FOCUS: Bernie Sanders' Quiet Triumph in the 2016 Race

By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone

13 July 16

Sanders didn't win the nomination, but he won the argument, shaping key Clinton policies and the future of the party

n Tuesday morning, Bernie Sanders finally endorsed Hillary Clinton, giving nervous Democrats — dreading that a fractured party could fumble away the White House to Donald Trump — the "Kumbaya moment" they'd been pining for.

Sanders' endorsement of his establishment rival marks the end of his implausible, meteoric campaign for president. But it should also mark a victory for his brand of democratic socialism. Sanders didn't secure the nomination, but he has left an indelible mark on Hillary Clinton's governing agenda, and he has reshaped the Democratic Party platform, likely for elections to come.

Sanders' endorsement of Clinton comes on the heels of two major policy concessions by the Democratic nominee. Lost amid the bloodshed last week of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the massacred Dallas police officers, Clinton embraced the core of Sanders' education plan and also took a major step toward his agenda on health care.

Eager to bring Sanders' young supporters into her fold, Clinton has adopted free-college-for-(almost)-all. Clinton had previously proposed complex policies to minimize student debt, and had blasted Sanders' free-college plans for spending public money to educate children of the wealthy — including (hypothetically) the children of Donald Trump.

The new Clinton spin on the Sanders education plan would extend free public-college tuition to households earning up to $125,000 a year — or to more than 80 percent of American families. The Clinton plan would phase in, beginning with families making $85,000 or less, and ramping up to the $125,000 threshold by 2021. Placing this shift by Clinton in the context of his "political revolution," Sanders praised Clinton for a "revolutionary step forward" — a "very bold" plan that, he said, "combines some of the strongest ideas she fought for during the campaign with some of the principles that I fought for."

On health care, Clinton took significant, but more modest, steps toward Sanders' dream of a national health plan. Clinton proposed allowing Americans over the age of 55 to buy into Medicare, the federal health care program for seniors, which provides health coverage at a steep discount to private insurance. In essence, this proposal would create a "public option" for Americans nearing retirement. In addition, Clinton revived her 2008 commitment to fight for a state-run public-option insurance plan for Americans regardless of age in each Obamacare exchange. Further, Clinton vowed to devote another $40 billion to a nationwide expansion of community health centers — offering primary care regardless of a patient's ability to pay, including to millions of farmworkers, public housing residents and Americans experiencing homelessness.

On these health care issues, Sanders saluted Clinton for amping up the boldness of her familiar, incrementalist approach: "These steps will get us closer to the day when everyone in America has access to quality, affordable health care," he said.

These ambitious education and health care proposals are now grafted into Hillary Clinton's governing agenda — deepening the imprint of a Sanders candidacy that had previously pushed Clinton into opposing both the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership she once touted as the "gold standard" of free-trade agreements.

The fact that Clinton was forced to tack to the left on key issues at the close of the Democratic primary contest underscores the enduring grassroots power of the Sanders political coalition. That Clinton is able to move left in the context of the general election (when Democrats usually pivot to the right) speaks volumes to Donald Trump's indifference to policy. There are peculiar advantages to squaring off against a nativist strongman campaigning on a cult of personality and a platform of bigotry rather than a coherent right-wing policy agenda.

Sanders' quiet triumph extends beyond the policy proposals Hillary Clinton is now promising to enact as president. The Democratic Party's national platform — a statement of values and vision more than a governing agenda — now reads like it was cribbed from Sanders' campaign website.

The platform, enacted with the participation of Sanders' delegates, calls for legal marijuana and a $15-an-hour minimum wage. To reform Wall Street, it demands the breakup of too-big-to-fail banks and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, separating high-risk investment banking from traditional commercial banking. On criminal-justice reform, it calls for the abolition of the death penalty, an end to private prisons and for routine Justice Department reviews of police shootings. On climate, the platform exhorts Congress to place a price on carbon and methane pollution, to weigh climate in all policy decisions and to invest heavily in wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

With these ideals now spelled out in black and white, the Democratic platform reinforces a line Sanders used frequently in his stump speech: "Our vision of economic, social, racial and environmental justice is the future of America," he would say, "and the future of the Democratic Party."

Rather than claim victory for revolutionizing the platform, Sanders has deflected the credit to his supporters. "We have made enormous strides," Sanders said last week. "Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process — many for the first time — we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party."

The Democrats Ignore the 500-Pound Lobbyist in the Room

By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company

13 July 16

As party members meet to approve a new platform, they pay little attention to the industry that's destroying government and politics.

n all of the 35 single-spaced pages of the Democratic Party’s platform draft, there is just one mention of lobbying.

One.

Oh, it says some fine uplifting things about voters lacking a proper voice in government, about money and politics and the need to overturn Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo, two of the Supreme Court decisions that unleashed a deluge of dollars into our electoral system.

