I said I don’t usually vote for President? Hmmm. I don’t normally vote in primaries, but I normally vote in the general election.
I did indeed contribute money to Sanders, but my opinion has changed over the last year. I like most of his policies, but the man is angry all the time and just yells and yells and yells about the same thing over and over. I just can’t shake this feeling that Sanders is all bluster and is completely ineffectual at building support within government to get what he wants done.
Compromised on legislation? The AUMF is 60 words long. What exactly was his compromise? It authorized the endless war on terror and all the horrible things that came with. And effective legislator?
Let me quote Nader of all people:
Dear Bernie:
This letter is long overdue, but still timely. For years, I have been trying to speak with you, meet with you and discuss dynamic ways to expand progressive activities between citizen groups and your office on the critical issues of corporate power and abuse. So have others. To no avail.
For example, in the past year I have called you many times at your Washington office. Your staff dutifully takes my messages, forwards them to you and you do not call back. Never. During your famous marathon address on the Senate floor in 2010, I called to congratulate you and suggest that your cogent arguments be reproduced in a small book. Your staff took the message to you. No return call.
Back in 2007, we held the most notable conference on corporate power and reforms in the country right in Washington, D.C. You, along with Congressman Kucinich and others, were invited to speak. Your office said you would, assuming the Senate was not conducting a session on Thursday afternoon. The Senate did not have a session and you took off for Vermont leaving a large audience awaiting you without any explanation. I sent you a letter requesting an explanation for not showing up to relay back to the disappointed people who were in attendance. You chose not to reply.
You’ll remember that I met with you before and during your tenure as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. That is how far back we go. I have touted your achievements in events around the country by way of encouraging people in those areas. How to explain your many proposed reforms in the Congress with an inability or unwillingness to network the numerous civic groups here with millions of members around the nation?
The simplest answer is that you are a Lone Ranger, unable even to form a core progressive force within the Senate (eg. Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Elizabeth Warren, etc.). You surely understand that without internal and external networking, there are no strategies to deploy, beyond speechifying, putting forward amendments that go nowhere and an occasional hearing where you incisively question witnesses.
You do communicate in one way – repeatedly, intensely, and expressing alarm. Along with others deemed to be on the right mailing lists, I receive many of your fundraising letters to help Bernie get re-elected. Your letters are full of warnings about the right-wing, corporate interests out to defeat you – a shoo-in for re-election. Quick send a check to ward off the Huns. In the two years before your election, the letters flow with predictable regularity, recounting your record and the perils confronting your election. Once you are comfortably and predictably reelected, Bernie returns to the Lone Ranger mode.
It is comparatively telling to note how closely your Congressional adversaries work with their civic organizations and corporate-funded think tanks right down to daily visits and drafts of legislation and press releases. Think Heritage, Cato and many others.
We do not believe in that level of symbiosis. But having the kind of interactions as occurred when Senators Magnuson, Nelson, Ribicoff, Mondale, and Kennedy were leading the way should not be so routinely dismissed. In those years, our issues were decidedly facing uphill struggles before the intensity of advocacy with staff and Senators gained traction. The restoration of the minimum wage to 1968 levels, adjusted for inflation, ($10.80 per hour) would have achieved greater visibility much earlier were you to interact as Senator Kennedy did years ago. Your inaccessibility is not of recent vintage. From the first weeks of your tenure in the House of Representatives (1991), you appeared aloof – an impression not countered when you refused to take a stand with other Progressive House Democrats against an untimely Congressional pay increase about to be rammed through the House of Representatives.
I am sending this letter to some of our friends in Vermont to see if they have an explanation for your insularity, described above. Clearly, you’re all over Vermont when you go back there frequently. But Vermonters sent you to the Senate to maximize your impact there. The national civic community in the nation’s capital can provide much greater support if they can ever get in regular contact on major agendas with you and your staff.
Sure, you can give instances to the contrary. You’re not a complete loner. But consider the unfilled potential of a Senator with broad ranging corporate reform and enforcement proposals that need an ongoing constituency with chapters and supporters through the country. Day in and day out! At a minimum, they might help you get a sponsor or two for your singlepayer, full Medicare for all legislation, for example.
As the Romans used to say – tempus fugit!
Sincerely Yours, Ralph Nader
