Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement

by Heather Gautney, Adolph L. Reed Jr. (Introduction)

A leading activist-scholar on what’s next in the Sanders revolution

Bernie Sanders shocked the political establishment by winning 13 million votes and a majority of young voters in the 2016 Democratic primary. Since that upset, repeated polls have judged this democratic socialist to be the most popular politician in the United States. What lessons can be drawn from his surprising insurgent campaign?

Longtime author and activist Heather Gautney was a Policy Fellow in Sanders’s Washington, DC, office and a volunteer researcher and organizer on his presidential campaign. In reviewing what enabled Sanders to reach out to an unprecedented number with a socialist message—and what stalled his progress—she draws lessons on the prospects and perils of building a progressive movement in the United States.

Gautney’s poignant account of the role that race and class played in this election cycle, her anatomy of the conflicting dynamics of movement and electoral ambitions, and her clear-eyed analysis of the Democratic position following Trump’s victory will serve as a useful starting point for many readers newly aware of the limitations of the Democratic Party and the immensity of the challenges ahead.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, United States

207 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2018

About the author

Heather D. Gautney is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Fordham University. She has written and edited books, opinion essays, and academic articles on US politics, social movements, social inequality, and workforce issues. Dr. Gautney was a senior policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders in the US Senate Budget Committee. In 2012-2013, she was a legislative fellow in Sanders’s Senate Office, a volunteer organizer and researcher on his presidential campaign in 2015-16, and representative of the State of Vermont for the 2016 Democratic Party Platform Committee. Currently, she is the Executive Director of Our Revolution.

Reviews

[Dale]

Gautney talks about the consistency of Sanders' political views over the decades; views that have been shaped since the early 60s by principled defense of working-class interests. That consistency, and those principles, are what led me to support Sanders during the primaries in 2016. Whether he could have won the general election is debatable: given the level of hatred and hostility towards him by the media elite, it would have been an uphill battle. We'll never know.

Most of this book examines the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, looked at from the class-based Sanders campaign, and the identitarian focus of the Clinton campaign. As has been often pointed out, Clintonians would be quite happy with the present level of economic inequality and class oppression, as long as the oppressors were 50% female, 17% black, and 20% latino. That's social justice! A far cry from the social solutions to social problems proposed by Sanders and wildly popular with his supporters: free higher education, expansion of Social Security, Medicare for all, higher taxes on the rich. Programs that would be direct concrete benefits to all citizens, and which would provide the greatest benefit to those in lower economic strata.

Gautney concludes with some discussion of the distinctions between electoral campaigns and mass movements, and notes that none of the Sanders policies have a chance of being enacted without mass movements to force the issue.

I didm't find any great new insights in this book - but I have been reading Sanders-based post mortems on the election for 18 months. Even so, this is a concise and clear explanation of the Sanders phenomenon and its aftermath by a Sanders campaign insider.

[Steffi]

Now, this is a good book. Western democracy is in a very deep crisis with various new movements and/or parties from the left and right trying to either fix or exploit this crisis. The specific relationship and constellation between movements and parties depend on the wider political system and often highlight other power relations and class interests among the party leadership and the state.
While movements often try to work towards election campaigns and outcomes, what is interesting about Bernie Sanders is his attempt to use a national election campaign to support and stimulate movement-building (which then became ‘Our Revolution’). The US is also an interesting case given the absence of independent, membership based parties as such (essentially, the US is a two-party state), a Corbyn-like takeover of the Democrats seems rather impossible. So Bernie’s and other movements such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) fight as much for specific policies (socialism) as a political revolution (radical democracy) from the ‘outside’ of the system through ‘engineering’ outcomes within the system.

