Is Bernie Sanders channeling Teddy Roosevelt? Having recently re-watched Ken Burns’ in-depth biography, The Roosevelts, I am struck by the similarities—both in substance and in style.

I started thinking about this comparison as I watched Burns’ old-time film snippets of Teddy Roosevelt—particularly those documenting him on the campaign stump. Roosevelt, known affectionately as TR, was a fighter. In the film clips, his body language shows a man leaning into his arguments, gesticulating for emphasis, speaking forcefully and intently—all of this in a less-than-Adonis-like body.

The similarity to Bernie Sanders’ outspoken, forceful, vigorous and passionate campaign persona is uncanny.

But, of course, there’s more to this comparison than style. Teddy—the leader of the Republican party of his day, became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the US in the early 20th century—and Sanders has adopted that mantle 100 years later.

I’m not a historian [although I do occasionally binge-watch Drunk History]. So here are some of the similarities noted by people who know much more than I do:

In a 2016 article, The Observer observed:

Both [Sanders and Roosevelt] are strongly skeptical of corporate power, and live in periods in which the power, influence, and abusiveness of these institutions (in the view of the general public) is considerable and growing. Teddy’s major domestic agendas (trust busting, environmental stewardship and national parks, consumer protection) are at odds with significant corporate powers of their respective times, insofar as these interests collided with those of everyone else.

… both intended to save capitalism from self-inflicted injuries driven by greed. Teddy Roosevelt did it by busting up the big trusts of his day. Bernie is focused on the banks that are too big to fail. He wants to break them up before their reckless gambling collapses the economy again as it did in the Great Recession of 2007-2010.

…In 1912, when Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency as the leader of the Progressive [Bull Moose] Party, he laid out one of the most progressive platforms in American history. The party backed, among other policies:

• Limits on campaign contributions
• An eight-hour work day
• A commission to regulate securities markets
• A workers compensation program
• A “national health service”
• Passage of the 16th Amendment to allow for a federal income tax
• Infrastructure through “the early construction of National highways;”
• An estate tax

Roosevelt explicitly expressed his desire to increase the share the wealthy paid in taxes in his “New Nationalism” speech:

I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Sanders’ 2020 platform–like that of 2016– is, of course focused on issues more modern than creating a national highway system–although Teddy would undoubtedly support the modern call for a vast upgrade to our crumbling infrastructure. Clearly, Sanders is continuing the Roosevelt legacy of progressive populism, and, like Teddy, he, willing to stump—tirelessly—for what he believes in, and is focused on matters of corruption and the abuse of power. You can take the Roosevelt platform and, almost point-by-point, correlate it with what Bernie Sanders is proposing 100 years later.

I see that as good news.

The bad news that, more than a century later, we are still not there on these issues. We’re still fighting for the basic tenets of a progressive, equitable society. And it’s just sad that a presidential candidate who is fighting back against democracy-killing corporate greed is regarded as out of the mainstream.

What would Teddy think?

[Note: Voice recordings of Teddy Roosevelt are rare, but here’s one that gives you a flavor of his speaking style, and of the substantive nature of his speeches.]

[Editor’s note: This post first appeared here on Occasional Planet in 2016, when Bernie Sanders emerged  as a presidential hopeful. We are republishing it because of its new relevance in the 2020 election.]

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The 2016 election cycle continues on its baffling way, but foreign policy issues have largely been neglected, with a few exceptions like ISIS. Each of the three remaining major candidates falls short in certain ways.

Allow me to summarize each candidate’s position, what I believe each lacks, and to describe the appearance and objectives of a new vision for American foreign policy.

