{"id":1746,"date":"2019-11-20T11:42:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T10:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2019-11-20T18:57:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T17:57:43","slug":"sanders-and-warren-whats-the-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/sanders-and-warren-whats-the-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanders and Warren: What\u2019s the difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

American politics has made a sharp turn to the left in recent years \u2013 a turn that few anticipated, but that underpins much of what is going on in the Democratic primary now underway.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ntwo leading progressive candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth\nWarren, together represent a clear majority of Democratic voters. \nThe party\u2019s \u201cmoderate\u201d wing thought it had a winner in Joe\nBiden, but the implosion of his campaign has led to a search for\nviable alternatives to the two Democratic senators from New England. \nMayor Pete Buttigieg is emerging as the hope of that wing of the\nparty as all the other candidates struggle to show any support in\nrecent polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any\nof the Democratic candidates would be huge improvements over Trump,\nobviously. And of them all, Elizabeth Warren is far and away the\nmost progressive \u2013 except for Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nwhere do they differ? Warren proudly calls herself a capitalist, and\nwas a Republican party supporter until the mid-1990s. Sanders calls\nhimself a democratic socialist, and has been active on the American\nleft since the early 1960\u2019s when he was a member of the Young\nPeople\u2019s Socialist League. Unlike Warren, Sanders speaks the\nlanguage of the socialist left. Speaking to trade unionists in Iowa\nrecently, he said that \u201cif there\u2019s going to be class warfare in\nthis country, it\u2019s about time the working class won that war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\ndifference also expresses itself in policies, where Sanders is\nconsistently somewhat to the left of Warren. This is even true with\na proposal like Medicare for All, where the two candidates seem to be\nreading from the same page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nthe main difference between them is how they see social change\nhappening in America. Warren has detailed plans to fix social\nproblems one by one. Sanders sees a grassroots movement, and in\nparticular a revitalised trade union movement, as central to turning\nhis vision into reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders\nsays that if elected, he\u2019ll play the role of \u201corganiser-in-chief\u201d\nand is counting on mass popular support to pass his radical program\nof change. Warren says nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\nmodels himself somewhat on President Franklin Roosevelt, whose New\nDeal reforms were made possible by the rise of a radicalised labour\nmovement in the 1930s. And he grew up at a time of radical social\nchange in 1960\u2019s, underpinned by the growth of increasingly\nleft-wing civil rights and student movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders\nis especially focussed on strengthening America\u2019s greatly weakened\ntrade union movement. He has pledged to double the membership of\nunions during his first term in office. While other Democratic\ncandidates have made similar pledges in the past \u2013 especially to\nreform labour law to allow unions to organise and grow \u2013 they have\nnot followed through once elected. Sanders understands that there\nwill be no real change in the country without massively stronger\ntrade unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwould be best for American workers if Sanders is the Democratic\nnominee in 2020. But right now, he\u2019s in a tough fight to win that\nnomination. In most polls, Warren is ahead of him. If she wins the\nnomination, Sanders has already pledged to support her (or any other\nDemocrat running against Trump). \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not\nall Sanders\u2019 supporters share his view. Three months ago,\nDemocratic Socialists of America (DSA) voted at its national\nconvention in Atlanta for a \u201cBernie or Bust\u201d resolution \u2013\nsaying that if Sanders was not the party\u2019s nominee in 2020, they\nwould not officially support anyone, not even Elizabeth Warren. \nOthers, socialists among them, disagree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether Sanders is the nominee or Warren, the Democrats will likely embrace the most radical platform any American political party has proposed since the 1930s. But of those two candidates, it is Sanders who best understands what it takes to turn such a platform into reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity. American politics has made a sharp turn to the left in recent years \u2013 a turn that few anticipated, but that underpins much of what is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}