Everyone Loves Bernie… Even the New York Times
When Senator Bernie Sanders was a threat to the Democratic establishment, and actually looked like he could win the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, leading voices of corporate liberalism like the New York Times were apoplectic. During last year’s primary season, the Times sometimes ran two or three news stories and opinion pieces a day against Bernie. That’s right — even the Times’s supposedly “objective” news pages became a platform for anti- Bernie animus. But now that he’s become a Joe Biden loyalist — working hard to advance the president’s progressive legislative agenda — Bernie has become lovable again. Henry Louis Gates recently sat down with him for his Roots program on PBS, And now Maureen Dowd gives him a big wet kiss in her Sunday Times column.
To his credit, Senator Sanders wouldn’t allow himself to be diverted from his talking points about the national renewal program that America desperately needs. As Dowd noted, she wanted to talk to Bernie about Britney and “the absurd price of a Birkin bag.” But the senator — who, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee and an old comrade of Biden’s, suddenly finds himself in the middle of Washington action — stayed studiously on message during his interview with Dowd in a Burlington diner. Sanders did offer opinions about the suspension of Olympic track star Sha’Carri Richardson for using marijuana, whom he saw as a victim of America’s warped war on drugs, and the grotesque space race of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
“You have the richest guys in the world who are not particularly worried about earth anymore," Sanders observed. “They’re off in outer space” while people are sleeping on the streets. That’s why we need President Biden’s tax-the-rich legislation, the senator stated, steering the conversation back to his serious talking points.
Berne is now surrounded by a younger generation of democratic socialists and militant progressives on Capitol Hill, whom he has inspired and who have inspired him. But they sometimes part company with Sanders over his legislative alliance with the White House. But at age 79, Sanders has every right to use his political influence to win as much as possible for the American people. If Biden’s infrastructure legislation gets passed at close to the levels that he and Sanders want, it will be the biggest federal infusion in social spending since FDR’s New Deal.
If the Democrats fail to use their slight margin to deliver relief for the American people, Sanders is sharp enough to see the dark consequences — a further descent into Republican “delusion,” “authoritarianism” and even “violence.”
At the end of Dowd’s column, Senator Sanders offers a lesson on the difference between liberals and progressives — and it can be read as blunt message to the Times editorial board that helped block his “ascension” to the White House. “Liberals want to do nice things,” Bernie remarked. “And progressives understand that you have to take on powerful special interests to make it happen.”
Right on.
Bernie and his talking points