I reviewed some key passages from each candidate’s website and came up with a short summary of their ideas:

Trump – “America first” realism:

This strategy might best be compared with what international relations scholars call “realism”, though that school has far from a monopoly on realistic proposals. Realism posits that since the world order is essentially anarchic, meaning that it has no central authority to enforce peace, states must engage in “self-help” by following national interest above all else. Because no supranational force will come and save us, we must maintain a strong military as a cornerstone of our foreign policy.  Trump demonstrates this thinking:

• In his 23-second video on the military, Trump says: “I’m gonna make our military so big, so powerful, so strong that nobody, absolutely nobody, is gonna mess with us.” There’s a couple issues here, primarily that the President’s foreign policy should take longer than half a minute to describe and should consist of something more substantial than something you’d overhear at a pub. Secondly: Since Trump has frequently invoked the specter of Islamic terror, it’s important to point out that even in pre-911 2001, the USA spent $287 billion on defense. This did not stop fundamentalists from committing the 9/11 attacks. This means that even though America was and continues to be the strongest country in the world, “nobody is gonna mes with us” is a utopian fantasy. Furthermore, for fiscal year 2015, America spent $596 billion on defense. This doesn’t strike me as “weakness” on the part of the military. Military preparedness is certainly a virtue, but Trump’s saber-rattling is not.
• The virtues of Trump’s economic foreign policy are frankly not worth discussing. Suffice it to say they represent economic nationalism, exclusion, and xenophobia.
• Note that Trump’s realism is distinct from Bush’s neoconservatism, which advocates intervention in many situations as a way of spreading “democracy”. Trump seems to forgo this ideology in favor of a more basic version of national self-interest. Regardless, Trump’s bullish attitudes about military buildup are antiquated in fights against non-state actors like ISIS in which fighting smart is as important as having the biggest guns, figuratively. Of course, all of the above rests on the assumption that Trump actually has beliefs and policies, and that this whole campaign isn’t a perverse version of self-actualization for him.

Clinton – “Mixed” liberalism:

Clinton’s platform more closely resembles international relations liberalism, which in this context means a foreign policy centered around international political and economic cooperation towards greater prosperity and freedom for all, theoretically. This is evident in her website’s national security section, which includes some interesting points:

• “Create partnerships for tomorrow. Hillary believes in free peoples and free markets. As president, she’ll invest in partnerships in Latin America, Africa, and Asia with people and nations who share our values and vision for the future.” Presumably, this means Clinton will support free trade deals and more privatization. We are looking at a more liberal version of the Washington Consensus, an economic plan for the world which values free trade and free markets. However, frequently this has resulted in inequality, oppression, and stagnation in the developing world. It does not fundamentally change United States policy, which has almost always been to guarantee the existence of friendly markets, by force if necessary.
• “Engage civil society. America has the opportunity to resolve familiar conflicts and nurture new democracies; to empower moderates and marginalize extremists; and to open markets and champion human rights. From engaging students and civil leaders to broadening our development partnerships to involve our businesses, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists, Hillary knows that America’s greatest assets are our diverse citizens and the vision of fairness and openness we offer the world.” This alludes to another key tenant of international relations liberalism: The importance of non-state actors and institutions in maintaining capitalist freedom and peace. The more ominous side of this is giving authority to fundamentally undemocratic organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These financial institutions will frequently help save economies of the developing world on the condition that these economies privatize and frequently sell off state assets to wealthy corporations. Egypt and Greece recently went through this process; a Clinton presidency would probably see more of it.
• Democrats are frequently on the defensive when it comes to defense, constantly attempting to prove to the American people that they are as “tough” internationally as their Republican counterparts. This phenomenon explains the military positions on her website. These include “making sure our military is on the cutting edge”, “defeating ISIS”, and “standing up to Putin”. I have no doubt Secretary Clinton will attempt these things in office. Her term as Secretary of State was rather hawkish, especially in regards to airstrikes in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. One could make the argument that her hardline on the military is a result of sexism; that is to say, a woman gunning for the nation’s top elected office must appear especially tough when it comes to international relations. This may very well be true, but it does not fundamentally alter Clinton’s foreign policy, merely our understanding of it.
• Thus, the word “mixed” I used to describe Clinton’s liberalism refers to her belief in a combination of “soft” power economics and “hard” power military intervention and force projection.

