Wake Up Democrats, Warns Sanders, This Populist Unrest Cannot Be Ignored

Cast in a New York Times op-ed published late Tuesday evening, Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a stark warning to the Democratic Party leadership that if they don’t wake up to the profound dissatisfaction of the poor and working classes in the United States, they may very well wake up to a similar shock experienced by many in the United Kingdom last week when a majority—fueled largely by financial frustrations—chose to leave the European Union.

“Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States? You bet it could.” —Bernie Sanders”Surprise, surprise. Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children,” Sanders writes.

“Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States?” he later asks. “You bet it could.”

Citing troubling metrics of massive income and wealth inequality both in the U.S. and around the globe, Sanders said the xenophobia and regressiveness represented by the rise of Donald Trump within the Republican Party and Friday’s vote in favor of Brexit in the UK is the result of increasing numbers of people around the world who recognize that the economic system is designed to disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful, not them.

Progressives voices in the U.S. and Europe have been warning throughout the economic downturn which began with the financial meltdown of 2007 that if governments continued to ignore the root causes of inequality and the political demands of working class people, they would ultimately empower the xenophobic and fascist forces of the far-right.

Sanders’ public warning comes as many establishment figures within the Democratic Party and in the corporate media express increasing levels of frustration that Sanders has yet to formally suspend his campaign and endorse the presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.  However, many rank-and-file Democrats have said they support Sanders’ staying in the race through to the convention. Meanwhile—in addition to saying he will vote for Clinton in November—he has repeatedly explained that his primary goals now are to push the party in a more progressive direction while also ensuring that Donald Trump is not elected president in the fall. The warning contained in his op-ed, does not appear to contradict any of these aims.

“Let’s be clear,” Sanders writes. “The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.”