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On July 26, 2016, after a tense day at a Democratic Convention scarred by fratricidal primaries, leftist Senator Bernie Sanders proclaimed from the pulpit: "Hillary Clinton must become the next President of the United States." The revolution admitted its defeat, but it was such a narrow defeat, after the consolidation of such a powerful movement, that many understood that this was not a farewell. And it wasn't.
This Monday, four years later, in a very different world, Bernie Sanders returns to the Democratic Convention with another loss in his backpack. But this time, it does sound like goodbye. At least, for a candidate who would reach the next presidential elections at the age of 82 and who suffered a heart attack during the campaign of the last primaries. But what about the movement? After all, although the candidate's tousled hair and glasses graced the shirts and stickers, it was never just one person. "Not me, we," read the slogan of the last campaign.
After a promising start that made one dream that three years of Donald Trump had convinced the electorate of the inevitability of the "democratic revolution", the leftist sector of the party, this time divided between two candidacies, that of Sanders himself and that of Elizabeth Warren lost again to the moderate sector. The Democratic presidential candidate is Joe Biden, the candidate who best represented, with the permission of Michael Bloomberg, all that Sandernism stood up against.
The left had awarded itself a consolation prize, which it has been savoring for three and a half years. They had lost the war of power, but they had won the battle of ideas. How Bernie Won, read the title of the book he wrote after the defeat of Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign boss in 2016. And it was true. The center of gravity of the ideological debate in these primaries was more to the left than four years ago.
Once Sanders was out of the race, Biden himself involved his former rival and his team in a series of working groups that were to shape the party's position on some of the main issues. But when push comes to shove, it is hard to speak of an ideological victory when the Democratic program does not even include the central idea of the Sanders project, often supported in polls by a majority of the electorate: that of a universal and free public health . And that, in the midst of an unprecedented national health emergency. “I am a Biden delegate and will vote for him, but I have voted against the program. I cannot vote for a program that does not support universal healthcare when 27 million people have lost their employment-related health insurance in this crisis. It is a moral imperative, ”defended former Georgia State Senator Vincent Fort on Twitter.
The specter that one in four Sanders supporters did not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 haunts the Democratic establishment , and mobilizing the leftist electorate on this occasion is imperative. Conventions traditionally serve to bring a party together after the primary season. But in a virtual convention, without bleachers, without banners, without corridors, it will be more difficult to see to what extent the wounds have closed.
If social networks are the new corridors, the first bars of the convention do not seem to have satisfied the leftist sector. Protests abounded Monday over the excessive space the organization has reserved for Republican speakers willing to air their frustration with Trump. "One more Republican speaker and they will have as much representation as Latinos in the Convention," complained on Twitter Briahna Joy Gray, who was the national press secretary for Sanders' last campaign.
“We want every segment of the country that supports Biden and Harris to have a choice in explaining their motives, including Republicans. There are silent Biden voters, Republicans who feel abandoned by Trump, and we want them to understand us, ”justified Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond on Monday, in a conversation on Zoom with journalists. A sign that the priority fishing grounds for fishing votes for Biden and Harris may be more to starboard than to port.
Despite their ideological differences, Sanders and Biden have a strong friendship relationship built over decades. And the confidence of the senator from Vermont in the candidate is greater than that aroused in the Sanderista bases. After leaving the presidential race last April, Sanders took steps to try to prevent a rebellion by his followers like the one that was seen four years ago against Hillary Clinton. The senator's campaign, according to The Washington Post, asked some of his faithful to sign agreements in which they promised not to attack other candidates or the party apparatus, and to avoid spectacular confrontations on social networks.
Four years ago, when Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, the general feeling was that he did so reluctantly. He accused the party establishment of rigging the race, fueling a fury among his followers that poisoned the convention, and opened a rift between the two factions of the party that remains unclosed four years and another primary process later. But Biden doesn't want to say goodbye from the trench. "Right now, what we need is to embrace coalition politics with the goal of defeating Trump," he said in a recent teleconference with his delegates.
The conviction prevails in the party apparatus that Sanders' message that the top priority is to prevent a second term for Trump, which would harm the cause of the left far more than any Democratic administration, will permeate. That, they trust, will be enough to mobilize the leftist sector. A sector that, after two defeats and the farewell of its iconic leader, will need time to rebuild the cast and the message. The primary season, with sounded progressive victories that add to the revalidations of the batch of congressmen who arrived in the Lower House in 2018, politically trained in sandernism, such as the popular Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, offers arguments for those who want to keep the flame lit by the veteran senator.