Sanders – Liberal Cooperation and Caution:

Sanders’ policy is a little difficult to fit into the one of the schools of international relations, which are frequently descriptive rather than prescriptive. One might point to constructivism, which argues that international society is built by evolving norms of behavior, which Sanders’ caution probably seeks to build. Economic structuralism, a Marxist school of international thought, doesn’t accurate describe Sanders’ platform either: But Sanders’ “socialism” isn’t particularly Marxist or revolutionary: it stands for measured critiques of the corporate elite, the reform of capitalism, and opposition to international free trade deals and not the overthrow of the capitalist world-system. Liberalism may best serve to describe Sanders’ overall vision, which is that of peace, cooperation, and economic progress:

• Ending unliateral action: “We must move away from policies that favor unilateral military action and preemptive war, and that make the United States the de facto policeman of the world.” This is comforting to left-leaning Americans who are tired of Afghanistan, Iraq, and a variety of other conflicts which appear to have hurt us and not furthered the national interest. Critics may therefore refer to Sanders as Trump-like or isolationist.  However, Sanders lays down some examples of situations in which he would advocate the use of force:
• Cautious and limited use of force: “As a member of Congress, I have supported the use of force only when it was a last resort and America’s vital interests were at stake. I opposed the first Gulf War, as did many other Members of Congress, because I believed that there was a way to achieve our goals without bloodshed, through sanctions and concerted diplomatic action. I supported the use of force to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. And, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us. I regret that President Bush did not use that authority properly, and that American combat troops remained there too long. I voted against the war in Iraq, and knew it was the right vote then, and most people recognize it was the right vote today. The only mission President Bush and his neo-conservative friends accomplished was to destabilize an entire region, and create the environment for al-Qaeda and ISIS to flourish.” This may be the kernel that composes a hypothetical “Sanders Doctrine”: The use of force as a last result, and only then to prevent mass murder and self-defense.

Why are these inadequate? What do we need? A shift beyond imperialism and isolationism to internationalism. 

It is my opinion that the United States should focus in the long run on the improvement of the international system itself. Each of the candidates has not fundamentally addressed the root causes of the problems identified, namely, the lack of a system of global governance to solve problems individual states are unable to. It should be relatively obvious that Trump does not care about the world-system. His idea of a good world is one in which America is strong. In an increasingly interdependent world in which the borders between nation-states are dissolving, this nationalist position is as impractical as it is immoral. As for Clinton and Sanders, they seem to be focused on individual solutions to individual problems, holding out the promise of “international cooperation” as an antidote to climate change, terrorism, and trade. Though I am more sympathetic to their arguments, Sanders in particular, without a fundamentally just international system, none of these problems are solvable. Below I explain a little about our current international system, and posit some ways in which it must be reformed.

After World War II, the United States set up multiple interwoven systems to guarantee its global dominance. They include Bretton Woods, the system that regulated monetary relations globally, the IMF, the World Bank, and the United Nations. When I say “global dominance”, I do not mean to indicate that U.S. hegemony was totally negative in nature. It did allow a degree of prosperity globally, especially in U.S.-aligned states in Western Europe and Asia. However, it was a system that guaranteed the supremacy of the United States and, to a lesser extent, the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, France, Russia, and China.

Conventional wisdom says the United States is a hegemon in decline. Regardless of the accuracy of this statement, we are certainly seeing what Fareed Zakaria describes as the “rise of the rest”, specifically the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) as well as many states in Africa. We are facing a century in which the United States will not have overwhelming authority it possessed in the past. And despite the horrible human rights abuses of the United States and its allies since 1945, I am hesitant to declare that China, the probable next hegemon, would be somehow more peaceful or responsible. A responsible world wouldn’t be bound by American or Chinese dominance. What then must we do?

The international system is changing, and the United States foreign policy apparatus should use its clout to move towards a more inclusive, just, democratic, and peaceful world order. How do we do this? A strong commitment to human rights, for one. It is difficult to speak as a moral authority when the nation is engaged in unjust wars, and the intelligence apparatus supports kleptocrats in the developing world. In the long run, we should strengthen, reform, and reshape multilateral institutions like the UN. The international system should be just and more permanent than whoever is in power.

I can’t give you specifics as to what an ideal world-system would look like. But I do know that Trump’s nationalism, and to a lesser extent the immediacy of Clinton and Sanders’ ideas, are fundamentally incapable of moving toward such a system.

