THE FIGHTING SOUL
Out and about with Bernie Sanders
By Ari Rabin-Havt
So much has happened to shape American politics since Bernie Sanders ended his second presidential campaign — the pandemic, Donald Trump’s denial, the siege of the Capitol on January 6, the war in Ukraine — it’s easy to replace the the Vermont senator in political history.
To a remarkable degree for a failed presidential candidate, Sanders has had a lasting influence on the Democratic Party. In the wake of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Democrats have turned sharply left on issues like college debt, health care and Social Security. Even in defeat, Sanders remains a progressive hero, with a new place to influence policy as chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
Despite all that, Sanders is not well known at the detailed level – his management style, tastes and idiosyncrasies – in a way that is common for national politicians. Into that vacuum comes Ari Rabin-Havt’s captivating memoir of the 2020 Sanders campaign, “The Fighting Soul: On the Road With Bernie Sanders.”
Rabin-Havt, a former deputy campaign manager, offers an insider’s look at the gruff, no-nonsense, democratic socialist — a politician who “hated the political part of political campaigns” such as fundraising and hobnobbing. He was so ignorant of party pooh-bahs that he failed to recognize Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic donor.
Rabin-Havt was with the senator when he suffered a heart attack during a campaign in October 2019. Even in an ambulance, Sanders questioned paramedics about their jobs and benefits. Asked to rate his pain on a scale of 1 to 10, he snapped with an expletive, “That’s a (nonsense) question. I have no idea.”
The heart attack was a turning point that looked like the end of the campaign. By the time he was 78, Sanders was already faced with questions about whether he was too old to be president, losing ground to Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.
Surprisingly, the health scare helped revive Sanders’ fortunes. While still in the hospital, Alexandria called Ocasio-Cortez to offer her much-coveted support, bringing new momentum and being central to a “Bernie Is Back” campaign.
He dominated the early voting rounds as Biden struggled. After Biden’s primary win in South Carolina, other Democratic contenders dropped out, leaving Sanders as the final rival. When Sanders retired, he became a reliable team player and worked hard to pick the Democratic candidate.
Rabin-Havt says the main purpose of his book is not to dwell on why the senator lost. Still, that question lingers in the story. Rabin-Havt’s statement, common among Sanders loyalists, is that the party establishment, aided by the mainstream media, rallied behind Biden to prevent Sanders from winning the nomination. “The Democratic Party is a disorganized institution,” he writes, “but it would organize against Bernie Sanders in a way they didn’t against any other candidate — Democrat or Republican.”
He rejects suggestions from some Democrats — including former President Obama, told in new detail in a 2018 meeting with Sanders here — that he would have had a better chance if he had reached beyond his base or moderated his message. But had he followed that advice, Rabin-Havt writes, Sanders would have turned into a different politician and lost nuclear supporters. There’s the rub: The uncompromising consistency that thrilled supporters and put Sanders within reach of the nomination posed an obstacle to building a broader coalition to win it.
The book ends with a glimpse of how the iconoclastic outsider now values the satisfaction of being a Senate insider. Sanders was instrumental in shaping President Biden’s first major achievement — a pandemic relief bill packed with forward-thinking policies.
“We’ve done something here, haven’t we?” he told Rabin-Havt after the bill was passed. “This is fun.”
