This summer has seen the notable rise of Bernie Sanders from an independent socialist US Senator from Vermont known only to a small niche of liberal voters, to a true candidate to beat in the Democratic primary.
There are many reasons to suspect that his rise can be attributed to increased name recognition and that his appeal remains deep but narrow; for now, though, let’s just admit that Bernie Sanders has been doing pretty well recently, and impressively well considering that he was relatively unknown not too long ago and he is making his campaign almost entirely off of grassroots support.
A friend of mine recently asked me what I thought about Bernie Sanders. Specifically, he asked me if I thought he was just a modern Ralph Nader, or Dennis Kucinich, or the democratic equivalent of Ron Paul.
In other words, he was trying to ask, in his pejorative way, two often conflated but very different questions: 1) Should Bernie Sanders be taken seriously? And 2) Does he have a chance at winning?
But since he was begging a comparison, I decided to give him a different one instead: Bernie Sanders reminds me of William Jennings Bryan.
That comparison is likely to get two very confused responses. The first is, “William Jennings Bryan? Who the hell is that guy?!” And the second is, “William Jennings Bryan? But I thought he was that religious nut at the Scopes Trial who thought that Evolution was the invention of Satan! How could Bernie Sanders resemble him?”
To answer the first question, William Jennings Bryan was a three time Democratic Presidential nominee, a strong advocate of popular democracy, a social reforming, trust-busting, anti-imperialist pacifist. He anticipated the Progressive movement in the United States before it really happened; he was pivotal to fortifying the Democratic Party as a champion of the poor rather than simply a party of Southerners; and he was one of the most articulate motherfuckers ever to grace American politics.
I would call him a Proto-Progressive; the link between Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt in the Democratic Party. He was a true populist; he was idealistic, perhaps even naïve, but he held those ideals at a time when politics was wielded by political machines funded by a legal form of bribery, and in a time where political elites held sway, he defied them and became the representative of a major political party three times.
He also lost. Three times.
That is largely why people don’t really hear the name William Jennings Bryan very often, because in spite of his contemporary popularity and influence, he never elevated himself to the office he sought, and never had the chance to put his name on the legislation he advocated – even those that got passed in his lifetime.
Bernie Sanders has a lot of similarities, so a comparison with William Jennings Bryan should explain why Bernie Sanders has a charitably slim chance of winning the Presidency – and why that is no excuse to not take him seriously.
1896 Presidential Election
If I were being fair, I should spend equal time about the background of William Jennings Bryan and Bernie Sanders – or, as I prefer to call the pair, “Bryan and the Bern” – but information about Bernie Sanders is publicly available and most people who are reading this article are likely up to date about Bernie Sanders and his background, something I can’t really say for William Jennings Bryan. So let’s bring you up to speed about the 1896 United States Presidential Election.
In 1896, the major policy question of the day was whether to keep the US Dollar standardized solely to an amount of gold, or to allow silver to be freely coined and back currency at a fixed 16:1 ratio with gold and… wait, WAIT! Please don’t stop reading! It’s much more interesting than it sounds!
Let’s start again: the Free Silver debate, as it was called, was about economic stimulus and income inequality, only at a time when US currency was held to the Gold standard, long before the existence of the Federal Reserve.
If you ever run into a Libertarian that tries to view the Gold Standard as some nostalgic economic… err, emm, ‘golden age’, do kindly tell them to piss off because while there weren’t any better systems to manage monetary policy at the time, the Gold Standard caused a lot of problems, and exacerbated downturns with deflationary periods and runs on the gold supply. In fact, one such Panic in 1893 caused the worst depression in the United States up to that point. The government’s attempt to remedy it led to the accusation that the President was supporting the wealthy industrial and banking elite over the impoverished working class. These concerned coincided with discontent over the Political Machines of both parties, where political power and financing was essentially monopolized and held by a powerful few bosses and handed out on the basis of political loyalty. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m still talking about 1896.
This depression invigorated the Free Silver movement, who proposed to let silver be freely coined into the currency along with gold, at a fraction of Gold’s value but still generally overvalued compared to silver’s purchasing price. In short, what Silverites wanted to do was increase the money supply and deliberately inflate the currency in order to help poor farmers pay the debts they incurred during the downturn.
