n

However, this raises important questions for leftist politics. Is such a position truly viable? Does the usage of the label \u201crevolution\u201d do damage to more radical positions by appropriating the term? Or, to the contrary, does inoculating the public from some of its more radical connotations allow for a more nuanced discussion of non-traditional policy positions by broader publics?\u00a0 What are the limitations to Sanders\u2019s positions on race? Additionally, how do we reconcile this label with Sanders\u2019s platform?\u00a0 Espousing largely a nationalist agenda, how can we reconcile the label of revolutionary with his positions on foreign policy, specifically with regard to Palestine?<\/p>\n

Certainly these are only some of the important questions raised by Sanders\u2019s campaign and by the paradoxical idea of a political revolution more broadly.\u00a0 The answers to these questions are not simple. They may likely exist in the liminal space of a \u201cpolitical revolution\u201d itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming off a solid Super Tuesday, the Bernie Sanders campaign is not going down without a fight.\u00a0 Championing a platform premised on economic justice and corporate power, Sanders\u2019s rhetoric resounds with that of Progressive reformers of a century ago.\u00a0 Yet, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}