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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 12/5/12

The Secret of Bernie Sanders's Success

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Cross-posted from The Nation


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"We will not accept cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid," declared US Senator Bernie Sanders Monday night, at The Nation Institute dinner where the independent senator from Vermont was cheered for his absolute defense of programs that he argues must not be sacrificed to the austerity demands of those who would toss working American off the "fiscal cliff."

That Sanders is a hero to progressives, like those who gathered Monday night in New York for the annual event, is no secret.

But what is the Sanders secret?

How does an independent senator, who refuses to accept the false constructs of the Republican right and its media echo chamber, who calls out compromising Democrats, and who rejects the centrist fantasies of so many pundits, keep winning elections by overwhelming margins? And what can progressives learn from his political success -- and aggressive progressivism -- as they engage in the fiscal-cliff fight, prepare for the coming Congress and set the stage for the elections of 2014 and 2016?

To begin with, Sanders does not accept conventional wisdom, and he does not play by conventional political rules.

The narratives spun by political and media elites throughout the 2012 election campaign were all about money and television buys, polls and personalities. Both major parties focused on a narrow set of issues, and an even narrower set of appeals directed to a conventional wisdom that imagined Americans wanted only drab variations on the moderate themes sounded by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in their last debate. But in Vermont, the most refreshingly unconventional politician in America was coasting toward re-election with a campaign that broke all the rules.

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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

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