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Jacobin #38
After Bernie
PARTY LINES
MEAGAN DAY
We Won’t Forget the Questions Bernie Asked
What will decide the fate of neoliberalism today is not the extent of the economic damage the virus wreaks — it is the extent to which the virus transforms popular expectations.
Illustration by Daniel Haskett
THE SOAPBOX
Letters & Internet Speaks
Send us your deepest thoughts — we’ll try to publish them.
STRUGGLE SESSION
BRIAHNA JOY GRAY, ARI RABIN-HAVT, DAVID SIROTA, AND JEFF WEAVER
The Oral History of the Bernie Campaign
Four key figures in Bernie Sanders’s quest for the White House on what really happened.
MEANS OF DEDUCTION
Numbers Don’t Lie
VULGAR EMPIRICIST
The Social Democracy Index
We looked at the best polling from the 2020 primary season. Turns out, you can spot a Bernie Sanders supporter not just by their age, but by their support for social-democratic policies.
UNEVEN & COMBINED
How We Lost Michigan
In 2016, Bernie won a major upset in Michigan, thanks in part to a groundswell of support in the state’s rural areas. In 2020, he lost every county in the state — and the numbers show he lost many of his rural supporters, too.
READING MATERIEL
Take a Look, It’s in a Book
CANON FODDER
ANTON JÄGER & DOMINIK LEUSDER
The Prophet of Inequality
Whatever its shortcomings, Thomas Piketty’s latest book, Capital and Ideology, is a serious attempt to map our social world without resorting to easy abstractions.
FIELD NOTES
The Enemy Within
Leaked messages from Labour Party staff littered with casual racism and sexism show that they worked against Jeremy Corbyn and wanted to keep the Tories in power.
CANON FODDER
HANNAH PROCTOR
Reading Victor Serge from the Depths of Defeat
Despite isolation, political defeat, and incalculable grief, the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge persisted in writing in collective rather than personal terms.
Bernie Sanders’s Five-Year War
FEATURE
MATT KARP
How he lost and where we go from here.
The Two Paths of Democratic Socialism: Coalition and Confrontation
FEATURE
JARED ABBOTT
After Bernie Sanders, democratic socialists in America face a vital strategic dilemma. Do we go the Justice Democrats route of winning gains by being the junior partner in a progressive coalition, or do we take a gamble on more independent class organization and struggle?
How the Labour Party Lost the Chance of a Lifetime
FEATURE
RONAN BURTENSHAW
Corbynism had a popular program — but not the popular insurgency it needed to fight for it.
Illustration by Harry Haysom
CULTURAL CAPITAL
Capitalist Realism
BASS & SUPERSTRUCTURE
ALEX NIVEN
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Britpop is often dismissed as an embarrassing, retrograde moment in British culture. But at its best, it hinted at what might have happened if the working class had managed to regain its sense of power and pride after the defeats of the 1980s.
WAYS OF SEEING
PHOEBE BRAITHWAITE
Mark Fisher’s Popular Modernism
It’s been three years since we lost Mark Fisher, but his vision of a socialist future endures.
BEYOND A BOUNDARY
DANIEL FINN
Where Have All the Political Footballers Gone?
“Football gives meaning to life, yes. But life also gives meaning to football.”
Illustration by Charlie Le Maignan
THE TUMBREL
Still Roasting Liberals
GIRONDINS
DAVID SIROTA
Did Americans Want a Political Revolution?
Joe Biden told us there was an easy path. Reality will soon catch up to that fantasy.
WORST ESTATE
DAVID BRODER
We Don’t Live in Weimar Germany
Liberals say that socialists who don’t support Joe Biden are “like the German Communists who refused to fight Hitler.” The analogy doesn’t hold up — and it’s also historically illiterate.
LEFTOVERS
The Struggle Continues
POPULAR FRONT
MARILYN ARWOOD
We Knocked on a Million Doors for 45,000 Votes
I helped organize Bernie Sanders’s canvassing efforts in Iowa, and I learned that we can knock on as many doors as we want, but to make lasting change, we need to think beyond election day.
POPULAR FRONT
CEDRIC JOHNSON
Let’s Talk About South Carolina
Bernie Sanders didn’t lose because of the “black vote,” but winning places like South Carolina is crucial to building a left majority.
