Why the Progressive Machine Is Mobilizing for Elizabeth Warren and Ignoring Bernie Sanders

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

13 January 15

f you want to understand the current state of American politics and why the oligarchy always seems to have an advantage, allow me to make a Civil War comparison: The right is the Confederacy, and the left is the Union. Just as the Confederacy nearly won the Civil War with strategic geniuses like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, the left nearly lost the Civil War due to the strategic incompetence of generals like George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside. Even when McClellan had the Confederacy’s battle plans at Antietam, he still failed to win the battle and wasted the lives of thousands of soldiers. The opposite was true of the Confederacy – even when Stonewall Jackson was outnumbered 60,000 to 17,000, his troops still won the Valley Campaign due to his strategic prowess, gaining 46 miles of ground in 48 days.

Compare the Civil War battles to the political battles of today. The right may have made tactical blunders that cost them temporary campaigns, like how Mitt Romney’s surreptitiously-recorded “47 percent” comment to a roomful of millionaires and billionaires lost him the presidential election, but they still succeed in advancing their strategy. For proof of this, take a moment to read the Powell Memo of 1971, which outlines the corporate strategy to take over universities, the media, and the courts to create a government subservient to big business. Then observe how, over the last 40 years, universities have become eerily similar to corporations, most of the media is owned by a small handful of large corporations, and this current Supreme Court is the most corporate-friendly since World War II.

Tactically, the left is superior. Nobody knows how to harness new technology and build an impressive brand for a candidate to capture the national mood like the professional left. During the New Organizing Institute’s week-long “bootcamp” in Washington D.C. in June and July of 2011, I met the people who designed the rising-sun logo of the 2008 Obama campaign, focus-group tested the “Hope and Change” mantra of that campaign, made waves in online fundraising with sophisticated campaign finance and constituent management services technology, and created the sleek branding of the most innovative presidential campaign in history. They made Barack Obama the first candidate in history to use Twitter in order to find the young audiences that had, until then, been left out of the national political conversation.

However, despite so many smart people and so much smart technology used to elect him, the left failed to use their tactical superiority to devise a winning strategy that would hold President Obama to Candidate Obama’s promises. As the last six years have shown, President Obama is one of the most corporatist presidents in history. Under Obama’s leadership, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have never been higher, corporate profits are skyrocketing to new levels that would make Ronald Reagan giddy, and somehow, working Americans are poorer than they were 26 years ago, with 40 percent less net worth than before the recent Great Recession. All this is to say the professional left has no sense of strategy, or how to keep a movement moving toward higher goals after building it. The progressive machine’s current drive to peer-pressure Elizabeth Warren into running for president in 2016 despite her repeated insistence that she’s not running is more of the same strategic blundering we’ve come to expect.

Here’s why: One beloved populist voice on the left is speaking in presidential primary states, openly calling for a “political revolution” against “the billionaire class,” building an impressive following on social media, drawing large crowds all over the nation, and is expected to announce their would-be presidential campaign this March. Another populist voice has emphatically said they aren’t running in 2016, and asked one persistent interviewer point-blank, “Do I need to put an exclamation point on that?” Guess which one of those voices the progressive machine is pouring out all of their resources for?

Despite Elizabeth Warren’s clear intentions to drive for progressive policy in the U.S. Senate, where she’s kicking ass and making headlines almost daily, the professional left is pouring resources into a “Run Warren Run” effort, getting over 200,000 people to sign a petition asking her to run for president. MoveOn is raising $1 million to put field organizers on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire to build grassroots momentum for a Warren campaign. In the meantime, none of these groups fundraising and organizing are spending a dime on Socialist Bernie Sanders, who is actively trying to build momentum from the left around his potential campaign.

The professional left’s full-throttle campaign to draft Elizabeth Warren is strategically flawed for multiple reasons. It’s very likely Warren will do as she’s said she would do and make a final decision to not run in 2016 – this means all that money and energy spent on building up a pro-Warren movement in Iowa and New Hampshire would have been for nothing, which would be tremendously demoralizing for the left. Simultaneously, all the energy and resources wasted on drafting someone not interested in running could’ve been used to build up excitement and momentum for Bernie Sanders, who won’t run unless he has it. And Bernie Sanders not running would be a huge missed opportunity to unite behind a candidate who is saying what mainstream America is thinking.

Democratic Party-aligned pundits moaned over the 2014 midterms about how nobody showed up for Democrats, and Republican pundits cheered about their new Senate majority, but both missed the larger, more important theme of that election: multiple ballot referendums around the country that signified a widespread, bipartisan outcry for economic justice. San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Deep-red voters in Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all elected Republicans but increased the minimum wage. Illinois elected a Republican governor, but voters approved a nonbinding minimum wage increase. In Democrat-dominated Massachusetts, voters didn’t elect a Democrat governor, but voters still chose to guarantee workers paid sick days. Even voters in Alaska, many of whom likely voted for Sarah Palin several years ago, voted to raise the minimum wage and legalize marijuana.

What the professional left also fails to account for is the growing distrust of the two-party system. The progressive machine’s adherence to supporting only Democratic Party candidates is a strategic error for their continued relevance, as more than half of millennials (ages 18 to 33) affiliate as Independents, not as Democrats or Republicans. As this chart from the Pew Research Center shows, the gap in young people identifying as Independents rose sharply between 2012 and 2014, and that number is expected to rise again leading up to November of 2016. Should an economic justice-minded candidate like Bernie Sanders choose to run in 2016, and do it as an Independent, he could capture the attention of the younger voters who will be the deciders of future elections. And if the progressive machine were smart enough to mobilize for Bernie Sanders, whether he runs as a Democrat or an Independent, they might be surprised at the amount of support an Independent presidential candidate can get, especially if the only other two choices are from political dynasty families that everybody is sick of.

Elizabeth Warren is a fantastic senator and has great ideas for banking and financial reform, but in the end, she’s a policy wonk with little interest for the national spotlight. It was hard enough to get her to run for her Senate seat in Massachusetts, when the only constituency she had to appeal to was a traditionally Democratic-leaning one. It isn’t too late for the professional left to rethink their strategy, get behind Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign, and pull out a huge win.

Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

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