Bernie Sanders in Iowa

     "What you know and I know is that the only way we rebuild the crumbling middle class, the only way we provide dignity and security for tens of millions of workers is when we rebuild the trade union movement in this country."

              Bernie Sanders, August 21

Bernie Sanders said a class war is underway in America, and the working class must win it.

Bernie Sanders announced a plan: the Workplace Democracy Plan, at a convention of the Iowa AFL-CIO.

He said his goal was to re-establish a large trade union segment in America, with a specific goal of doubling the number of trade union members in America in the first four years of his presidency. He said that working people in America want to join a union but are stopped from doing it because of employer opposition.

CLICK: Workplace Democracy

The Workplace Democracy Plan would make it easier to form unions. It could be done by petition alone, and when 50% of the workers, plus one, in a workplace signed a petition to form a union, a union would be formed at that moment. Under current law there is another step and it takes time to implement it, time that the employer can use to discourage a yes vote.

His plan would allow workers to strike against the federal government and it would ban hiring of replacement workers. 

He would raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. 

He condemned the high levels of pay received by corporate executives, and he condemned their practice of moving manufacturing to China, Mexico, or other low wage countries.

Sanders addressed workplace issues of the gig economy, where workers who are essentially employees under the control of an organization are defined as contractors, and incidences of low level employees being defined as supervisors to avoid paying them overtime. He condemned those practices.

These comments were well received by the 300 or so union leaders in the hall in Iowa. The applause was more scattered for his call for Medicare for All. Unions have negotiated for private health insurance plans which would disappear in a universal Medicare for All.

Takeaway: Class struggle

It is war, not kumbaya. Not unity. Not cooperation. The rich have gotten richer and working people have gotten screwed. Half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Sanders posits an economic system of sharp conflict: employee vs. employer, working people vs. corporate elites. He draws those lines and he declares he is firmly on the side of the workers. 

CLICK: Class war is underway.

The employers are not good guys doing the best they can in a difficult world. He uses words like "ruthlessly exploit." He said :

   "For 45 years there has been a war in this country waged by the corporate elite against the working class of America. . . and what we have seen is the decimation of working families all across this country while the richest people and larger corporations have done phenomenally well. If there is going to be class war in this country, it's time the working class won that war."

This populist sentiment exists on both left and right, and Trump addressed it with "drain the swamp," a task he voiced in the campaign. Hillary's establishment message fell right into Trump's hands in 2016.  She was the swamp.

As president Trump diverted the attention of the right-populist base away from corporate elites and toward immigrants, reparations, American socialists, and foreign trade. 

Draining the corporate elite swamp is now the message identified with Democrats, voiced most clearly by Sanders. 

Sanders--for better or worse--is a disrupter. Sanders says the enemy is within, Americans at the top--greedy employers--and this message disrupts the political alignment that was underway, a Democratic Party coalition of the women, people of color, and the professional people in suburbs of moderate tastes who want liberal reform and who are anti-racists. These are the people in the 40-plus red and purple suburban districts who elected new Democratic Members of Congress switching the House majority in 2018. 

Many of those professional people want a unity message, not a class warfare one. Often, they are the boss, or are married to the boss, or are in management or on a career path that will lead to management. They don't think they are exploiters. They don't want civil war with their employees. They want a safe, reasonable liberal who will improve the status quo, not demolish it.

Sanders presents himself as a war president. He is on the side of working people.

Possibly one of the Democrats will emerge who can bridge that space between progressive and liberal, but Sanders is not choosing to be that person.

That may be the widest lane for a Democrat to win the nomination, but it leaves open another lane: unifier.