The Myth of the Democratic Party Purity Test
By: Mike Houghton
Tags: Purity Test, Progressive, Democratic Party, Neera Tanden, Bernie Sanders

The phrase “purity test” is corporatized political upspeak for “Please, stop showing me for the bullshitter that I am.”

There is no such thing as the “purity test” among even the most staunch progressives. But there is an expectation that the party and its leaders choose people without a questionable (and, in many cases, vile) background to take on positions of power and influence. Better yet, there is the expectation that those who do ascend to power within the party actually have a people driven vision of how to move the country forward.

Take Neera Tanden, for example — President elect Biden’s pick to head the OMB. For over a decade, Neera Tanden has called herself a progressive yet has dedicated her life to subverting and squashing any progressive vision or policy in favor of more of the same old third-way, corporatist, lite-blue-liberal version of trickle down economics. She’s called for cuts to Social Security, admitted to assaulting a journalist, has campaigned aggressively against a $15 minimum wage, has smeared Bernie Sanders and his supporters with a tooth-to-tooth smile, and has developed and promoted policies that would be more expensive, less effective, and more cruel than Medicare expansion. Tanden is also a war hawk that thinks countries the United States invades should be forced to pay their war debts in oil.

Rejecting Neera Tanden to head the OMB is not instituting a purity test. It’s actually much simpler than that: it’s expecting that someone in charge of formulating and executing the federal budget has a shred of humanity.

If there was a progressive formulated Democratic purity test, Bernie Sanders would fall short. Bernie Sanders voted for the same disastrous crime bill that many (including myself) have criticized Joe Biden for. Sanders also voted YES to give war authorization powers to President Clinton during the Kosovo War.

And with respect to his voting records on guns, policing authority and enforcement, military spending, and foreign intervention, Sanders record is spotty at best.

However, Sanders vision for America and its people — namely lower and middle classes — has always been solid. He’s always believed in expanding Medicare in one way or another and has always highlighted the absurdity of student loan debt, our barely working education system, and the lack of government guaranteed benefits, rights, and cushions afford to other peoples of the Western world. And even on some of his less-than-progressive positions and votes, he’s evolved.

That’s why the people overwhelmingly chose and still choose Bernie Sanders as their progressive leader — because, all things aside, he has a vision, a drive, a background, and voting history to align with polices, proposals, and cultural shifts a growing segment of the population wants.

But you don’t have to be Bernie Sanders to be a progressive. Get this: you can disagree with Bernie Sanders and be a progressive, so as long as the aim and trajectory of your vision and proposals is similar. For example: Bernie Sanders thinks most if not all private health insurance should be done away with. Other progressives look to models like Germany, Australia, and Canada as opposed to, say, the NIH, for achieving their goals. Given the state of American healthcare, a model that still guarantees healthcare is absolutely-fucking-progressive.

Progressives don’t care if you worked at Google or Goldman Sachs so as long as your current track record and trajectory is forward thinking and moving. Again, that’s not a purity test — it’s a test of bare minimums. And even if the answers aren’t ideal in terms of funding, policy execution, or strategy, progressives can still coalesce around people who simply want better for American workers and families.

However, progressives likely will care if you try to spin time at a financial engineering desk or conducting surveillance on the masses as some superior credential for holding office or exercising influence. Sure, you may be smart, intelligent, have all the degrees from all the good schools — but are you for the people? You may be able to handle any spreadsheet that comes your way, talk about bold ideas at elite conferences and retreats, and get to the grit about minute policy details — but are you for the people?

Politicians will often say something along the lines of, “I can’t wait to begin working for all Americans” when they enter office. Yet, as time goes on, it becomes clear that the work they do is mostly for large corporations, foreign powers, the military industrial complex, and whatever their useless team of pollsters and consultants tell them to do about re-election. A real progressive simply works for the people — not the might, muscles, and tax structures.

So, next time you hear the phrase “purity test,” look at the people saying it. More often than not, they are just mad that what they stood and stand for doesn’t align with what they are telling us or what they are expected to do.