Of the many expertly produced goose-bump moments at the Democratic National Convention last month, one of the most moving tributes came when a retired nurse from suburban Ohio introduced a video about President Obama.
Sharon Belkofer lost her son Thomas in Afghanistan in 2010, when his NATO convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber. How did this 73-year-old Gold Star mother choose to honor her son’s sacrifice? She ran for her local school board, and won.
“Maybe,” she told the delegates, “this sweet old lady could still make a difference.”
I admit I teared up when I heard the story. I thought of the many disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters who were heckling the speakers that night, some of whom were pledging to boycott the election in November. I wanted them all to heed Belkofer’s example. You say you want a revolution? Well, this is the gritty, unglamorous way to get there.
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Despite the excitement of national campaigns, political change rarely comes charging in on a presidential steed. It took decades for same-sex marriage to become law of the land, and nearly 150 years from the nation’s founding for women to get the vote. Universal health care was first proposed by President Harry Truman. These movements took hold not in the heady atmosphere of a presidential campaign, but in state and regional laboratories, with citizen petitions and community meetings and local officeholders doing the difficult, dull work of democracy. What a waste of all that progressive energy if the Sanders crusade were to dissipate in a snit of disappointment!
So I was heartened to learn of A Brand New Congress, an effort launched by a group of Sanders supporters to replace change-averse incumbents of either party with new candidates who will run on the Sanders platform in the 2018 mid-term elections. The group is organizing in 100 cities this summer, and it reports that 44 people attended a kickoff session earlier this month at Doyle’s, the Jamaica Plain watering hole that has been a locus of progressive politics for years.
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Selina Policar, a national event team co-ordinator for the campaign who spoke at the Doyle’s event, said the group already is accepting nominations for candidates to run on the BNC slate.
“Our ideal candidate is not someone who has wanted since childhood to be a politician,” Policar said. “We want the people who would normally never want to be in Congress, because they have a soul.”
The BNC platform is clearly progressive, including large public investments in renewable energy, higher education, and infrastructure. Mostly, however, the aim is to cleanse the system of special interest money. This, organizers believe, is a national yearning that will resonate in Republican and Democratic districts alike.
“Because politics are so absurdly corrupt right now, there is a lot of crossover between red and blue,” said Phoebe Bodkin, 21, a student at Wesleyan University who attended the Doyle’s event.
The clean-sweep strategy has some promise, since Congress has even lower favorability ratings than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and many low-turnout congressional primaries can be decided by just a few thousand votes. But what the Brand New Congress really needs is 50 brand new state legislatures, because redistricting in 2020 is the next best chance to reverse the gerrymandering that has drawn congressional districts to favor Republicans. This is where another Sanders spin-off, Our Revolution, comes in. This group, independent of Brand New Congress, is focusing on down-ballot races in the current campaign year, including those for legislative seats. Sanders plans a live-feed broadcast later this week to whip up enthusiasm — and cash.
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It’s easy to be skeptical that either of these efforts will bear fruit. Previous attempts to harness the energy of discontinued campaigns — Howard Dean’s comes to mind — have foundered. Even after winning, Obama couldn’t sustain enough grassroots support for his agenda to counter the Tea Party juggernaut of 2010.
Still, here’s hoping the erstwhile Sandernistas disprove the doubters.
“It’s going to be a long process before we live in a democracy again,” said Bodkin, sounding ready for the work. Maybe, like Sharon Belkofer, these passionate idealists can still make a difference.
Renée Loth's column appears regularly in the Globe.