Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes from a Failed Revolution

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Bernie Sanders promised a Revolution, a promise that was seized upon with an almost religious fervor by a new generation of political activists, a generation raised with smart phones and terror alerts, a generation burdened by debt and facing dim economic prospects. Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of the political journal CounterPunch, called Bernie’s raucous band of followers The Sandernistas, as they pitched themselves for battle against one of the most brutal political operations of the modern era, the Clinton machine. Ridiculed by the media and dismissed as a nuisance by the political establishment, the Sanders campaign shocked Clinton in a state after state, exposing the deep structural fissures in the American electorate. Ultimately the Sanders campaign faltered, undone by the missteps of its leader and by sabotage from the elites of the Democratic Party. By the time the Senator gave his humiliating concession speech at the convention in Philadelphia, even his most ardent supporters jeered him in disgust and walked out, taking their protests back to the streets. This turbulent year of mass revolt and defeat is recounted here, as it happened, by one of America’s fiercest and funniest journalists.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

81 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2016

About the author

Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor with Alexander Cockburn of the political magazine and website CounterPunch. Raised in Indiana, he attended American University in Washington, DC, majoring in Literature and History. He is the author of 13 books, including the best-sellers Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and Al Gore: a User's Manual. He has written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, The Nation, the Village Voice, New Left Review, Anderson Valley Advertiser and The Progressive. HIs newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth, will be published in May by AK Press. He lives in Oregon with his wife Kimberly, a librarian, and their dog Boomer.

Reviews

[Christopher Blosser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey St. Clair, investigative journalist and editor of CounterPunch (a left-wing mag that specializes in "muckracking with a radical attitude"), provides a hilarious, provocative, irreverent and acerbic post-mortem on the failed campaign of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders (as well as the campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton).

The book consists of Clair's commentary on the campaign itself and culminates in the day-by-day anecdotes and observations of the author in attendance at the Democratic Convention, spelling the end and wholesale implosion of Sander's "revolution" as he capitulated to Clinton and the DNC.

Operating from a staunchly pacifist and liberal perspective, Clair holds Sanders accountable for a number of historical flubs -- examples being the expulsion of anti-war protestors from his office in 1994 (protesting his support of sanctions on Iraq); his twice-fold affirmation of Clinton's bombing of Serbia and general backing of a bloated military budget ("it means jobs for Vermonters") and general support of U.S. military interventionist exploits in Libya and Syria. He likewise chides Bernie for playing it safe during the campaign, refusing out of principle to go negative against the Clintons in 2016 ("masters of gutter politics") or take advantage of his opponents' political record, provided as it did so many opportune targets for criticism.

At the same time, it's patently clear that for his dislike of Sanders, St. Clair dislikes the Clintons even more ("the chief architects of the neoliberal takeover to the Democratic Party"), and thus at once applauds Sanders for the rare moments where he serves as a troublesome foil to the Clinton campaign, while criticizing Sanders for his weakness and eventual surrender:

Revolutions aren't led by well-meaning wimps. Revolutions are about siezing power. They are about righting wrongs. Revolutions demand fierce confrontation ... but Sanders was never interested in a real Revolution.

In addition, St. Clair populates his writing with fascinating historical tidbits about Trump (his bankrolling of Cuomo's campaign for governor, with Cuomo in turn planting the idea in Trump to run for President) and Hillary Clinton. I found one chapter, "Good as Goldman" was particularly insightful in lending detail to the Clinton's relationship with Robert Rubin, co-chair of Goldman in the 90's who in exchange for orchestrating the financial backing of Bill Clinton's campaign by Goldman, Lehman Brothers and Citibank was made Treasury Secretary and went on to oversee the deregulation of credit derivatives and the gutting of the Glass-Steagall.

Those who supported any of the finalists of the 2016 presidential race will likely find St. Clair at times infuriating in his criticisms of the candidates, but they would be hard-pressed to rebut or refute them.

[Zach Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short pamphlet (100 pages) of St. Clair's writing for Counterpunch covering Bernie's primary and up to the DNC. He is highly critical of Bernie, rightfully so most of the time, as a liberal and imperialist (though much softer than the right-wing hawk Clinton) and for not challenging the DNC on primary voting issues (think coin tosses, votes thrown out, etc.), on matters of war and imperialism, and of not *actually* activating his base:

"What might a real movement have done? If Sanders could turn 30,000 people out for a pep rally in Washington Square Park, why couldn’t he have had a flash mob demonstration mustering half that many fervent supporters to shut down Goldman Sachs for a day? If he could lure 20,000 Hipsters to the Rose Garden in Portland, why couldn’t he turn out 10,000 Sandernistas to bolster the picket lines of striking Verizon workers? If Sanders could draw 15,000 people in Austin, Texas, why couldn’t his movement bring 5,000 people to Huntsville to protest executions at the Texas death house? If Sanders could draw 18,000 people to a rally in Las Vegas, why couldn’t he just as easily have lead them in a protest at nearby Creech Air Force Base, the center of operations for US predator drones? Strike that. Sanders supports Obama’s killer drone program. My bad. But you get the point. Instead of being used as stage props, why hasn’t Sanders put his teaming crowds of eager Sandernistas to work doing the things that real movements do: blocking the sale of a foreclosed house in Baltimore, disrupting a fracking site in rural Pennsylvania, shutting down the entrance to the police torture chamber at Homan Square in Chicago for a day, intervening between San Diego cops and the homeless camp they seek to evict? Why? Because that’s not who Bernie Sanders is and that’s not what his movement is about. He’s willing to rock the neoliberal boat, but not sink it.

Ultimately, Bernie Sanders is a loyalist to liberalism. That’s why he voted for Bill Clinton’s racist since 9/11, backed the Libyan intervention and, most crucially, pledged to support Hillary. So let’s dispense with this year of magical thinking and get back to work in the real war against neoliberalism in all its guises."

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

St. Clair knows how to write with wit, humor, go-for-the-gut insight. His notes on the 2016 D. convention were priceless. As a former Sandernista, I enjoyed this immensely and saw how I was lead down a primrose path although I fully well knew Sanders was a Democratic sheepdog.