This Is What the Revolution Looks Like: Former Sanders Staffers Are Launching a New PAC Aimed at Midterm Congressional Elections
Political movements have no spirit, no spine, and no heart if they can not persist past a singular defeat.
Real change in this country will require a sustained national mobilization, what I’ve called a counter-Tea Party movement. While their agenda was nihilistic and obstructionist, the Tea Party was a massive success by any measure. And they succeeded because they systematically altered the Congressional landscape. Our system is such that the president, no matter who she is, can accomplish very little legislatively without a majority in Congress.
Currently, the GOP has a 30-seat majority in the House; so long as that’s the case, there is virtually no chance of passing universal health care or a higher minimum wage or sensible financial regulations or even a carbon tax, all of which are central to Sanders’s platform.
Now that it’s clear Sanders won’t be the Democratic nominee, it’s worth asking: What becomes of his “revolution”? Will his supporters remain engaged beyond 2016 or will they retreat from politics altogether? Again, even if Sanders was elected president, he would still face the same systemic constraints as Obama.