Anyhow, the book is interesting in that it’s written by one of Bernie’s former staffer who provides a convenient recap of the thinking and movement based strategies behind the 2016 campaign. (It’s probably much more interesting for people who haven’t obsessed as much as me over the 2016 primaries Bernie campaign!). So given that I am fairly familiar with the campaign and post-election Sander activism, I enjoyed the final chapter on the ‘lessons learned’, e.g., the risk to mistake online support for actual grassroots support and the difference between organically grown movements and election cycles; how to translate popular support for a political project into policies in the absence of actual democracy. Overall, I think it’s fairly inspiring to see how a movement that started so small can alter the debate which was for too long dominated and somewhat closed by the Reagan-clinton-bush-obama neoliberal agenda. The 2018 mid-term elections will show whether the power of movements can translate into winning political power. The 2020 presidential primaries will then show whether the Democratic Party can be transformed from within (doubt it) or whether a movement linked third party will be able to challenge the two-party state.

[Mary]

This book isn’t bad, it just doesn’t say anything new. I was hoping it’d be more about the path forward than just a post-mortem of 2016, but alas.

[Laurie]

A brief look at the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie’s campaign, and the history behind them. Bernie’s own political history is in stark contrast to Hilary’s. He came up from the bottom, representing the poor and people of color, while Hilary (as well as Bill Clinton, and, for that matter, Obama) was funded by, and stood for, the class of people with money to invest in her campaign.

The author, a professor of sociology as well as staffer for Sanders, tells us how the appeal of the socialist message worked. He brought in the majority of the youth vote, and that of the lower classes and people of color. Sadly, the super delegates worked against him, causing him to lose even in states where he won the majority of the popular vote (how ironic that something similar worked against Hilary in the general election). An easy read; it’s the first political book I’ve found readable since Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Five stars.

[Tim]

It's fine? I guess? I just don't see why anybody needs to read this book. The book covers the 2016 Sanders campaign, but only sort of. It's mostly an overview of Sanders' policies, and the ways in which the establishment Democrats absolutely undermined and attacked his campaign. But neither the undermining, nor the actual primary process, is covered in much detail. If you were a Sanders supporter, this book isn't going to provide you with much new material. If you weren't a Sanders supporter, this book isn't going to convince you. The only real strength of the book is that it does show, in non-wonky-academic terms, what a class analysis of policy and politics looks like. I just don't think that it's worth reading at this point.

[Tony]

A quick read that seems clear-headed and accurate about diagnosing the causes of the Democratic Party's 2016 failure to win the U.S. Presidency. From the last paragraph of chp.4, this quote may serve as representative of the book as a whole: "[W]hat's important to consider for the sake of moving forward is that, like Clinton's neoliberalism, Trumpism does not offer a viable framework for unifying various segments of the population ... [The 2016 contest] left a gaping hole for a more diverse and class-conscious political movement to emerge and to offer real solutions to the most pressing issues of our time." (p.126)

[Molly]

Very interesting analysis/reflection on how the Democratic Party’s embrace Hillary lost the left the 2016 election. Written by a Bernie staffer/advisor and the bias is clear, but this is a well footnoted book with lots of impossible to deny arguments. Painful to imagine what this could’ve happened if the party had an awareness of the class war that would define the election and chose to embrace Bernie. Hindsight I guess.

[Manny]

An insider's look into how the Sanders campaign rose from a small grassroots movement and evolved into a powerful political movement that has altered the views of many and continues to influence many,especially the younger generation. It also shows how the corrupt Democratic party did everything in their power to assure Clinton's nomination, eventually leading to Trump.

[Josh Wright]

Revisiting this, on the Bernie v. Hillary primary campaign. Light on analysis, more of a straightforward account. Some interesting threads picked up but never really followed through eg around how/why labour principally sided with Hillary and implications for the outcome. Not much new to glean here tho I guess it has been 6 years now lol

[Wesley]

A succinct and poignant analysis of the Democratic Party establishment in relation to the 2016 presidential primary.
Gautney examines the role of identity and class-based politics in relation to Sanders’ platform and how this is the viable alternative to the Clintonite approach.

[Patricia]

This is an interesting account of the Bernie Sanders campaign and its future impact on politics.

[Karl]

A bit dry in parts but still some very interesting tidbits learned, especially about just how unprogressive the Clintons really have been