Coronavirus Crisis May Keep the Sanders Revolution Rolling

Now that Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed presumptive candidate Joe Biden, it's worth considering just how profoundly Sanders seems to have shifted the policy landscape. Despite the rise of inequality and other long-term economic problems, a majority of Democrats probably felt too comfortable with the current system to embrace revolutionary change. Although the Sanders insurgency is over, many of the progressive ideas he urged on the electorate may yet come to pass in some form -- thanks to the crisis unleashed by the coronavirus.

History offers a number of potential parallels. The original U.S. socialist movement, headed by Eugene V. Debs, failed to win significant power. But when the nation was forced to respond to the Great Depression and World War II, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded government enormously -- increasing taxes on the wealthy, creating a social insurance system, providing jobs directly to citizens and executing industrial policies. Though he always vehemently rejected the socialist label, in some ways FDR took the country in the direction Debs and his followers wished.