Photo: Jim Vondruska/Reuters
At a time when plenty of people have advice for unhappy progressive Democrats, one of their heroes, Bernie Sanders, had a succinct message: Don’t love the party, leave it. In an interview with the New York Times, he previewed a barnstorming tour he has undertaken with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but made it clear he wouldn’t be asking audiences to rally ’round the Democratic Party. “One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” Sanders said.
In one respect, that isn’t surprising. Though he has long aligned with the Democratic Party in Congress and has regularly backed its candidates, Sanders has always self-identified as an independent, even when he filed to run for president as a Democrat in 2020. Now, as before, he seems to regard the Democratic Party as inherently corrupted by its wealthy donor base, per the Times:
During the interview on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders repeatedly criticized the influence of wealthy donors and Washington consultants on the party. He said that while Democrats had been a force for good on social issues like civil rights, women’s rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, they had failed on the economic concerns he has dedicated his political career to addressing.
Still, when Democrats are now already perceived as losing adherents, and as many progressives believe their time to take over the party has arrived, Sanders’s counsel is both oddly timed and pernicious. Yes, those on the left who choose independent status may still work with Democrats on both legislative and electoral projects, much as Sanders does. And they may run in and win Democratic primaries on occasion without putting on the party yoke. But inevitably, refusing to stay formally within the Democratic tent will cede influence to centrists and alienate loyalist voters as well. And in 18 states, voters who don’t register as Democrats may be barred from voting in Democratic primaries, which proved a problem for Sanders during his two presidential runs.
More fundamentally, Democrats need both solidarity and stable membership at this moment with the MAGA wolf at the door and crucial off-year and midterm elections coming up. Staying in the Democratic ranks doesn’t mean giving up progressive principles or failing to challenge timid or ineffective leadership. To borrow an ancient cigarette-ad slogan, it’s a time when it’s better to “fight than switch.”
That said, there may be certain deep-red parts of the country where the Democratic brand is so toxic that an independent candidacy could make some sense for progressives. The example of 2024 independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn of Nebraska, who ran a shockingly competitive (if ultimately unsuccessful) race against Republican incumbent Deb Fischer, turned a lot of heads. But while Osborn might have been a “populist” by most standards, he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a progressive, and in fact, centrist and progressive Nebraska Democrats went along with Osborn as a very long shot. They didn’t abandon their party; they just got out of the way.
Perhaps someday, the popularity of electoral systems without party primaries or with ranked-choice voting will spread to the point where candidates and voters alike will gradually shed or at least weaken party labels. Then self-identifying as an independent could be both principled and politically pragmatic.
But until then, it’s important to understand why American politics have regularly defaulted to a two-party system dating all the way back to those days when the Founders tried strenuously to avoid parties altogether. In a first-past-the-post system where winners take all, there’s just too much at stake to allow those with whom you are in agreement on the basics to splinter. That’s particularly true when, as is the case right now, the other party is rigidly united in subservience to an authoritarian leader. Sanders is one of a kind in his ability to keep his feet both within and outside the Democratic Party. His example isn’t replicable without making a bad situation for progressives a whole lot worse.
