They finally have one of their own running for president, but America’s small band of socialists are not exactly united in backing Sen. Bernie Sanders’ underdog campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Many on the far left say they are thrilled by the Vermont senator’s entry into the race, happy to see socialist issues getting attention in the national debate. But others see his candidacy — and his pledge to support the eventual Democratic nominee — as a betrayal of the socialist movement.
While the mainstream media debate whether America would ever elect a socialist as president, the debate on the left has been over whether Mr. Sanders should be considered a socialist in the first place.
Mr. Sanders, wrote leftist New York activist and Green Party leader Howie Hawkins recently, “is no Eugene Debs” — the last avowed socialist to make a serious run for the White House with five campaigns between 1900 and 1920.
The Democratic Socialists of America is one group that approves of Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, even endorsing his decision to run as a Democrat after so many years serving in the Senate as an independent.
“By running in the Democratic primaries, [Mr. Sanders] will challenge the dominant discourse of neoliberal Democrats that privilege corporate business interests over those of all working people,” the group said in a statement.
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But in the famously splintered politics of the far left, that’s not the universal view.
Joseph Kishore, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, said bluntly that Mr. Sanders is “not a socialist in our view.”
Mr. Sanders is “basically a Democrat and that’s reflected by his decision to run as one,” Mr. Kishore said in a phone interview. ” … His nominal independence is something of a political fraud.”
Mr. Hawkins accused Mr. Sanders of “violating the first principle of socialist politics: class independence.”
“Bernie Sanders’ entry into the Democratic presidential primaries should be seen as his final decisive step away from the democratic socialism he professes to support,” Mr. Hawkins said. “He will raise some progressive demands in the primaries and then endorses the corporate Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Nothing changes.”
Gloria Mattera, a self-described socialists and co-chair of the Green Party of Brooklyn, said at a forum of leftist leaders in New York recently that “we should not be harsh towards the people or organizations that get involved in the Sanders campaign,” but that real socialists should not be distracted from the work of building a real leftist political movement by his candidacy.
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Warning that most of Mr. Sanders’ current supporters will eventually back “warmonger and 1 percenter” Hillary Clinton, Ms. Mattera noted, “Sanders has been silent on the increasing police violence against black and brown young men and women. In my opinion, no leftist who stands in solidarity with Palestine can make excuses for Sanders’ foreign policy positions.”
For his part, Mr. Sanders has long embraced the “socialist” label and has said he is not running away from the tag despite his long alliance with Senate Democrats and his decision now to seek the party’s nomination.
“Do you hear me cringing?” he said in an interview last year when asked if accepted the label “democratic socialist.” “Do you hear me running under the table?”
• Andrew Nachemson can be reached at anachemson@washingtontimes.com.
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