Dear Friends and Colleagues,

An occasional message from Peter Dreier 

This message is all about the Bernie Sanders campaign, but since it is a national holiday about patriotism, I wanted to include this piece by Dick Flacks and me, "How Progressives Should Celebrate This July 4th," linking it to the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-President Obama’s oration last week in Charleston.
The Sanders campaign is surging, surprising everyone with the large turnouts in Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin (over 10,000 people at a rally in Madison a few days ago), and elsewhere.  He has raised much more money, mostly in small donations, than anyone expected.  He is attracting lots of people eager to volunteer for his campaign, hiring more staff, and picking up some significant endorsements. He is closing the gap in the polls with Hillary Clinton, including in key states with early primaries and caucuses. His campaign is based on a principled progressive agenda that, unlike any other figure in American politics (with the exception of Elizabeth Warren), he is able to explain in straightforward language that has a broad appeal. 
As a result of all this, Sanders is getting lots of media attention. The right-wing media echo chamber (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Weekly Standard, etc) is demonizing him as a dangerous radical but also hoping that his growing appeal will hurt Clinton and help a Republican win the presidency.  The mainstream media (NYT, ABC, Newsweek, etc) is taking advantage of the Sanders surge to create the drama of a political horse race, while asking whether a strong Sanders showing will help or hurt Clinton’s chances to win the White House. The progressive media (The Nation, The Progressive, American Prospect, MSNBC, etc) and blogosphere is greeting the Sanders surge with enthusiasm and excitement but also raising questions about whether he’s in it to win or to push Hillary to the left, whether he can raise enough money to mount a credible national campaign, and whether his presidential campaign, win or lose, can also help strengthen the progressive movement (and the Democratic Party’s progressive wing) for the long haul.

The Sanders campaign has surged so quickly, and things are changing so rapidly, that it may be difficult to grasp what it means.  With that in mind, here is a reading list (all from 2015 unless indicated otherwise) that may be useful for those who want to understand what is happening and to put it in historical perspective. You can also find out more at the Sanders campaign website.

• Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. This book includes the text of Sanders’ eight-hour speech on the Senate floor on Friday, December 10, 2010, that hit a nerve with the American people. Millions followed the speech online until the traffic crashed the Senate server.
• Bernie Sanders, Outsider in the House.  In this 1998 book,  Sanders tells the story of his remarkable career as a progressive activist and public official, including his eight years a mayor of Burlington, Vermont and his campaign to win Vermont’s lone seat in the House of Representatives.
• Bernie Sanders, “Why Not?” Huffington Post, June 30
• Sarah Lyall, “Bernie Sanders’s Revolutionary Roots Were Nurtured in ’60s Vermont,” New York Times, July 3
• Tamara Keith, "Leaving Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders Found a Home in Vermont," NPR, June 20
• Peter Dreier and Pierre Clavel, “What Kind of Mayor Was Bernie Sanders?” The Nation,  June 2
• Tim Murphy, "How Bernie Sanders Learned to Be a Real Politician," Mother Jones, May 26
• Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, “Turn Left on Main Street,” Moyers & Company, June 3
• Stewart Acuff, “Bernie Sanders CAN Be President,” Daily Kos, July 3
• Sophia Tesfaye, “The Real Reasons Bernie Sanders is Transforming the Election,” Salon, July 3
• John Wagner and Ann Gearan, “In Bernie Sanders, An Unlikely, But Real, Threat to Hillary Clinton,” Washington Post, June 28
• Peter Dreier,  "Is Bernie Sanders Too Radical for America?"American Prospect, June 30
• Ben Kamisar, “Sanders Raises $15 Million in His First Two Months,” The Hill, July 2
• Elliot Smilowitz, “Sanders Draws Massive Crowd in Wisconsin,” The Hill, July 1
• Ruth Coniff, "Bernie Sanders Comes to Wisconsin," The Progressive, July 1
• Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs, "’Grassroots movement working’: Bernie Sanders gains on the Clinton machine," The Guardian, July 3
• Cassie Spodak, "Sanders Snags Key Endorsement in New Hampshire," CNN, July 4
• Dave Jamieson, “Labor Leader Joins Bernie Sanders’ Campaign,” Huffington Post, July 1
• Eric Pianin and Rob Garver, "Where Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley Stand on the Issues," Fiscal Times, June 17
• Ben Schreckinger, "When Bernie Met Hillary," Politico, June 17
• Michael Warren, "Bernie’s Moment Now a Movement," Weekly Standard, July 2
• Jill Lawrence, “How Bernie Sanders Fought for Our Veterans,” Politico, July 2
• Chad Merda, “Bernie Sanders Draws Major Ground on Hillary Clinton in Poll,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 2 
• Peter Nicholas,“Bernie Sanders Draws Crowds With His Matter-of-Fact Message,” Wall Street Journal, June 6
• John Nichols, “Ready for Warren Becomes Ready to Fight And Backs Bernie Sanders,” The Nation, June 19

• Joan Walsh, "The Mainstream Media’s Bernie Sanders Trap," Salon, July 2
• Adam Hilton, "Bernie and the Search for New Politics," Jacobin, June 14
• Peter Dreier, "Bernie Sanders’ Socialism is as American as Apple Pie," Huffington Post, May 5
• Harvey Kaye, "Social Democracy Is 100% American," Moyers & Company, July 3
• John Nichols, The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism, 2011
• Michael Kazin, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, 2012
• Peter Dreier, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, 2012

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The opinions expressed are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of Occidental College or its employees. Occidental College is not responsible for the content of this communication.

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