Sanders does his best to unify
Bridge Over Troubled Water was the song Paul Simon sang to the Democratic National Convention. No doubt the nearly 2000 delegates pledged to Bernie Sanders would have preferred their theme song, America. Simon gifted Sanders the rights to the song at the very beginning of his extraordinary quest.
The campaign advertisement it accompanied was easily the best of the 2015-16 primary season.
There is something in the song that touches the hearts of more than the ageing Baby Boomers who recall the song from their long-haired, hitch-hiking days in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps it is the mixing of what is, after all, a love story, with an account of being caught up in a much larger narrative.
‘‘Cathy, I’m lost,’’ whispers America’s protagonist. ‘‘I’m empty and aching – and I don’t know why.’’ All those college kids who flocked to Saunders’s banner, did they too feel the tug of history’s currents pulling them out into the at-once thrilling and terrifying depths of political commitment?
‘‘All come to look for America’’ runs the refrain. It was both a description and a challenge. Tens of thousands accepted the call from this improbably grandfatherly ‘‘democratic socialist’’, and to their astonishment and delight, Sanders’s quest took on the bright aura of plausibility. Was it possible that the white-haired senator from Vermont might win the Democratic nomination?
No. Life is not a song and quests are seldom fulfilled in the way that those who set out upon them imagine. Hillary Clinton drew her political power from a grid several orders of magnitude larger than Saunders’s. Twenty-five years of ‘‘third way’’ Democratic Party politics were not about to be overturned by a college graduates’ crusade.
Not overturned, that was too much to hope for, but, even in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, Clinton’s people were ‘‘feeling the Bern’’. Like it or not (and if Wikileaks is to be believed, they did not like it at all), the Clinton juggernaut was being influenced by the Sanders insurgency. Barack Obama had beaten Hillary Clinton to the nomination in 2008 on the strength of his famous slogan: ‘‘Yes we can.’’ Now, thanks to Sanders’s ‘‘political revolution’’ from below, Clinton was making sure of the nomination by declaring: ‘‘Yes I will.’’
This was the message Sanders had, somehow, to deliver to his followers as, after a poignant reprise of his ‘‘America’’ campaign ad, he stepped on to the stage of Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Centre. They weren’t about to make it easy for him. The cheers and the chants went on and on as if, by dint of their undiminishing fervour, they could will another, happier outcome.
For there was sadness in the faces of Sander’s delegates – even among the cheers. One black woman looked on, her face a carved portrait of despair. Tears rolled unchecked down the cheeks of another young woman as she held aloft a placard promising ‘‘A Future to Believe In.’’
What followed was 30 minutes of uncompromising political education. Sanders acknowledged his followers’ disappointment, but he refused to let them wallow in it. He may not have won the nomination, but he and his movement had played a crucial role in writing what he called ‘‘the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party’’. And, like Wendy reattaching Peter Pan’s shadow, Sanders fastened Clinton to the Democratic Party platform with chains of rhetorical steel. The revolution would go on.
Pondering Sanders’s masterful address, it occurred to me that Bridge Over Troubled Water was the right choice after all. It’s a song of two parts. In the first, the singer declares: ‘‘When you’re down and out/When you’re on the street/When evening falls so hard/I will comfort you.’’ In the second part, the focus shifts: ‘‘Sail on silver girl/Sail on by/Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way.’’
Yes, this is Hillary Clinton’s time to shine. She has devoted her entire life to the hugely difficult task of changing the United States of America. That the task has required compromises goes without saying. It may even be true that in her suppers with the Devil, she brought too short a spoon. But, it is not only in comparison with the alternative that Clinton shines. She will make a fine president in her own right.
And Sanders will be sailing right behind.
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