Seven years ago this month, 69 million Americans voted Barack Obama into office. It was the largest amount of votes for a candidate in the nation’s history and the highest percentage of votes in the past quarter century. There were a multitude of reasons for the return of the Democrats to the White House: the economic collapse, the faltering of the Iraq War, and the rejection of the regressive conservative values the Bush administration sought to institutionalize.
The crisis of 2008 didn’t occur in a vacuum, but was the culmination of fundamental issues in American political culture and political economy, which were and remain damaging and unsustainable.
These issues? The military industrial complex’s influence over foreign policy. The exclusion of the poor and the unconnected from American political life. The towering ability of multinational corporations to influence elections, converting dollars to votes. The paradigms of corporate logic that have been institutionalized at every level of government, prioritizing innovation and dynamism for the accumulation of profit rather than improving society as a whole.
Seven years later, despite some successes, Obama has not addressed the fundamentals aforementioned, especially inequality of political access. In that sense, the fundamental crisis of American democracy has accelerated. In time, we may understand the Obama presidency as a correction from failed endeavors of the Bush administration, but he has been far too reluctant to articulate and implement the greater structural rearrangements the economy requires. While Obama has pulled the United States back from the brink of economic calamity, the USA needs to move forward in reshaping American capitalism to avoid future crises, make the system more fair and inclusive and prepare for climate change.
Voters should have no illusions about a Bernie Sanders candidacy. As a Democratic nominee, he would be the most left in generations, and there is no historical precedent for Democratic Socialists winning critical swing states like Ohio and Virginia, let alone New York or California. As a president, likely governing alongside a Republican House of Representatives, there is not only insufficient appetite for a wave of liberal domestic legislation in Congress, but fierce animosity. A meaningful Bernie Sanders presidency is a long shot.
But it is the only shot worth taking at all. Of the 19 candidates running for president in 2016, none have shown the sweeping social vision of Sen. Sanders. The Republican field is dominated by extreme movement conservatives. They cannot prepare the nation for climate change, Gilded Age inequality and the recurring financial crises of reckless capitalism if they deny these problems existence. Hillary Clinton may well be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party next year, though if that is the case, her political operation is too embedded with corporate interest groups to effectively challenge them. This is why she may go as far as building on some of Obama’s reforms, but she’ll never truly challenge crony capitalism.
Pushing our nation forward requires the stomach for such a challenge. It entails a leader who will be bold because that’s what systemic overhaul demands. It means electing the one candidate running whose comprehensive vision consists of challenging political exclusion, economic inequality, climate change and crony capitalism. In 2016, it’s Bernie Sanders or bust.
Adam Wilkes is a sophomore double-majoring in economics and philosophy, politics and law