Debunking the Case Against Bernie By Ben Norton / Salon

[Proserpina]

http://www.alternet.org/media/debunking-case-against-bernie?akid=13899.227380.lbKGzD&rd=1&src=newsletter1049249&t=9

As Sanders catches up to Hillary in the polls, corporate media circles the wagons as expected.

Argumentum ad nauseam refers to the logical fallacy that an argument is correct by virtue of it constantly being repeated. Argumentum ad hominem is the fallacy that a point is wrong because of personal critiques of the person making it. A new logical fallacy should be added to the list: Argumentum ad centrum, or the flawed claim that an assertion is accurate because it is from the ideological center.

The argumentum ad centrum is increasingly popular in politics today, as working-class people all around the world become more and more frustrated with the status quo. The rapid rise of left-wing alternatives to an increasingly right-wing political modus operandi — with Bernie Sanders in the U.S., Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K.,Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and more — has apologists for power on the ropes, desperately clutching for any argument that can beat back the dissent and discontent. Nowhere is this more evident than in the incessant liberal attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose unexpected presidential campaign has, in mere months, taken U.S. politics by storm.

Columnist Jonathan Chait lobbed a series of argumenta ad centrum at the Vermont senator in “The Case Against Bernie Sanders.” The article, published this week in New York magazine, went viral with tens of thousands of shares. The crux of Chait’s argument is that Sanders is too extreme of a candidate, and that U.S. politics is too far to the right, for him to get anything done. It is not until the final paragraph of his piece that Chait, an unabashed Clinton aficionado, makes it clear that he does not endorse “Sanders’s policy vision.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, his points perilously teeter-totter back and forth between vapid political tea-leaf reading and baseless condemnation.

“What the next president won’t accomplish is to increase taxes, expand social programs, or do anything to reduce inequality, given the House Republicans’ fanatically pro-inequality positions across the board,” Chait argues. “The next Democratic presidential term will be mostly defensive, a bulwark against the enactment of the radical Ryan plan. What little progress liberals can expect will be concentrated in the non-Sanders realm.”

In other words, Chait is essentially telling the American left to simply give up, because the cards are stacked in the interest of power. His entire article is a defense of fatalism and political resignation, covered with a thin veneer of liberal analysis. “It seems bizarre for Democrats to risk losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands zero chance of enactment even if they win,” Chait adds.

One could imagine similar pieces written in the early 19th century, with respectable pundits haughtily chiding abolitionists for being too extreme and unrealistic, insisting that slavery is reforming and getting progressively less brutal; or in the late 19th century, with popular columnists chastising suffragists for taking such clearly outlandish and utopian positions. Chait further confirmed these suspicions in a tweet, writing, “Even if you agree with Sanders’ ideas, which I don’t, they’re badly mismatched with the powers he would have.” The New York magazine columnist’s piece is, in essence, an extended argument from the center. In painting Sanders’ candidacy as a dangerous and extreme political gamble, Chait tries to graft a superficially attractive sheen onto the asinine axiom that the truth necessarily lies somewhere in the middle...We have all heard the argument before: The truth lies not on the right or the left, but rather safely in the middle. It has become increasingly popular in U.S. politics, as the Republican Party has veered into the far right, and the Democratic Party has retreated to the center, since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

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What Chait and fellow pundits fail to acknowledge, nevertheless, is that Sanders’ supposedly extreme policies are in fact supported by a majority of Americans.


A takedown of Chait, to be sure...not so much a supporter of Bernie!