Am just finishing a book that fell into my lap, courtesy of my Uncle and Amazon: Jeff Weaver's "How Bernie Won-Inside the Revolution that's taking back our country--and where we go from here."
Weaver, who was Bernie's campaign manager, has written the book in a breezy, journalistic style that takes us step by step through the 2015-2016 Democratic Party presidential primary and convention. The hacked DNC related emails are cited to help fill in what would have been guesses regarding how the process can be fairly said to have been manipulated in various places, and Weaver does a great job in explaining arcane voter registration rules as he discusses primaries and caucuses in each state in which Bernie competed. Weaver reminds us, too, how the corporate media narratives run perceptions, and overwhelm factual analyses that may be more true than the narrative. Weaver further reminds us of two things I think should be takeaways whenever someone tells us "Bernie isn't a Democrat!" as if that is a good-faith argument:
1. Contrary to most mainstream corporate media spin at the time, the Clinton campaign kept most of the money it raised that was supposed to go to State Democratic Parties. Clinton's campaign deal with the DNC netted only $450,000 for State parties out of $61 million raised. Contrast that with Bernie's Our Revolution organization, which has funneled $4.5 million to downstream Democratic Party candidates in federal, state, and local offices. Bernie's primary 2015-2016 campaign monies did primarily go to Bernie, but he was trying to establish name recognition and giving people a series of policy perspectives not normally heard in any coherent way.
2. Weaver also makes the point that Bernie's policies resonated deeply with the base, whether people had enough courage to vote for Bernie or stay with the always putative nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Weaver was also good at calling attention to lies from Clinton surrogates at strategic points in the primary campaign. However, he strangely left out John Lewis' double down lie for what I can only surmise is a hesitancy to criticize a hero of the Civil Rights Movement. My take is Lewis sullied his otherwise well-deserved and honored reputation, and needs to atone for that--which can only come from initial history recording the double down lie. This is particularly important as Weaver crunches the numbers and shows African-American and Latino youth went for Bernie more and more as the campaign progressed, as the word about who Bernie was spread, and how his policies spoke to the combination of identity politics and economic populist politics--not the dichotomy most often favored by corporate Democrats when the issues arise.
Weaver's book re-confirms what many of us understood at the time, which was the youth, across race, gender, and ethnicity, throughout America has chosen the Bernie platform, but the problem remains with youth turnout, which has been a problem since 18 year olds received the right to vote in the early 1970s. As for Baby Boomers and Oldsters, as I said back in 2016 and thereafter, they came out and voted--and gave us Clinton and Trump. Even then, they couldn't even get the choice amongst those two political barkers correct in at least the states that put Trump over the top in the Electoral College.
Weaver appears to be ending the book as to how Bernie's campaign was an educational campaign, and how it truly has begun to change the discourse, much to the chagrin of who the late Gore Vidal called the "owners" of the nation, and the corporate media executives who are part of that "ownership." That is an important development after 70 plus years of corporate media and governmental propaganda against what are policies designed to finish FDR's New Deal.
Weaver's book is an important book for those interested in reforming the election processes throughout our nation, and those who are looking forward to further develop policy issues Bernie raised in his campaign--policies which continue to resonate and grow more popular the more the issues are discussed. One should not read this book with an eye to re-fight the 2016 presidential campaign as much as to demand our election, voting, and primary rules be substantially revised. Reading this book, I find myself starting to revert to my view, from 20 odd years ago, that the Greens, Working Families Party, and Libertarian Party need to unite on election access and primary rule reforms. Third parties tend to lead to one of the two wings of The Property Party prevailing. Four parties...well, that would be interesting as it could lead to a collapse of one of the two wings of what the late Gore Vidal liked to call the singular "Property Party." That is the type of collapse that may be fun. The type of political collapse we are witnessing now is not fun. It is downright scary.