“Democrats believe we must fight to preserve the essence of the longest standing democracy in the world: a government that represents the American people, not just a handful of powerful and wealthy special interests,” the draft reads. “We will fight for real campaign-finance reform now. Big money is drowning out the voices of everyday Americans, and we must have the necessary tools to fight back and safeguard our electoral and political integrity.”

But the word “lobbying” is only in there once. And that’s in reference to regulating our financial system. “We will crack down on the revolving door between the private sector — particularly Wall Street — and the federal government,” it says in the draft. “… And we will bar financial-service regulators from lobbying their former colleagues for at least two years.”

All fine and dandy, and sure, language may change as the committee meets in Orlando this weekend to approve a final draft that will be sent to the convention later this month. But so far, there’s zero about the billions of dollars spent to lobby Congress, the White House and the other federal regulatory agencies — $3.22 billion last year alone.

Nothing about how lobbyists bundle masses of cash for candidates and bankroll lavish lunches and soirees at the party conventions. Nothing about the thousands employed along K Street to woo politicians and government officials on behalf of their fat-cat clients. Nothing about the trickle down of the lobby industry from DC into our states, counties and municipalities. Just the other day, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that since 2002, lobbyists in Minnesota alone have spent nearly $800 million buying influence: “The amount spent per year has doubled, and the number of new lobbying clients seeking to make themselves heard has tripled.”

Funny kind of democracy where you have to shell out big bucks to get any attention paid, emphasis on the “paid.” It reminds me of my late friend, humorist Henry Morgan, who used to say that the word democracy was derived from the Greek — demos, meaning “people,” and cracy, meaning “crazy.”

But the Democrats’ failure to sound the alarm on lobbying isn’t surprising, really. No one in either of the two party establishments wants to upset the cart that delivers all them golden apples. Besides, as journalist Thomas Frank writes, Washington and the lobbyists that the city nurtures have bonded as “a community – a community of corruption, perhaps, but a community nevertheless: happy, prosperous and joyfully oblivious to the plight of the country once known as the land of the middle class.”

Lobbying remains one of the nation’s “persistently prosperous industries,” Thomas Frank notes, with a “curiously bipartisan nature… After all, for this part of Washington, the only real ideology around is based on money – how much and how quickly you get paid.”

Look on their works, ye Mighty, and despair! Or better yet, take a look at a recent article in Politico, the publication which is to Washington gossip and dealmaking what Variety is to Hollywood gossip and dealmaking.

It’s the sad story of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, an attempt — after the arrest and conviction of superlobbyist Jack Abramoff — to address the revolving door between government and business, that sends former members of Congress and their staffs spinning into the arms of cushy lobbying jobs, too often fostering graft, greed and the gross abuse of money and power.

Instead, and in classic fashion, by the time the bill was signed into law, it had been subverted, twisted into a tangle of compromise and doubletalk that did nothing to solve the problem and may well have made it worse. Isaac Arnsdorf of Politico writes, “Not only did the lobbying reform bill fail to slow the revolving door, it created an entire class of professional influencers who operate in the shadows, out of the public eye and unaccountable.”

“Of the 352 people who left Congress alive since the law took effect in January 2008, POLITICO found that almost half (47 percent) have joined the influence industry: 84 as registered lobbyists and 80 others as policy advisers, strategic consultants, trade association chiefs, corporate government relations executives, affiliates of agenda-driven research institutes and leaders of political action committees or pressure groups. Taken as a whole, more former lawmakers are influencing policy and public opinion now than before the reform was enacted: in a six-year period before the law, watchdog group Public Citizen found 43 percent of former lawmakers became lobbyists.”

Further:

“There is less transparency because some former lawmakers don’t need to register because lobbying is just one slice of how special interests shape laws in Washington today… [And] it’s hard to tell the difference between the job descriptions of former members who are registered to lobby and those who aren’t. That’s because the reform law provided weak rules and even weaker enforcement. It added criminal penalties but made them so hard to prosecute they’ve never been tried.”

And it gets worse:

The revolving door is about to enter peak season. Already 42 members of Congress have resigned, lost or announced plans to leave by January, and some are already talking with prospective future employers — all perfectly permissible and confidential, thanks to weaknesses engineered into the post-Abramoff reform law. These members know they can command a premium — $100,000 more than other lobbyists, according to a new study — from an industry that values the access they can provide to the halls of power.”

And you thought Congress never got anything accomplished! And then wondered why plutocrats can still skip through yawning tax loopholes and the military still gets billions for weapons systems it doesn’t need and the health insurance industry gets away with murder and pharmaceutical prices are ruinous, to name but a few of the heinous ways the influence of deep pockets shafts the rest of us.

The crime, of course, is that none of this is a crime but business as usual. And so the draft platform of the Democratic National Committee mentions lobbying but once and the chicanery, gouging and legalized bribery continue unabated — just another perfect day in Washington and these United States. Check, please.