Is Sanders stupid or simply a coward?

Sandy Levinson

As readers of my previous posts are well aware, I am extremely critical of Senator Sanders for his abject refusal even to suggest that anyone defining him/herself as a "political revolutionary" might do what, say, Hamilton Madiaon, and Jay did when they denounced the existing constitutional order (of the Articles of Confederation) as "imbecilic" and suggested its replacement by something they saw as far better.  His notion of a "political revolution" is remarkably undeveloped, to put it mildly.

His unwillingness to engage in any such analysis is especially noticeable given his ever increasing propensity to whine about the particular rules of the Democratic Party--to which his own loyalty is minimal, incidentally--and the ostensible ways they have hindered his candidacy.  As Mark Graber notes in his own excellent post, Sen. Sanders seems to believe that non-Democrats should play a key role in selecting the nominee of the party.  There is something to be said for "open primaries," but there is also surely something to be said against them.  There is a genuine debate to be had about the extent to which parties should be viewed as membership organizations entitled to make their own choices as to whom they wish to represent them as candidates, subject to limitations on, say, racial discrimination.  But Mark is surely correct that there would be something odd if non-Catholics demanded a right to participate in electing the next Pope, and so on.  But, obviously, Sanders is not leading a genuinely serious debate, which might require at least a modicum of disinterestedness.

Sanders, alas, has revealed himself as incapable of leading a serious discussion about truly necessary structural reform in this country.  I genuinely regret this, as I have admired (and contributed to) Senator Sanders and believed that his candidacy was in fact very good for the country.

Even if Sen. Sanders is from Brooklyn, he is behaving exactly like the Vermont Senator he is, inasmuch as he seems almost totally oblivious to the actual number of voters supporting Secretary Clinton as against himself and prefers to treat all states as equal, so that we are asked to treat his triumph in Wyoming as the equal of her win in Ohio.  Only someone unconcerned by the indefensible allocation of voting power in the Senate could possibly believe any such thing.

To answer my own question, I do not believe that the University of Chicago-educated Senator is stupid.  Perhaps, though, it's too easy to denounce him simply as a coward.  Maybe he remains enough of a classic Marxist so that he views political institutions as merely epiphenomenal relative to what's really important, which is class struggle.  But he seems to believe that rules and institutions matter with regard to the Democratic Party.  If that's the case, then why can't he accept the fact that the same is even more true at the national level?

If he in fact refuses to get solidly behind Secretary Clinton and help her defeat the fascist and incompetent Donald Trump, then he should roast in hell.  But, frankly, I will be only somewhat mollified if he does the right thing re Clinton and Trump, given that he still will have blown the opportunity of a lifetime to initiate a long-overdue discussion of the degree to which our present constitutional order, as designed in 1787, is indeed imbecilic and very much in need of examination and change.
Posted 1:32 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]