Back in July , while in Michigan for one of the early Democratic Party presidential debates, I was invited to a small dinner with Bernie Sanders. What ensued was a free-flowing discussion of the agents of social and political change, sprinkled with personal recollections of and lessons learned from historical figures β many of whom had been known by my dinner companions. I came away from that evening seeing Bernie Sanders in a different light.
He was, and still is, a candidate for the presidency of the United States. At the same time, he must also be seen as a transformative figure in modern American political history. From his campaign to the present, he has been able to galvanize a progressive political movement and give it organization and direction. He has elevated issues like health care, education, and a decent living wage as fundamental human rights.
And he has created the momentum that helped elect hundreds of like-minded individuals to posts in Congress, state and local government, and party leadership.
As a result, he has arrested the rightward drift of the Democratic Party which had, over the past four decades, become shy of asserting the role of government as an agent of economic change. Owing to the momentum created by Sanders, other Democrats have felt compelled to embrace his progressive agenda.
And so that night, as I looked at the candidates standing behind the 10 podiums on the debate stage, it occurred to me that a decade from now if I were to ask Americans to name the Democrats who ran in this year's contest, most wouldn't be able to name more than two.
