Being Like Bernie (Page 3)

But Sanders makes no apologies for refusing to be a party man. Yes, of course, he'd like the Democratic Party to be more progressive and for third parties to develop the capacity to pull the political process to the left. But Sanders is not going to wait for the right political moment to arrive. What he's done is create a model for how an individual candidate can push beyond the narrow boundaries of contemporary politics and connect with voters in the same sense that Progressives and Populists of a century ago--operating within the shells of the Democratic and Republican parties and sometimes outside them--did so successfully.

This willingness to play with whatever political cards he is dealt has made Sanders an unexpectedly effective Congressman. In June he successfully forged a left-right coalition in the House to deal the Bush Administration a significant setback--attaching an amendment to a Justice Department appropriations bill that zeroed out funding for the use of the Patriot Act to spy on library and bookstore records. The vote, which saw most Democrats and dozens of conservative Republicans break with the White House, inspired a rare threat by George W. Bush to veto the entire appropriations bill. A few weeks later, when the House voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, rules committee Republicans blocked a Sanders amendment on the issue from coming to a vote--knowing that it would pass--but a bipartisan group of senators may yet attach it to the act.

It is not only on civil liberties that Sanders is a master at forging unlikely coalitions. Right-wingers like North Carolina Republican Walter Jones are regular Sanders allies on issues as diverse as trade policy, foreign investment and, recently, setting a timetable for getting US troops out of Iraq. "I suppose some people think it's strange that I work so well with a liberal," Jones said on a recent afternoon, wrapping his arm around Sanders's shoulders as the two men shared a seat on the underground train that connects the Rayburn Office Building with the Capitol. (Informed that Sanders identifies himself as a "socialist," Jones smiled. "I know. I was trying to be polite.") "You can disagree with someone 98 percent of the time, but if you can find the 2 percent where you agree and get together, that's what matters," Jones explained. "Bernie understands that better than some of the Democrats do."

Sanders says that if he makes it to the Senate he'll continue building unlikely alliances. "In the sense that we are trying to develop left-right coalitions, we are also trying to redefine American politics," Sanders declares. "You have the trade issue, which is very, very important to people who are worried about losing their jobs. You have healthcare issues, which are very important. You have war and peace issues, economic priority issues, which are very important when we talk about how this country is going to pay for all our domestic needs. And on those issues you can bring together coalitions that redefine the 'normal' paradigm that a lot of the corporate media create when they talk about liberal and conservative."

The extent to which Sanders has redefined the paradigm in Vermont has emerged as a fundamental factor in the Senate race. Democrats have essentially backed off the race; Sanders's old nemesis, former Governor Howard Dean, now the Democratic National Committee chair, says, "A victory for Bernie Sanders is a win for Democrats," while most of the party's prominent players in the state have endorsed him. The party line on the November 2006 ballot is unlikely to be filled by anyone but a nuisance candidate and might even go blank. Republicans have been struggling to identify a top-tier candidate since Governor Jim Douglas, a moderate who was courted by the White House, stood down. They'll have a nominee, however, perhaps conservative Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie or millionaire businessman Richard Tarrant, and the Republican candidate will have all the money he needs to mount a serious challenge to Sanders.

That campaign will be nasty and personal; already Republicans have tried, without much success, to stir up a controversy about the fact that Sanders's House re-election committee paid the candidate's wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, a veteran activist and political consultant, to help run his campaigns. At least, Sanders notes, his status as the country's best-known "out" socialist means "it'll be hard to redbait me." To counter the GOP attacks that do come, Sanders expects he'll have to raise $5 million--after years in which "the most money I have ever raised in an election is $800,000 or $900,000." Sanders says most of that money will be used not for television ads but for grassroots organizing.

Sanders will offer no gimmicks, no easy answers or quick fixes--just an unyielding faith that people want to talk about the issues that matter in their lives. "Maybe that's the lesson of Bernie," says Margrete Strand, who saw Sanders in action years ago. "He doesn't worry so much about winning one election. He's in it for the long haul, because that's how you build the awareness and the trust that allows you to get beyond the spin and talk to people about the real issues in their lives. I don't know if the Democrats have the patience to do that. But if they want to get through to the people they need to reach, they should be paying attention."

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