Now, since this policy was never enacted, it’s less relevant to us what the economic impact of this would have been so much as what it meant at the time. The idea of deliberately inflating the currency was universally despised by wealthy businessowners and most middle income tradesmen, because it posed financial risks and would certainly reduce their buying power of the dollar and diminish the value of any long-term investments they made before the depression. But to those who supported it, Free Silver promised to provide a kind of economic relief to the poor, and backing the policy also meant standing up to the business and political elite whom the supporters felt betrayed by, and who apparently didn’t represent to interest of the common man.
President Grover Cleveland’s retreat from the Silver policy deepened the ever-growing divide in his party between the more conservative aristocratic Bourbon Democrats and the reactionary Populist Democrats, and by the 1896 Democratic Convention, the advocacy of the Populists completely undermined Cleveland’s chance to regain the nomination of the Democratic Party. But there was a void; if the convention were to accept the Free Silver platform, there was no obvious candidate to carry the banner.
But in walks William Jennings Mutha-fuckin’ Bryan. At the time, only a lawyer, former congressman and failed Senate nominee, and in the minds of most people, just some guy from Nebraska. (Technically, he was born in Illinois – but still!) But William Jennings Bryan was nothing if not an orator supreme, and he took that stage to let his voice be heard. And it was heard.
The speech that Mr. Bryan gave at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is without reservation one of the most astonishing moments in American politics. To say that the speech was a success, that Bryan, as the young kids say, ‘killed it’, would commit a gross understatement. With a single speech, William Jennings Bryan became the nominee of his party, in spite being a relatively unknown figure. In a single speech he became a national sensation, someone adored and jeered, but whose name was known across the country. A career of political fame and infamy, which lasted until his death, was conjured from nothing in the course of less than half an hour, with one “Cross of Gold” speech.
I really can’t reiterate enough how exceptional a moment this speech was; while it isn’t as well known as the Gettysburg Address, or the “I Have a Dream” speech, or FDR’s Pearl Harbor address, it easily demands to be studied and remembered as a pivotal part of American history. Even after a century, the rhetoric is still stirring and I highly recommend reading through it, or even finding a professional recording of it.
But to summarize it, William Jennings Bryan advocated a platform of Free Silver and also reinstating the overturned Federal Income Tax, based on what he termed ‘the cause of humanity’. He framed the issue of Free Silver as a controversy between “the idle holders of idle capital” and “the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country”. He says, and I quote, “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.” This mothafucker was criticizing trickledown economics before trickledown economics was a thing!
So William Jennings Bryan gets the nomination, the Democratic party gets behind the platform laid out and makes prints of this speech to deliver to the four corners of the country, and in the general election against William McKinley, whom Bryan exposed as a hypocrite and flip flopper, William Jennings Bryan… loses decisively, 176 electoral votes to 271, receiving 46.7% of the popular vote to McKinley’s 51%. This, mind you, would be his best electoral margin in all three of his nominations.
Bryan and the Bern
Now, in my view, the comparison between Bernie Sanders and William Jennings Bryan may be a little too favorable to the former. In reality, Sanders doesn’t have a tenth of the charisma and eloquence that William Jennings Bryan had in his height. But for now, let’s use Bryan as a kind of benchmark of maximum impact that Sanders could have on the national stage – certainly greater than another comparable contemporary of Bryan, Eugene V. Debs.
Bryan and the Bern were both wholly committed to helping the poor and the working class. Both were deeply concerned about an economic system that was too favorable to Wall Street. Both were critics of a growing divide of wealth, and critical of, to quote Bryan, “the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world”, a much more poetic way of saying, “1%”.
Bryan and the Bern were both broadly disdained by the party leadership – ridiculed even. They were both confined to the fringe of the Democratic Party – even in each case taking on the mantle of a third party to properly articulate their viewpoints. (William Jennings Bryan associated with the People’s Party or “Populist Party”; Bernie Sanders was a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Liberty Union Party, and he still officially identifies as an Independent Socialist.) And for most of their careers, both were known only by a cult following of idealists and activists, and their hope for political success rested solely on grassroots campaigning and ‘stumping’ – the practice of going from town to town to make speeches in a tactic largely formalized in its modern form by none other than… William Jennings Bryan.
Both gained momentum after a devastating economic downturn and they used the resulting anger to mobilize their wing and challenge the party’s elite. Bryan even managed to galvanize his party enough to become its nominee.