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What happened at the Nevada Democratic Convention is awful and inexcusable, and Sanders needs to apologize; demand that his supporters stop such terrible, hateful, stupid, counterproductive behavior; and then carry on campaigning and talking about issues until the convention, by the end of which he should strongly endorse Clinton.

All that being said, a lot of what Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, Koz, and Paul Krugman are saying is overwrought, and I don’t pay much mind to them anyway, because they made it clear from the start they don’t like Sanders. All of them have been beating up on him for months.

I am going to engage in some you-tooism here. Not on the behavior of some of his supporters, which is despicable, but on “feeling sorry” [as Krugman said about some Sanders supporters]—for Clinton supporters. I am truly shocked and disappointed by people who call themselves strong left-wing liberals who have been reduced to defending Clinton’s positions and actions on a wide range of things on which they would never have defended anyone else.

I appreciate Clinton supporters who say, “I agree with Sanders on the issues but I don’t think he can win.” I understand that. But I have seen way too many Clinton supporters who defend her blatant changing of positions depending on who she is talking to (as we just saw last week with coal miners), her being buddies with people like Kissinger and Blankfein, her multi-million dollar contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street interests, her hawkishness on foreign policy, her actions in Honduras, her refusal to support Elizabeth Warren on major issues like breaking up banks and reinstating Glass-Stegall, her opposition to an immediate moratorium on fracking, her turning back decades of Democratic support for single-payer health care by saying “it will never, ever happen” and chastising people who support it, and several other items.

For those of us who care about issues, this has all been a very sorry sight. We will vote for Clinton in November because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. But don’t sugar-coat her poor position on issues.

None of which is to excuse Sanders for not forcefully condemning the actions of his supporters and demanding that those behaviors stop. It is extremely maddening and disappointing that he has not done that.

I do want to add one addendum here, lest I be accused of being a fraud and hypocrite this fall: I did not mean to imply that I will vote for Clinton only because Trump is worse. In spite of my many and major policy differences with her, I also admire her in some ways. I think she has good experience, I like her strength on other issues including guns and reproductive rights, and I admire her for standing up to all the phony scandals and other crap that the Republicans have thrown her way. And I am excited to vote for the first woman president!

Much like I feel about Obama– I strongly disagree with him on some issues and on some things he has done, but overall I greatly admire him and think he has been an excellent president. I am optimistic that Clinton can be the same.

And I also recognize that this mainly a fight between liberals, albeit moderate liberals and left liberals. It’s not like we’re all conservatives!

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Bernie Sanders has some pretty great ideas about what America should look like. Medicare-for-all and tuition-free college are two of his biggest proposals. Those ideas have a lot of support and have long been popular with progressives.

However, there are some who don’t think Medicare-for-all and tuition-free college are possible. It’s too hard, they say. It’s too expensive, they say. It will never pass Congress, they say. Where’s that progressive can-do attitude?

We can do it. It is possible. And I can prove it.

Humans—and Americans in particular–have accomplished some amazing feats against the odds and despite overwhelming backlash. For centuries, we have been fighting uphill battles—and winning. Let’s examine a few of them, briefly.

