Fetterman immediately was endorsed by two large unions (steel workers and food service) representing 80000 Pennsylvanians. Within just two days of announcing his candidacy he has received 37000 small dollar donations from all 67 counties in Pennsylvania and all 50 states.
Fetterman was endorsed by Bernie Sanders in all of his election cycles and was one of the only people elected to high office in Pennsylvania to endorse Sanders for president in 2020.
Bernie didn't win, but his campaign wasn't a waste. Look at where the leftist ecosystem (people, non-electoral organizations, elected officials, media outlets, etc.) is today vs. where it was before Bernie's first campaign. There's no comparison. And it's not solely attributable to material conditions deteriorating, either: people getting the short end of capitalism don't automatically become leftists. There's real value to having someone force leftist ideas into the political mainstream and put forward leftist ideas that desperate people can buy into. The number one thing the left needs right now is tens of millions of more leftists, and the Bernie campaign was great for starting people down that path.
And as cool as Bernie's war chest would be as a strike fund, we're not at the point where people would donate that sort of cash to that sort of project. It's not really useful as a comparison.
But, they did. They had the money. Then they used it to run a basically traditional electoral campaign, instead of a symbolic communist one. And after all said and done, I believe most of the leftover cash went to democrats in other races, correct me if i'm wrong.
He ran substantially to the left of mainstream Democrats and managed to put together a serious campaign while doing so. Considering no one's managed even that much since -- What, the 80s? The 60s? -- I don't think "he should have ran as a communist" is a very good criticism.
As for his leftover campaign funds, there are laws about how he can spend them, and he had good reasons to follow those laws instead of flouting them.
No, you misunderstand what I meant by that, or I miscommunicated. I mean that, he should have ran with the same rhetoric, but instead of spending money, just funnel it into a fund, and then use that fund for other purposes after he loses.
Most of the money came from small donors. A lot of it would have still come in regardless of whether they had spent the money the way they did or not. The movement for bernie assembled because there was pre-existing resentment from obama's failures, not from bernie's political acumen or the people directly running the campaign.
As far as those laws....I think there's ways around that, the president just flouted them and it seems it's legal.
It's all of the above. Organizing people takes real effort and skill even if they're primed to hear your message by the failures of capitalism. Consider how many people hate the symptoms of capitalism but don't spontaneously become leftists or spontaneously form leftist organizations.
As for why it's not smart for Bernie to just openly break campaign finance laws: First, capitalist reaction to someone who generally serves capital (Trump) will not be the same as capitalist reaction to someone who challenges it (Bernie). Look no further than how laws are enforced against BLM protesters vs. how they're enforced against right-wing cranks. Second, a lot of the people Bernie (and his successors) appeal to don't want someone who wipes their ass with the law, even if it's for a good cause. Trump's base doesn't care when he does this stuff because they already know he's a piece of shit; Bernie might not get the same pass because he comes off as a generally decent person.
It does look like it's theoretically legally possible from my layman's POV, but also I'm pretty sure the book would have fallen on any leftist that tried to do this.
I think a lot of you are just shitting on this alternative history because of continued attachment to electoralism and a refusal to question bernie as a public figure.
Honestly thanks for bringing it up because it's very possible, it's something I actively try to fight in my analysis. Canvassing as a new leftist for Bernie has an undeniable emotional attachment to the project.
But I also think we need to look at it as a reflection of the weakness of the left today. We're just witnessing the beginnings of class consciousness. In a country like the US, it's pretty expected that this beginning will take the form of not-really-that-anti-imperialist soft democratic socialism / social democracy. The fact that we had that at all was surprising to me.
But yeah I think it's important to decouple our Bernie support from our material analysis. To have more far-left politics and supporting Bernie, it was definitely silly to describe him as "hiding his power level" etc, but I think it was still a good unifying factor of many tendencies in a time when the far left has 0 power. I understand the historical danger of allying with imperialist socdems, but I do think it's the only thing possible currently in the US. Hakim brought some of this up in V*ush's stream from his ML standpoint, that social democracy in the US is worth fighting for even if you're not a socdem, as long as the end goal is anti-imperialism.
I don't know, I think getting roped into the big ol' chess game isn't...worth it. i'd rather focus my energy on building solidarity outside of the political system, rather than convince working class people to engage with it (eg, canvassing for social democracy). but i mean, it's just my personal opinion.
Despite what I said above I do totally agree with this, and it's hard to square these ideas. For example in retrospect, the labor I spent on Bernie (wasn't a huge amount or anything) would have been better spent organizing and radicalizing my union, which I previously wasn't active in at all. But ironically the Bernie run is primarily what led me to this idea (tbf maybe not the Bernie run, maybe it's the general specter haunting USA) :gold-communist:
Sometimes there is a difference between knowin the path, and walking the path. but eventually, we must join the same road.
Excellent quote comrade Morpheus.