Bernie will speak as a loyal party member at the Democratic convention. But that’s a break from the first 45 years of his political life, which are still a model for independent left politics.
I don't get a strong sense from your essay as to *why* Young Bernie morphed into Mature Bernie after the 2016 campaign. Would Sanders or his supporters even agree that there *was* a change after that campaign? Was the fact that the 2016 campaign made him a well known national figure responsible for that change -- and what other factors played a role? After that campaign, did he conclude that he had reached the limits of what an independent, non-major-party-aligned professional politician could accomplish in the U.S.?
It's a great question and I don't have an answer to that. I think about it a lot. Some people would say that that was the logical outcome of trying to run in the 2016 primary, that it pulled him into trying to reform the party. I'm not sure that's the whole story. I think there has been a small but real shift in the Democratic Party to the left on economic questions and maybe Bernie picked up on that and thought there was an opening for him to play the inside game. I don't think that's the best way to make use of that opening, if it exists.
I don't get a strong sense from your essay as to *why* Young Bernie morphed into Mature Bernie after the 2016 campaign. Would Sanders or his supporters even agree that there *was* a change after that campaign? Was the fact that the 2016 campaign made him a well known national figure responsible for that change -- and what other factors played a role? After that campaign, did he conclude that he had reached the limits of what an independent, non-major-party-aligned professional politician could accomplish in the U.S.?
It's a great question and I don't have an answer to that. I think about it a lot. Some people would say that that was the logical outcome of trying to run in the 2016 primary, that it pulled him into trying to reform the party. I'm not sure that's the whole story. I think there has been a small but real shift in the Democratic Party to the left on economic questions and maybe Bernie picked up on that and thought there was an opening for him to play the inside game. I don't think that's the best way to make use of that opening, if it exists.