The senator says in this exclusive interview that challengers to status quo politics can run in Democratic primaries or as independents.

Bernie Sanders caused a stir last week, when the independent senator from Vermont and two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination sent a post-election email to his progressive supporters across the country. In it, he argued that the Democrats suffered politically in 2024 at least in part because they ran a campaign that focused on “protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges.”

In contrast, said Sanders, “Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.” Yes, he explained, “the ‘change’ that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.”

Despite that the reality of the threat they posed, Trump and the Republicans still won a narrow popular-vote victory for the presidency, along with control of the US House. That result has inspired an intense debate over the future direction not just of the Democratic Party but of the country. And the senator from Vermont is in the thick of it.

In his email, Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus who campaigned in states across the country this fall for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket, asked a blunt question: “Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life?”

His answer: “Highly unlikely. They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.”

  • minnow@lemmy.world
    4·
    19 days ago

    at least on a federal level

    The FPTP spoiler effect isn’t going away any time soon.

    You are 100% spot on. What we need are progressive candidates on the local level, were voting rules are determined, to push Rank Choice Voting. The Two Party System is a result of FPTP voting; take that away and implement RCV and the Two Party System will begin to crumble naturally.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      18 days ago

      The Two Party System is a result of FPTP voting; take that away and implement RCV and the Two Party System will begin to crumble naturally.

      I agree that FPTP systematically promotes a two-party system and ranked choice voting enables it to me more easily removed, but I would point out that it’s not an automatic inevitability that RCV will . Australia, for example, has had RCV (IRV) since 1918:

      The preferential system was introduced for federal elections in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party was seen to have split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative federal government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk.

      Yet I would classify Australia as effectively a two party system for many of its decades (if we treat the Coalition as a single party), with 90%+ of votes going to one of two parties, until the past few decades.

      I want to emphasize I’m not disagreeing, because one could characterize this recent change as it naturally crumbling, albeit with factors causing it to only really catalyze recently: [quote re: 2022 federal election]

      Australia is unusual in electing independents at all, let alone in large numbers. There are more independents elected to the Australian House of Representatives than elected to the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand Parliaments put together. The recent growth in minor party and independent representation is just the latest example in a long history of power sharing in Australian parliaments.