Opinion A little to the left

The causes Bernie Sanders has espoused have galvanised young Americans and created the possibility of a new leadership on the left.

As he called an end to his second campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for US president on April 8, Bernie Sanders asserted that “few would deny that over the course of the past five years, our movement has won the ideological struggle”. A few days before Sanders’s announcement, the US pharmaceutical industry was exempted from price controls in the over $8 billion emergency spending bill proposed to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. It would be easy to see this development — seemingly opening the door to profiteering during the pandemic — as evidence of the futility of the “ideological struggle”. Inequality, unaffordable healthcare and an end to corporate profits determining American policy were key planks of Sanders’ campaign. But his political legacy is important not just for the outcomes, but more for how it has shifted the terms of debate in the world’s richest and oldest democracy.

Already 78, this was likely Sanders’s last campaign. But the causes he has espoused have galvanised young Americans and created the possibility of a new leadership on the left. Racial equality — including calling out police brutality — gender rights, affordable higher education, a better economic and social security net and healthcare are now front and centre in the US’s political discourse. A new generation of leaders, who don’t look or talk like the traditional suited male politician — the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — are making waves. And even the idea of the American dream is evolving for many into one that includes a basic standard of living for all.

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Yet, it was not Bernie’s time. Much like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Sanders was unable to gather the support of the centre of his own party. The rhetoric against the “one per cent” — the wealthiest — has lost out to the idea of someone who can build a consensus in Joe Biden. But Sanders has shifted the centre just a little more to the left.