1. American Independence. The battle for independence started long before the war, which officially began in 1775 and ended in our favor in 1783. This was a decades-long, bloody struggle. Historians not only put the odds against us. John E. Ferling, an expert American Revolution historian, said our victory was “Almost a Miracle.”
2. Ending slavery. It took an entire century and a civil war to abolish slavery in the United States. Slavery existed in this country from the Declaration of Independence until the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced across the country after the war ended, in 1865. Abolition pitted families against each other and cost us many lives. One of our greatest presidents was assassinated by a Confederate sympathizer. But we didn’t let any of that stop us from doing the right thing.
3. Women’s suffrage. The suffrage movement is thought to have picked up steam in the 1840’s but it was 1920 before women won the legal right to vote. For 142 years, risking arrest and abuse, women fought for the right to participate in our own government. We still haven’t given up fighting for equality. We still don’t have the right to make our own healthcare decisions or to pay equity.
4. Civil Rights. As with women, African-Americans have been fighting a long and frightful battle for basic rights. Protestors faced physical assault, arrest, and even death to obtain desegregation and an end to discrimination. As highlighted by a rash of police shootings, we are still fighting this battle as well. We have made great strides but there is work yet to be done to end institutionalized racism. If #BlackLivesMatter is any indication, this is a fight we are still willing and ready to participate in.
5. Space travel. It was said to be an impossible dream, a waste of time and resources. It was so mind boggling, that conspiracies still exist that claim the moon landing was faked. First, we entered space, escaping the earth’s gravitational pull. Then humans set foot on the moon. Most recently, and again despite the improbability, we landed a probe on Mars. We landed a probe on a planet that lies, at it’s very closest, 35 million miles from Earth. What’s more—you guessed it—we haven’t given up. Human occupation of Mars is very real and in the making.
6. Modern medicine. Cures for small pox, polio, and other horrific diseases are commonplace. We can transplant just about any human organ–and grow new ones in labs! Soldiers who have lost their legs can walk again with amazingly accurate prosthetics. We can restore hearing to the deaf. We restore life to the clinically dead. Our medical achievements have no end in sight and new discoveries are made practically every day. We are still fighting cancer and other life-shattering diseases, we haven’t give up.
7. The Internet. It’s still amazing to me. I can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world with Internet access. We can share ideas, keep in touch with loved ones, innovate, create, problem solve, learn, educate, ask, find a job, petition governments, protest wrongful deeds, hold meetings, navigate the earth with maps, watch cat videos…all via the Internet. Google. Need I say more? And we’re not giving it up. The fight for net neutrality—the Internet as we know it—is on.
8. Transportation. About a century ago, we were still using horses and carriages to get around. Of course, we’ve always had these two digits called legs but they aren’t very efficient for long travel. Take a moment to marvel that you can traverse the country in a matter of mere hours. I can see my sister in Vermont 6-7 hours from now with a major credit card and the click of a mouse. But mass transit wasn’t an easy achievement. By now, we all know the difficulties of the railroad, for example. There were human, economic, and political ramifications to laying tracks across the entire country but we toiled, innovated, and achieved.
9. Marriage equality. Victory! We have all lived through this so I don’t need to elaborate much here. Suffice it to say this was a long, arduous, and uphill battle against rightwing obstruction and extremist ideology. Some still refuse to accept that LGBT’s have the same rights, but we don’t allow them to ruin it for the rest of us and we’re not about to give up the fight for equality.
10. Germany’s renewable energy. Okay, Germany is not America. I’m not that terrible at geography. But they are a prime example of humanity’s best achievements, through hard work and demand. Maybe you have already heard, but Germany recently achieved 100% of their power demands through clean, renewable energy. It was not a permanent achievement, they are currently at about 80% renewable energy consistently. But this is a huge deal and indicative of what we can accomplish when we are united on a cause. The cause being saving humankind from global warming, in this case.

People died (and are still) fighting these battles. They have been arrested; physically assaulted; pepper-sprayed and gassed; their lives, homes, and families destroyed. They sacrificed, they toiled, they cried, they raged. But they persevered. We persevered. We have endured. We continue to fight.

We can do this. We can give everyone an equal opportunity for success. We can have Medicare-for-all. We can have tuition-free college. We can have it all. We just have to be willing to fight and yes, sacrifice, for something we want. Bernie Sanders is willing. So are millions of Americans and people around the world whose hopeful eyes are on us. How about you?

What great human achievement inspires you?

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As much as I admire economist Paul Krugman, I am disappointed that he has joined the camp of those who believe Americans are no longer capable of high-minded goals. In his January 22nd New York Times column, Krugman ridiculed Sen. Bernie Sanders for trying to “conjure up the better angels of America’s nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions.”

It is precisely because of his appeal to our “better angels” that millions of American voters want Sanders to be our next president. The contrast with the other political party is painfully obvious. Their candidates appeal to the kind of animal instincts that human evolution should have left behind. Fear and selfishness may be necessary in a life and death situation, but they should not be the main drivers of decision making by intelligent members of a democratic republic.

Supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate who offers baby steps toward progressive goals have hammered into our heads that a President Sanders would be hamstrung in his goals by an obstructionist Republican Congress. Why are we assuming that Congress will always be controlled by corporate toadies and war hawks?

Imagine where we would be today if the American colonists believed they would never be able to defeat the British monarchy. Imagine if President Jefferson had thought it too expensive and difficult a task for Lewis and Clark to explore the land west of the Mississippi River.

Imagine how much longer women would have waited for the right to vote if Susan B. Anthony and other brave souls hadn’t sacrificed themselves for the cause.

There have been many comparisons of our economic situation today with that of the late 19th century “Gilded Age.” The similarities are striking. Massive wealth and power held by a few families and corporations. Desperate workers being mistreated by nameless, often foreign, company owners. Children growing up in poverty with no hope for a better future. That was the 1890’s, and who stepped up to bellow the need for reform? Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, the “trust buster.”

We need a trust buster today with the guts to call a spade a spade. Sadly, we don’t have muckraker journalists going after billionaire hedge fund managers today the way Ida Tarbell and others went after the oil and meat packing companies one hundred years ago.

Wall Street is off limits.The Walton and Koch families are off limits.The military-industrial complex is off limits.

Why is that? Look no further than how political campaigns are financed and how quickly our supposed “representatives” jump ship when offered a deal too good to pass up.
No wonder the power brokers hate and fear Bernie Sanders. He is forcing us to look behind the curtain and see who is pulling the levers that keep the majority of workers desperate for any crumbs that fall from the table of the filthy rich.

Americans traditionally set their sights on higher goals than “incremental improvements” or “minor adjustments” to existing programs. If previous generations could build massive projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the interstate highway system and the NASA space program, why can’t we?

Defeatism does not produce heroic leaders or great accomplishments. The choice is ours. What kind of future do we want for our children and grandchildren?

Think about that as you head to the voting booth this spring.

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It has been very disconcerting to watch voting rights erode in America over the past 30 years or so. For those of us naïve enough to think that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the 19th Amendment, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act settled the thorniest issues around voting rights—we have been forced to rethink our assumptions.

The term “erosion” is not really accurate, though. Eroding seems too passive a verb for what has been happening: the deliberate attempt, by politically motivated legislatures, to shrink voting rights for people whose votes they’d rather not count.

I seem to remember from my 8th grade Civics class that the history of voting rights in America has, traditionally, been one of expansion. The reversal of that trend, via radical, anti-democracy, anti-voting policies initiated primarily by right-wing Republicans, is a shameful blot on a country that claims to be a democracy [“the greatest democracy in the world!”]

So, I feel encouraged by some recent developments that may indicate the beginning of a pendulum swing back in the appropriate direction. Here are a few, in no particular order:

Automatic voter registration
On the campaign trail, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both called for automatic voter registration for everyone at age 18. Voting rights advocates [wait, why is voting-rights advocacy even necessary?] note that these declarations represent a breakthrough, as voting reform has been absent as a front-and-center issue in presidential campaigns for at least 50 years.

Further along this spectrum is Oregon, whose state legislature passed a bill in March 2015 putting that idea into practice.

According to the Brennan Center,

…the new law automatically registers eligible citizens who have driver’s licenses (and do not ask to remain unregistered). While there had been strong and bipartisan efforts across a majority of states to modernize voter registration, Oregon’s law went a step further, giving government the primary responsibility for ensuring that every eligible citizen is registered.

Soon after Oregon’s bill was signed into law, legislators in 17 states plus the District of Columbia and the United States Congress introduced similar bills that would automatically register citizens who interact with motor vehicle offices and ensure that voter information is electronically and securely sent to the voter rolls.

The Brennan Center estimates that the new procedure in Oregon will immediately add 300,000 citizens to the voting rolls.

Making Election Day a national holiday

It has been clear for many years that the first-Tuesday-in-November Election Day schedule is out of sync with contemporary life. Many states have found ways to adapt, mostly by offering early voting days and extended voting hours [both of which have been under attack in the 21st century]. But, because most voting still takes place on a single day, during slightly extended business hours, it’s hard for people to get to the polls, let alone wait in long lines for their turn. It’s also hard to get people to work for election authorities—and the most qualified, such as government workers, people accustomed to checking numbers, workers comfortable with electronic equipment, etc., are otherwise occupied with their day jobs.

