Here's some claims I've seen given for justifying supporting Bernie Sanders in the 2016 elections and why they're fairly weak arguments.
Claim #1: If Bernie doesn't get the nod, Hillary will, and she's much worse!
On what front is Hillary worse? On the question of Palestine, you'll be hard pressed to find a US politician willing to defending Palestinian sovereignty, especially one who decides to run for president. Hillary has had nothing but contempt for Palestinians for essentially her entire career, and Sanders is not much better. If you care even remotely about anti-imperialism you'll admit this is sort of a huge flaw in your argument.
People have claimed that if Sanders is elected there won't be a ground war in Syria and sanctions against Venezuela will end when in fact Sanders has been nothing but hostile towards Venezuela and Syria:
“They suggested I’d be friendly with Middle East terrorist organizations, and even tried to link me to a dead communist dictator,” the email continued, referring to Venezuela’s three time democratically-elected former president Hugo Chávez. - US Presidential Hopeful Bernie Sanders Slams Chávez in Reposte to Clinton AttackBut speaking of those "Middle East terrorist organizations" Sanders hates so much:
Sen. Bernie Sanders wants Iran and Saudi Arabia to send ground troops into Syria as part of a coalition of Muslim nations to fight ISIS, an idea he’s pressed multiple times as a strategy to fight Islamic extremism in the region. [...] But that wasn’t just an off the cuff gaffe. It’s a point the Vermont senator has repeated in press releases for the past year: The war against ISIS, he said, “must be won primarily by nations in the region—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iran— which must be prepared to send ground troops into action to defeat Islamic extremists.”
- Bernie’s ISIS Strategy Is A DisasterDoesn't sound like a strategy an anti war, anti imperialist candidate would support. Perhaps Sanders was hoping that lumping in Iran with some of the worst sponsors of terrorism and serial human rights violators would make him look progressive. Instead it simply demonstrates that he's willing to follow the White House's strategy on the Middle East: Continue funding Turkey and Saudi Arabia to "fight" US-backed rebels in Syria.
Claim #2: Bernie promised us social democracy! If we don't vote for him we'll literally die!
I'm in over fifty thousand dollars of debt in student loans. Yes, believe it or not, I grew up in the US so this kind of affects me too! I'm not pulling these arguments out of my ass to yell at people!
Name one social democracy. In the past ten years, at least, their social programs have been absolutely destroyed. In the UK, it was New Labour that helped dismantle and privatize the NHS. Scandanavia has suffered massive cuts to its welfare programs. And in Latin America, countries that try to vote in social reforms like Venezuela are treated as terrorist rogue states.
Capitalism is threatened by social welfare programs. Even the most thriving social democracies have taken massive cuts in recent years because the money going into those programs are cutting into profits.
The US Congress knows this. Remember in 2009 when Obama tried to push an extremely capital-friendly health care reform and had it languish for months, suffering dozens of rewrites until it was barely a shadow of its former self? Obama didn't want single payer health care. He wanted to protect insurance companies and so-called Obamacare still leaves millions of people uninsured. It hasn't reduced the costs of health care and many are still uninsured.
What do you think will happen in 2017 when President Sanders begins pushing forward his plans to provide single payer health care? Do you think highly profitable industries in the US, like higher education and health insurance, will simply let these reforms happen?
Even in social democracies, people have to fight to maintain their welfare programs because capitalist countries will eventually try to abolish them. Capitalism does not like even the most toothless, bareboned social democractic system.
Claim #3: Bernie's campaign will open up the dialogue on many progressive issues!
Those issues that have existed before? And that are now being co-opted by opportunistic politicians to gain votes? We have to discuss things like healthcare and education away from the electoral system. They cannot be passed through the ballot box--the US electoral system is incredibly undemocratic as we've discovered recently.
However, does this mean that we as Marxist-Leninists shouldn't participate in electoral politics? Lenin says otherwise:
And thus, here is my purpose: to engage with those who engage with bourgeois politics. Doing so exposes the system for what it is--a farce. The reality is harsh. It isn't about discouraging people but about raising consciousness and elections are a great opportunity for communists to expose the hypocrisies of candidates and, indeed, bourgeois elections themselves.
This is conciousness raising, a revolutionary activity.
In conclusion, far too often I see "leftists" whining about communists nitpicking and being downers about elections while at the same time saying that they harbor no illusions of the system. Yet they engage with bourgeois politics in a way that dismisses working class action and organizing, which I think is the wrong way to do it. Leftists should absolutely know better and therefore I don't believe telling them to knock off the "feel the Bern" nonsense is harsh.
I think plenty of comrades are going to have to do some self criticism and re-evaluate their positions, especially those of you with larger platforms than I. Our duty as Marxist-Leninists during elections is to raise consciousness, not parrot off campaign promises as if we've never heard of the term "populism" before.