And, in one of the more interesting comparisons, while both represent themselves as champions of progress and change, Bryan and the Bern in their own ways held an anachronistic view of the world, 50 or 60 years behind their time, which informed their policy ideas for better or worse. Bryan held onto a Jeffersononian agrarian view of the US economy; he idolized the country’s farmers as the holders of a virtue that had to be protected from the urbanized United States. “Burn down your cities and leave our farms,” he said, “And your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” He was also a deeply religious Presbyterian, with a revivalist fundamentalism that was better suited to the 1840’s and was simply out of place in a worldlier industrial United States. His religious nature and his distrust of the political elite led him to become an aggressive opponent of Evolution, not only because he saw it as an affront to Christianity, but because he conflated it with the much less scientific and more political and insidious Social Darwinism. And in a move that would forever taint his name, the last job he ever took up in his life was to prosecute not some cigar smoking robber baron, but a small town Tennessee substitute Biology teacher who wanted to teach his class the best science available at the time.
And the Bern? For all the modern digital expertise his staff can bring, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that he isn’t the most up-to-date character. He articulates a labor-centric worldview that hasn’t changed much from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s; he speaks the rhetoric of old school class struggle with only a few updates in language from the heyday of Pete Seeger. He’s unashamed to call himself a socialist; he’s critical of globalized trade, and he’s even stated that he’s skeptical of increased immigration because he is concerned that they will decrease wages and support ‘Big Business’. That’s the kind of left that makes the New Left actually look new!
Why It Matters
More to the point, the campaign of William Jennings Bryan shows the limits of an outspoken polemicizing populist that galvanized his party around a primary issue of economic justice. You see, while Bryan’s support was deep and enthusiastic among the Democratic Party faithful, it was ultimately too narrow, and for all his eloquent speeches about representing the American people, he had trouble getting non-farmers and non-Democrats on his side, and he alienated a lot of people who could have helped him, even within his party.
Democrats were, as they still are, a big tent party, that represents a large but fractured base of support, and while the progressive ideological base and small holder farmers adored Bryan, the veterans had deep reservations. Even poor urban wage-earning Democrats were conflicted about Bryan; they were largely ill-educated Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and Bryan’s evangelical flair and mighty rhetoric did not resonate.
To make matters worse, when the era’s tycoons discovered that William Jennings Bryan had gained the Democratic nomination on the silver issue, they panicked, to put it lightly. They desperately put the weight of their support behind the moderate Republican William McKinley. The McKinley campaign likewise embarked on an aggressive campaign to tell voters that Free Silver was a pipe dream dangerous to business. This campaign went directly to attack Bryan’s character, slandering him as a quixotic religious fanatic with a loose grip on reality.
To finance this strategy, Mark Hanna, McKinley’s campaign organizer, decided to utilize the upper class resentment of Bryan, and instead of funding the campaign by setting party dues, he would instead ask wealthy party members to give him money if it was worth it to get rid of Bryan. If that sounds familiar, it isn’t surprising. With this move, Mark Hanna basically invented modern campaign finance. Not something you’ll find in the book of ‘great inventions’ mind you…
And while Bryan modernized the stumping tour to combat it, an influential strategy in its own right which certainly played to his strengths, it wasn’t enough. The Democrats’ traditional fundraising sources didn’t step up to support him, largely because he antagonized party leadership so thoroughly.
Hated by the Republican Party, disdained by party leadership and not benefitting from the divisions within his own party, Bryan’s momentum simply fell short and he lost the general election to McKinley, who thereafter became the 25th President of the United States.
Bryan retained the traditionally Democratic Solid South (how times have changed) and even managed to pick up some rural states in the prairies, but he failed to grab any of the states in the Northeast and the Great Lakes which were much more urban and populated.
So what’s the comparison with Bernie Sanders? There is no question that Bernie Sanders has an enthusiastic base of support among ideologically progressive, politically active liberals – activists, college students, urbanites, union members, etc. But look closer, and you’ll find that he doesn’t have inspire nearly as much enthusiasm outside that base. His support is significantly weaker among Latinos and Black voters, partially because his name is not well known, but also because some of his positions alienate those demographics, particularly on immigration. And that’s just within his party. Come the general election, I have no idea how Bernie Sanders expects to appeal to independent and centrist voters. And forget about conservative voters – the moment Bernie Sanders proudly declares himself a socialist they’ll start lighting the torches. If Bernie Sanders wanted to broaden his support and reach out to people outside of his small base, he would need top-down support and resources. Unfortunately, because he has spent his whole political career actively stigmatizing political and financial elite, he may have already lost help he needed to communicate more broadly.
