In his Q & A article at The New Yorker, “Will Left-Wing Democrats Reinvent the Party or Hurt Its Chances in November?,” Isaac Chotiner interviews Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Presidential-campaign manager and founder of the media nonprofit More Perfect Union. An excerpt:
Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Democrats are in the midst of a series of heated primaries across the country, pitting more centrist candidates, often backed by the Party establishment, against leftist opponents. Two Democratic House members have already lost primaries in New York to progressive challengers, and on August 4th the Michigan primary will decide whether the leftist doctor Abdul El-Sayed can defeat the congresswoman Haley Stevens in the race for an open Senate seat. In Wisconsin, another purple state, Francesca Hong—the progressive candidate for governor—has a wide lead on her opponents in the lead-up to the August 11th primary.
To try and understand the fissures in the Democratic Party, I recently spoke by phone with Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Presidential-campaign manager and founder of the media nonprofit More Perfect Union. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why so many Democrats are angry at the Party establishment, whether the Party is in danger of losing seats in swing states, and whether progressives, like Bernie Sanders, were right to stick with Joe Biden until the end of his reëlection campaign.
I think it’s intensified. The division is over the desire of candidates to take on concentrations of wealth and power, and their willingness and desire to take on corporate greed and corporate power in general. There are people who were born for it, or desire it, and they are the candidates who tend to be doing quite well at this moment. They’re the ones who understand that part of your job in public service is to stand up to the power of moneyed interests, and how critical it is to speak out on behalf of people living paycheck to paycheck. There is friction against others in the Party who would say we don’t need that kind of tension with the moneyed élite. We have to raise money from them, we have to coddle them, we have to have public-private partnerships with them, we have to make them feel nice, and be kind to them.
I’m not saying tonally you have to be mean, but you have to acknowledge that there is friction and tension if you’re going to fight for working-class communities right now.
Do you think progressives should be focussing on running these types of candidates in safe, Democratic areas and states, so that the caucus in the House and the Senate is more left-wing and pushes for more left-wing ideas? Or do you also think they need to be pushing these types of candidates across the map?
I certainly come at this from a desire for persuasion. And, in order to be persuasive, I do tend to think that the candidates who are going to perform best across the board clearly define their desire to address concentrations of wealth and power, and the issues around corporate greed. And, if they are defined in that way, they can succeed in the reddest parts of this country. I do tend to think those candidates should start to reflect their geographies a bit, if they’re doing it the right way. So a New York City candidate who’s doing this may look and sound different than a Montana candidate who’s doing this.
You hear people like Senator Sanders, and yourself, say that the common thread for winning in diverse places is fighting for working people on economic issues. But, with candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan, or Francesca Hong, in Wisconsin, you see left-wing campaigns running on very liberal social platforms. For example, El-Sayed has gotten tripped up over questions about defunding the police. I’m curious how you see that tension.
Many candidates run on liberal social-justice platforms. I don’t think you’re wrong that there are elements of that in this wave of progressive candidates. But what often happens is people look at their tweets from six years ago and miss how they are campaigning right now.
Look at how different candidates are talking about ice: some use the word “abolish,” some say “reform,” some say “move funding to different agencies.” Those are all part and parcel of what I was suggesting—that you are attuned to the geographies in which you’re representing, and you are close to the people you’re representing. If you go talk to a lot of these working-class people, they are three-dimensional human beings. They know when somebody is being honest and levelling with them. And I see in a lot of these progressive candidates that, while they may have views on things that don’t one hundred per cent align with every working-class person in their district, there is a benefit because people understand the candidate is telling them what they really believe. And there’s points for honesty.
I thought you were saying that there was some need for candidates to change their pitch based on where they are running, though.
When you’re in Montana, the issues of housing play out a bit differently than the housing issues of New York City, right? The density of renters in New York City is very high. Montana, obviously, they’re going through tenant unions; they have their own issues, but there are a lot of people being squeezed out of their opportunity to own their own homes. I’m just arguing that economic justice, the way in which you talk about those affordability crises, will have geographic dimensions to them that matter to your relatability.
I see, so the issue is not that you need to moderate or change your pitch on social issues, depending on where you’re running.
Well, I agree with that, too. So if you’re running in Montana, you’re running in Idaho, you’re running in Ohio, I do think that a good candidate who is trying to appeal to the working class has to be aware of what the attitudinal views are of the community, and the candidate has to be interested in them and want to have a conversation about them. What are their views on trans kids? How’s the community feeling about immigration raids?
More here.