Recognizing this disconnect in the most essential activity of a democracy, Bernie Sanders recently introduced a bill into the U.S. Senate to declare presidential Election Day a national, public holiday, making it more convenient for more people to vote, as well as to do the vital work of ensuring fairness and accountability at the polls.

Sanders is realistic in his expectations: Making Election Day a national holiday won’t cure Americans of their embarrassing indifference to voting, but it would make an important statement about a fundamental element of the American democratic system.

In introducing the bill, Sanders said:

We should be doing everything possible to make it easier for people to participate in the political process. Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a vibrant democracy.

Reversing punitive voter ID requirements

In a decision that gives hope to those of us who see voting as a right, rather than a privilege, the 5th Circuit Court recently struck down Texas’ highly restrictive voter ID law. According to the Brennan Center for Democracy, the Texas law discriminated against blacks and Hispanics and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Texas ID law is one of the strictest of its kind in the country. It requires voters to bring a government-issued photo ID to the polls. Accepted forms of identification include a driver’s license, a United States passport, a concealed-handgun license and an election identification certificate issued by the State Department of Public Safety.

[Note that, under Texas law, you could use, as proof of identity, your concealed-carry handgun license, but not your state-issued student ID, your voter registration card, or your utility bill.]

According to Think Progress:

The plaintiffs, including individual voters, civil rights groups and the Department of Justice, said it was discriminatory because a far greater share of poor people and minorities do not have these forms of identification and lack easy access to birth certificates or other documents needed to obtain them.

In its ruling, the noted that “the lack of evidence that voter fraud was a threat and cited expert testimony that about 600,000 Texans, mainly poor, black and Hispanic, lacked the newly required IDs and often faced obstacles in obtaining them.”

Previously, a lower court had ruled that the law “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote” and blocked its enforcement.

It’s also worth noting that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued the ruling striking down the Texas voter ID requirements, is considered one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country. Apparently, Texas’s rules went too far even for a conservative court. That’s significant.

Gerrymandering

There’s also some good news on the gerrymandering front. The Florida Supreme Court [recently] ruled that the state legislature’s redistricting plans ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election are tainted by “unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and its incumbents” and ordered new congressional districts to be redrawn within 100 days.

In a 5-2 decision the court found the GOP’s redistricting process in 2012 violated the the state’s Fair District amendment, enacted two years earlier to safeguard against legislatures redrawing congressional boundaries to give favor to a political party—a process known as gerrymandering.

The judges affirmed a previous ruling by a trial court, which found that Republican “operatives” and political consultants “did in fact conspire to manipulate and influence the redistricting process.”

Eight out of Florida’s 27 congressional districts will be redrawn.

It’s a victory for voting rights, and a precedent-setting decision that could influence future gerrymandering fights.

Susan Goodman, who heads up the Florida League of Women Voters said:

This was the fox guarding the henhouse. In gerrymandered states, lawmakers end up choosing their voters, rather than voters choosing their legislators,” Goodman said, adding that the ruling “sets a precedent for many states across the country who are dealing with gerrymandered districts.”

The state court decision follows a similar anti-gerrymandering ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court last month, in which the justices voted 5-4 to uphold an Arizona ballot initiative that took redistricting power away from elected politicians and gave it to a nonpartisan commission.

We’re not there yet

All of these developments are encouraging. But they are only baby steps toward returning our country to the democratic system it could and should be. And they will undoubtedly be staunchly opposed by the cheaters and vote-riggers who think it’s just fine to win elections by denying the vote to their perceived opponents and people whose interests they don’t share or bother to represent.

And it’s cold comfort to know that, even though women there have recently gained the right to vote, at least we’re more advanced than Saudi Arabia.

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Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are putting a new focus on the Glass-Steagall Act, which was, unfortunately, repealed in 1999 and led directly to the financial crises we have faced ever since. Here’s a bit of history of this legislative debacle from an older post on Occasional Planet published several years ago :

On November 4, 1999, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) took to the floor of the senate to make an impassioned speech against the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, (alternately known as Gramm Leach Biley, or the “Financial Modernization Act”) Repeal of Glass-Steagall would  allow banks to merge with insurance companies and investments houses. He said “I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation, I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible.”