And, to hammer the nail into the… golden cross, just imagine what the reaction would be among Wall Street financiers if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination. They would react so hostilely to Bernie Sanders that their efforts to remove him would kick their campaign into high gear. They would paint Bernie Sanders as a radical socialist who would upend the national economy to chase ideological fantasy. And with a fraction of the media savvy needed to be successful nationwide, and far fewer resources at his disposal, Sanders would be at their mercy, and the Bern would, if I may, go down in flames.
That was what happened to Bryan, back in the era when campaign fundraising was just being figured out. Nowadays we have more money, more media channels, and more expertise; in virtually every way it is more unfavorable to the outsiders.
But…
Yes, but winning an election isn’t the same thing as being politically notable. In fact, in a comparison between William Jennings Bryan and the man who defeated him twice – William McKinley – I’d probably guess that it was Bryan who had a greater longer term impact on politics. McKinley did maybe two notable things in his Presidency. The first was going to war with Spain, which allowed the United States to gain control of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and – oh, and Hawaii, because the U.S. wanted a parking lot for their dreadnoughts. The second, and most important thing that William McKinley did was find himself on the receiving end of a bullet that cleared the way for his Vice President. That wouldn’t be a major accomplishment, unless your Vice President was one Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt.
McKinley’s previous Vice President, Garrett Hobart, died of Heart Disease in 1899, and McKinley was persuaded to do the New York Republican bosses a favor and pick Roosevelt so he could get Roosevelt off their back. And part of the reason why he chose Roosevelt is because Teddy was such a beloved famous personality that the war hero and reformer would give the Republican ticket a populist appeal to combat… William Jennings Bryan.
The ideological differences between Democrat and Republican were much softer and more malleable back then; party membership was familial and demographic oriented, but Republicans just like Democrats were split between a more conservative, pro-patronage Stalwart Republicans, and the reformist wing that went through various incarnations in the late 19th century – among them, Radical Republicans, Half-Breeds, and finally with Roosevelt, the Progressives.
Bryan’s influence may have rallied the Republicans to defeat him, but it also emboldened the reforming progressive wing of the Republicans to take charge, and within a few decades, many of the policies that Bryan advocated for were adopted by Republicans and Democrats alike, over the objections of the blue-blooded elements among both parties.
Bryan’s political career didn’t end with his nominations; he was a popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit – think of it as a Paleolithic version of TEDTalks – he created a popular newspaper to advocate his policies, The Commoner, and in 1912 he became the Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson. His stauncher pacifism put him at odds with the Wilson administration after they started giving military and financial resources to the Allies, so he resigned within two years, but he at least got a decent title.
Among the things he advocated for, that were passed in his lifetime: trust-busting became a bipartisan concern; income tax was amended into the Constitution; inheritance taxes became national policy; women got the vote; temperance was amended into the Constitution (and promptly amended out); and even his recommendation for an inter-continental, Inter-Parliamentary Peace Conference to resolve disputes ended up materializing into the League of Nations. And all it took was a world war…
But more importantly, his greatest influence was on the self-image of the Democratic Party. That the Democratic Party considers itself a fighter for social justice can be traced directly back to William Jennings Bryan. Harry S. Truman himself declared himself to be profoundly influenced by Bryan, and stated that “If it wasn’t for old Bill Bryan, there wouldn’t be any liberalism at all in the country now. Bryan kept liberalism alive, he kept it going.”
On the other side of the table, Bernie Sanders has been pretty vocal in his belief that the Democratic Party’s commitment to social justice has been slipping in favor of business-as-usual. And while he’s unprepared for the nomination, let alone the Presidency, he is influencing the process by being outspoken and active, and by organizing the public around the issues he cares about. He’s doing exactly what he needs to, and with a little luck, he could make a difference – maybe even alter the aspirations of the Democratic Party, back to the anti-establishment roots he wishes for. It certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented.