{"id":13945,"date":"2020-02-24T09:23:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T17:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=13945"},"modified":"2020-02-24T09:23:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T17:23:57","slug":"after-the-nevada-blowout-its-bernies-party-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/after-the-nevada-blowout-its-bernies-party-now\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Nevada Blowout, It\u2019s Bernie\u2019s Party Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY DUSTIN GUASTELLA<\/a> CONNOR KILPATRICK<\/a>

February 22, 2020 (jacobinmag.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie Sanders\u2019s decisive victory in Nevada today shows that he has a working-class base committed to fundamentally transforming our radically unequal political and economic system. He\u2019s on his way to not just the nomination, but the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Senator Bernie Sanders stands on stage during a campaign event on February 21, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Joe Buglewicz \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bernie Sanders\u2019s crushing victory in the Nevada caucuses today is much more than one giant leap toward the Democratic Party nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders is, of course, the favorite to win at the convention in Milwaukee. But a closer look at the numbers and demographics of the \u201cSilver State\u201d reveals something much bigger \u2014 the seeds of a new electorate rising up, and a fundamental realignment of US politics. And a new party, thoroughly working-class and committed to egalitarian politics, quickly blooming up into the husk of the old one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While recent polls<\/a> show Trump strengthening his grip on the Rust Belt, Sanders\u2019s victory in Nevada points ahead to a new electoral map which might be the key not only to defeating Trump in November but toward rebuilding a working-class movement in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevada, unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, isn\u2019t dominated by an older, wealthier, and whiter electorate. Even though it\u2019s a right-to-work state like much of the Sun Belt, it\u2019s a labor stronghold with higher than average union density thanks largely to the mighty Culinary Workers Union representing sixty thousand members, and providing the kind of working-class social mobility that\u2019s all but vanished elsewhere in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after the economic crash of 2007\u20138, Nevada was also the state hardest hit by foreclosures and since that time has seen wage growth lower<\/em> than that of the country at large. In so many ways, it perfectly represents the thwarted social dynamism of the Sanders coalition. Unlike in the affluent metropolitan regions who find comfort both in the absurd platitudes and sneering contemptuousness of Mayors Pete and Mike respectively, Nevadans are immune to the anti-Sanders spell cast by the Democratic Party elite. The need for a left insurgency within the Democratic Party in the Silver State clearly isn\u2019t merely uncontroversial \u2014 it\u2019s commonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n