The famous linguist and political-left thinker Noam Chomsky has come out in a recent interview on the Jacobian to dampen the hopes and dreams of a Sanders presidency. Chomsky voices his doubts on the ability of a Sanders presidency to make the huge impact his supporters hope he will.
In an interview featured in the Jacobian, Chomsky says:
“Suppose that Sanders won, which is pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections. He would be alone: he doesn’t have congressional representatives, he doesn’t have governors, he doesn’t have support in the bureaucracy, he doesn’t have state legislators; and standing alone in this system, he couldn’t do very much. A real political alternative would be across the board, not just a figure in the White House.”
In other words, liberals are putting their hopes into this one figurehead and this one election. Noam Chomsky, in his usual even-minded analysis, begs us to slow down and consider the situation realistically.
He first reminds us of the unfairness of the American electoral system, with its strong association between winning a presidency and money spent during the campaign.
Say that Bernie did raise enough money to win the election. If that happened, Bernie Sanders would be coming into an overwhelmingly Republican congress and senate. In addition, he’d be walking into a political system overwhelmingly set up against him, both ideologically and economically. The possibility of change would be pretty marginal.
But don’t lose hope yet – and continue working on the Sanders campaign. Noam Chomsky continues on to say:
“In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable — it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.”
As always, Noam Chomsky reminds us that change happens when groups of people come together and pressure systems of power.
That won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen because of one person being elected into the White House. It happens over the long run, little by little, with all hands on deck.
Featured image by Michael Vadon via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
