Bernie Sanders Is Barry Goldwater
by Bob Schwartz
Bernie Sanders for the Democrats is what Barry Goldwater was for the Republicans.
In the short run that might make the current generation of Democrats unhappy. In the long run, they should ask the Republicans how that turned out.
This is how it turned out. An unlikely, marginalized, and idealistic candidate tried to remind a party of its deepest philosophical roots. He won the party’s nomination for President, against all odds and against the wishes of many in the party, who believed he would lead them to total and inglorious defeat. Which he did.
Barry Goldwater also won. It is understandable that the Republican Party lionizes Ronald Reagan as its hero, model and godfather, since Reagan went on to serve two inspiring terms as President. But it was Goldwater, that embarrassment to some in 1964, who inspired Reagan himself and that first young generation of modern Republican conservatives (including Hillary Clinton, who began her political involvement as a Goldwater Girl).
We don’t know how the Bernie Sanders adventure turns out, either in the upcoming caucuses and primaries or at the convention. He is just as unlikely, marginalized and idealistic as Goldwater, and maybe less likely to win the nomination.
But in the long run, progressives who have been sidelined by the siren song of unwavering pragmatism—politics as the art of the possible—may be the winners. A new generation of genuine and fearless progressives may be born, even as the unlikely messenger is pushed aside.
In the words of Barry Goldwater, and as Bernie Sanders might also say:
“And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
Bob Schwartz 
I love your idealism. I fear he’s more like Ross Perot, and his cheerleaders would be disinterested by the mid-terms leaving him high and dry like they did their hero Obama.
Thanks. It has taken me this long to wrestle with your kind comment about my idealism. I guess what I carry might be called imperative idealism, that is, I don’t think we have a choice. Not if we have some clear vision how tomorrow arrives and how we arrive at tomorrow, even in what appears for all the world like genuine darkness. I could go on about how candidates on both sides have a mantra of how things are just not possible, including Hillary’s flat assertion that universal health care is “NEVER” going to happen. The awesome poet Wallace Stevens wrote a really long poem called Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. Literary analysts have been dissecting it for more than seventy years: Is the supreme fiction God, poetry, reality? All I know is that a few lines of that poem have stuck with me forever, and whether I understand what Stevens meant, I get what I take them to mean:
It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible.
Anything is possible, if people do the work. They might get him elected. Will they follow up at midterms, run for office, better their schools and streets any more under Sanders than Obama? Not likely. I think it’s great that revolution is in the air; I just hope people think about what’s ahead when the air clears and whether they have the right tools. Realism is also important to me.
The supreme fiction seems to be just that, the supreme fiction; and that’s why it’s always possible. Thanks for the recommendation, will Google it this weekend. I loves me a good challenge.
And to be sure, I meant idealism with much respect. You have an awesome mind. Thanks for letting us in it :)
Thanks.