MEANS & ENDS
SETH ACKERMAN
The Victory to Come
Bernie critics seem to think they dodged a bullet. They haven’t — the bullet is still on its way.
MEAGAN DAY
We Won’t Forget the Questions Bernie Asked
What will decide the fate of neoliberalism today is not the extent of the economic damage the virus wreaks — it is the extent to which the virus transforms popular expectations.
Illustration by Daniel Haskett
THE SOAPBOX
Letters & Internet Speaks
Send us your deepest thoughts — we’ll try to publish them.
STRUGGLE SESSION
BRIAHNA JOY GRAY, ARI RABIN-HAVT, DAVID SIROTA, AND JEFF WEAVER
The Oral History of the Bernie Campaign
Four key figures in Bernie Sanders’s quest for the White House on what really happened.
MEANS OF DEDUCTION
Numbers Don’t Lie
VULGAR EMPIRICIST
The Social Democracy Index
We looked at the best polling from the 2020 primary season. Turns out, you can spot a Bernie Sanders supporter not just by their age, but by their support for social-democratic policies.
UNEVEN & COMBINED
How We Lost Michigan
In 2016, Bernie won a major upset in Michigan, thanks in part to a groundswell of support in the state’s rural areas. In 2020, he lost every county in the state — and the numbers show he lost many of his rural supporters, too.
READING MATERIEL
Take a Look, It’s in a Book
CANON FODDER
ANTON JÄGER & DOMINIK LEUSDER
The Prophet of Inequality
Whatever its shortcomings, Thomas Piketty’s latest book, Capital and Ideology, is a serious attempt to map our social world without resorting to easy abstractions.
FIELD NOTES
The Enemy Within
Leaked messages from Labour Party staff littered with casual racism and sexism show that they worked against Jeremy Corbyn and wanted to keep the Tories in power.
CANON FODDER
HANNAH PROCTOR
Reading Victor Serge from the Depths of Defeat
Despite isolation, political defeat, and incalculable grief, the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge persisted in writing in collective rather than personal terms.
Bernie Sanders’s Five-Year War
FEATURE
MATT KARP
How he lost and where we go from here.
The Two Paths of Democratic Socialism: Coalition and Confrontation
FEATURE
JARED ABBOTT
After Bernie Sanders, democratic socialists in America face a vital strategic dilemma. Do we go the Justice Democrats route of winning gains by being the junior partner in a progressive coalition, or do we take a gamble on more independent class organization and struggle?
How the Labour Party Lost the Chance of a Lifetime
FEATURE
RONAN BURTENSHAW
Corbynism had a popular program — but not the popular insurgency it needed to fight for it.
Illustration by Harry Haysom
CULTURAL CAPITAL
Capitalist Realism
BASS & SUPERSTRUCTURE
ALEX NIVEN
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Britpop is often dismissed as an embarrassing, retrograde moment in British culture. But at its best, it hinted at what might have happened if the working class had managed to regain its sense of power and pride after the defeats of the 1980s.
WAYS OF SEEING
PHOEBE BRAITHWAITE
Mark Fisher’s Popular Modernism
It’s been three years since we lost Mark Fisher, but his vision of a socialist future endures.
BEYOND A BOUNDARY
DANIEL FINN
Where Have All the Political Footballers Gone?
“Football gives meaning to life, yes. But life also gives meaning to football.”
Illustration by Charlie Le Maignan
THE TUMBREL
Still Roasting Liberals
GIRONDINS
DAVID SIROTA
Did Americans Want a Political Revolution?
Joe Biden told us there was an easy path. Reality will soon catch up to that fantasy.
WORST ESTATE
DAVID BRODER
We Don’t Live in Weimar Germany
Liberals say that socialists who don’t support Joe Biden are “like the German Communists who refused to fight Hitler.” The analogy doesn’t hold up — and it’s also historically illiterate.
LEFTOVERS
The Struggle Continues
POPULAR FRONT
MARILYN ARWOOD
We Knocked on a Million Doors for 45,000 Votes
I helped organize Bernie Sanders’s canvassing efforts in Iowa, and I learned that we can knock on as many doors as we want, but to make lasting change, we need to think beyond election day.
POPULAR FRONT
CEDRIC JOHNSON
Let’s Talk About South Carolina
Bernie Sanders didn’t lose because of the “black vote,” but winning places like South Carolina is crucial to building a left majority.