According to Sam Stein, writing in 2009 in the Huffington Post, only eight senators voted against the repeal. Senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now in the Obama administration praised the repeal as the “most important breakthrough in the world of finance and politics in decades”

According to Stein, Dorgan warned that banks would become “too big to fail” and claimed that Congress would “look back in a decade and say we should not have done this.” The repeal of Glass Steagall, of course, was one of several bad policies that helped lead to the current economic crisis we are in now.

Dorgan wasn’t entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin, Richard Bryan, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders also cast nay votes. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone opposed the bill, and warned at the time that Congress was “about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”

Democratic Senators had sufficient knowledge about the dangers of the repeal of Glass Steagall, but chose to ignore it.  Plenty of experts warned that it would be impossible to “discipline” banks once the legislation was passed, and that they would get too big and complex to regulate. Editorials against repeal appeared in the New York Times and other mainstream venues, suggesting that if the new megabanks were to falter, they could take down the entire global economy, which is exactly what happened. Stein quotes Ralph Nader who said at the time, “We will look back at this and wonder how the country was so asleep. It’s just a nightmare.”

According to Stein:

“The Senate voted to pass Gramm-Leach-Bliley by a vote of 90-8 and reversed what was, for more than six decades, a framework that had governed the functions and reach of the nation’s largest banks. No longer limited by laws and regulations commercial and investment banks could now merge. Many had already begun the process, including, among others, J.P. Morgan and Citicorp. The new law allowed it to be permanent. The updated ground rules were low on oversight and heavy on risky ventures. Historically in the business of mortgages and credit cards, banks now would sell insurance and stock.

Nevertheless, the bill did not lack champions, many of whom declared that the original legislation — forged during the Great Depression — was both antiquated and cumbersome for the banking industry. Congress had tried 11 times to repeal Glass-Steagall. The twelfth was the charm.

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” said then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

“I welcome this day as a day of success and triumph,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.).

“The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,” said Sen. Bob Kerrey, (D-Neb.).

“If we don’t pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive.”

Unfortunately, the statement by Chuck Schumer sounds very much like it was prepared by a lobbyist. This vote underscores the way in which our elected officials are so heavily swayed by corporate and banking money that our voices and needs become irrelevant. It is why we need publicly funded elections. Democratic senators, the so-called representatives of the people, fell over themselves to please their Wall Street donors knowing full well there were dangers for the country at large, for ordinary Americans, in repealing Glass-Steagall.

It is important to hold Democratic senators (along with current members of the Obama administration) accountable for the significant role they have played in the current economic crisis that has caused so much suffering for ordinary Americans. In case you were wondering, the current Democratic Senators who voted yes to repeal the Glass-Steagall act are the following:

Daniel Akaka – Max Baucus – Evan Bayh – Jeff Bingaman – Kent Conrad – Chris Dodd – Dick Durbin – Dianne Feinstein – Daniel Inouye – Tim Johnson – John Kerry – Herb Kohl – Mary Landrieu – Frank Lautenberg – Patrick Leahy – Carl Levin – Joseph Lieberman – Blanche Lincoln – Patty Murray – Jack Reed – Harry Reid – Jay Rockefeller – Chuck Schumer – Ron Wyden

Former House members who voted for repeal who are current Senators.

Mark Udall [as of 2010] – Debbie Stabenow – Bob Menendez – Tom Udall -Sherrod Brown

No longer in the Senate, or passed away, but who voted for repeal:

Joe Biden -Ted Kennedy -Robert Byrd

These Democratic senators would like to forget or make excuses for their enthusiastic vote on the repeal of Glass Steagall, but it is important to hold them accountable for helping their bank donors realize obscene profits while their constituents lost jobs, savings and homes. And it is important to demand that they serve the interests of the American people.

The post Glass-Steagall: Warren and Sanders bring it back into focus appeared first on Occasional Planet.