Next Tuesday April 26th is the Pennsylvania Presidential
primary. The contest in the Democratic
Party is of great interest to me as I have spent my entire adult life as a
Democratic Party politician holding both public and party offices. I’ve been campaigning for Democratic
presidential candidates since I distributed cards for Adlai Stevenson on my
block in Ridgewood Queens in 1956. I consider myself a Liberal Democrat and
also a Progressive which word I have never used to hide the L word but to
supplement it.
I will vote in next Tuesday’s primary for Bernie Sanders of
Vermont to be our party’s candidate for President. I will do so even though
I’ve been a part of the party establishment (attended three national
conventions as a delegate) because I believe that my party establishment today
has become rigid in its thinking; self absorbed in its exercise of power, and
subservient to the Wall Street interests and the military industrial complex
that it fought so hard and so successfully in the New Deal era. I believe my
party needs to be reformed; it’s commitment to the middle class and the
programs of the New Deal and Great Society needs to be renewed; and its
structure needs to be rebuilt. And only
Bernie Sanders shows a determination to achieve that end and the capacity to
energize a new generation of Americans to accomplish it...
FDR enacted Old Age Insurance (a.k.a. Social Security) for
all Americans not just some. JFK
challenged America to put a man on the moon not just get half way there and
return. LBJ signed Medicare for all seniors;
and guaranteed Voting Rights for all Americans.
He didn’t just settle for some health care to some older people; nor did
he settle for repealing some voting restrictions he opened the doors and let
the sunshine of human rights in. After
George McGovern’s defeat in 1972 a traumatized Democratic Party establishment
encouraged by a centrist Jimmy Carter began to tone down its rhetoric and run
away from the word Liberal. And what was the result - the Reagan
revolution. By 1992 the party had
adopted the strategy made popular by Bill Clinton of being moderately
progressive and working with the economic powers that be. What was the result - the Gingrich
Revolution. It is time the Democratic Party
returned to its roots: the political reformist and economic populism of Bryan,
Wilson and Roosevelt.
Bernie Sanders advocates expanding social security to
increase the benefits and extend the lifetime of the system. I ask Why Not? Bernie Sanders supports extending the public
commitment to free public education beyond the 12th grade to a college
degree. I ask Why Not? Bernie Sanders says, as our party leaders
have before, Break Up the big banks? And with Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson
I ask Why Not? Bernie Sanders calls upon us to rebuild the great American
Middle Class that the programs of FDR’s New Deal and his G I Bill helped
create. And, I ask Why Not? The centrists in our party say we can’t
afford these programs. Yet we could
afford to save the World in 1945 and rebuild Europe in 1948. We could afford to bail out Wall Street and
the Big Banks in 2008 and General Motors in 2009. If this country’s history has shown anything
it has shown that whether it was the Erie Canal, the Transcontinental Railroad
or the Space Shuttle America can do anything it believes in.
I was not born in time to vote for FDR. I was not old enough to vote for JFK or
LBJ. I can vote for Bernie Sanders. I can vote for someone whose lifetime
commitment to reform and progressive proposals will serve as a continuation of
the liberal progressive movement that began at the end of the 19th century over
120 years ago (with ideological roots that went back much further).Twenty years
from now young people of today will be the candidates, the party activists and
the majority of the nation’s electorate.
I want them to have a future they can believe in. I want them to look on
Bernie Sanders as my father’s generation looked on FDR and mine looked on
JFK. So I will vote for an American they
can believe in - I will vote for Bernie Sanders.
20 April 2016
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