MEANS & ENDS
SETH ACKERMAN
The Victory to Come
Bernie critics seem to think they dodged a bullet. They haven’t — the bullet is still on its way.
136 pages, Unknown Binding
First published August 1, 2020
23 people want to read
About the author
Jacobin
68 books129 followersJacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. The print magazine is released quarterly and reaches over 10,000 subscribers, in addition to a web audience of 600,000 a month.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 26, 2023
Bernie had the nomination both times until DNC people meddled and threw their weight behind moderate candidates. He crushed in Iowa, NH and Nevada. He was the choice of Latinos and young people by huge margins. The party missed the chance of the century. Instead we got Hillary and her awful campaign and three Supreme Court justices- ladies, how do you like that choice now? We then got old man Biden who most likely will snatch defeat from victory in 2024. Both voted for the Iraq war and neither has passed much of anything to help regular people.
November 9, 2020
"After half a decade of Bernie Sanders, the genie doesn't go back in the bottle."
This was a great edition. I'm still relatively new to Jacobin, but in general I'm impressed with the quality of the writing and the thought that goes into them, especially this particular issue. There a lot of people who were in various degrees within the Bernie Sanders orbit asking what comes next and what do we do now. The answer of course, is to mobilize more, prepare better, and continue coming at Dems and the GOP from the Left. Sure we can make alliances with Dems, when it suits us, but we're just using them in those cases to get something.
"The major achievement of Bernie's five-year war, then is an invigorated and a clarified movement for American democratic socialism - newly optimistic about the appeal of it's platform, yet intimately aware of the power of it's enemies. Sanders has left the Left in a stronger position than he found it, both larger and more self-aware, and far less tempted by either the futility of third-party campaigns or the saccharine cheerleading of party-approved "progressives."
I'm not sure about whether I agree with that statement when it comes to third parties. I think challenging the Dems on the Left would be incredible. I think Sanders, AOC, and a handful of others should break away today and formally either join the Green Party or form their own party. It would devastate the Dems and be the death of the two party system we've wanted for a long time. Have them move left on policies in order to get the Progressive block's vote, or lose.
"If Bernie Sanders was not fated to be the Abraham Lincoln of the twenty-first century left, winning a political revolution under his own banner, he may well have been our John Quincy Adams - the "Old Man Eloquent" whose passionate broadsides against the Slave Power in the 1830s and 1840s inspired the radicals who toppled it a generation later."
"In every contested primary, progressives will inevitably face Joe Bidens - corporate backed moderates who reassure use that there is no need for a slog, who tell us a fantastical and inspiring tale about how we can fix the country through half measures, bipartisan-ship, and polite requests for national unity."
This was a great edition. I'm still relatively new to Jacobin, but in general I'm impressed with the quality of the writing and the thought that goes into them, especially this particular issue. There a lot of people who were in various degrees within the Bernie Sanders orbit asking what comes next and what do we do now. The answer of course, is to mobilize more, prepare better, and continue coming at Dems and the GOP from the Left. Sure we can make alliances with Dems, when it suits us, but we're just using them in those cases to get something.
"The major achievement of Bernie's five-year war, then is an invigorated and a clarified movement for American democratic socialism - newly optimistic about the appeal of it's platform, yet intimately aware of the power of it's enemies. Sanders has left the Left in a stronger position than he found it, both larger and more self-aware, and far less tempted by either the futility of third-party campaigns or the saccharine cheerleading of party-approved "progressives."
I'm not sure about whether I agree with that statement when it comes to third parties. I think challenging the Dems on the Left would be incredible. I think Sanders, AOC, and a handful of others should break away today and formally either join the Green Party or form their own party. It would devastate the Dems and be the death of the two party system we've wanted for a long time. Have them move left on policies in order to get the Progressive block's vote, or lose.
"If Bernie Sanders was not fated to be the Abraham Lincoln of the twenty-first century left, winning a political revolution under his own banner, he may well have been our John Quincy Adams - the "Old Man Eloquent" whose passionate broadsides against the Slave Power in the 1830s and 1840s inspired the radicals who toppled it a generation later."
"In every contested primary, progressives will inevitably face Joe Bidens - corporate backed moderates who reassure use that there is no need for a slog, who tell us a fantastical and inspiring tale about how we can fix the country through half measures, bipartisan-ship, and polite requests for national unity."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews