Is Bernie Sanders a William Jennings Bryan for the Twenty-first Century?

By Greg Brueck

Watching the Democratic Party nominating process unfold over the past few months, and in particular watching Bernie Sanders’ rise to the front of the race, made me remember a book I taught in my first quarter as a lecturer at Cal State East Bay. Michael Kazin’s A Godly Hero is a deeply researched biography of William Jennings Bryan, the charismatic and fiery Nebraskan orator who became the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency in 1896. In some respects, it reads as a field guide to our current political world.

On the surface, at least, Bryan and Sanders seem to be cut from the same cloth. Bryan represented an insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, and sought to unseat the party bosses he and his predominantly western and southern constituency scorned as conservative and irredeemably corrupted by corporate interests. His famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic Convention in Chicago (“we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold”) brought conventioneers to their feet in rapturous applause. Congress had recommitted the nation to the gold standard, which limited the amount of money in circulation to that which could be backed with gold, in 1873. To farmers and workingmen far from the financial centers of the East, the gold standard, by making money scarce, looked like a conspiracy to concentrate wealth in the accounts of their creditors, industrialists, and even the Bank of England. Sanders, likewise, rails against a “billionaire class” and a “corrupt political system” that robs ordinary people of fundamental rights and the ability to share in the nation’s prosperity. The clarity of his message and the quality of his ground game (Bryan, too, was a master political tactician), has earned him a following that tends to see Democratic Party leadership as hopelessly compromised by connections to corporate America.

In the cases of both men, their respective parties responded to their rise with a range of reactions from suspicion to predictions of disaster. After his momentous speech, it still took five rounds of voting before Bryan secured the nomination. Even those who shared his political values, like John Altgeld, the pro-labor governor of Illinois, expressed skepticism. “It takes more than speeches to win real victories,” he told his friend and ally Clarence Darrow. The conservatives in the midst of losing their grip on power, like supporters of the incumbent president, Democrat Grover Cleveland, declared Bryan a fanatic and a socialist. Sanders, meanwhile, wears the “Democratic Socialist” label proudly but has faced accusations of naïve affinities for autocratic left-wing regimes, not to mention being labeled a communist by Mike Bloomberg in one debate. Upon winning the South Carolina primary this past weekend, former Vice President Joe Biden declared in television interviews, “People aren’t looking for a revolution, they’re looking for results.”

Finally, for supporters of both men, such attacks only increase(d) their commitment. Bryan was renowned for a magnetism in his public speaking that, in Kazin’s words, “lifted him above the ranks of the typical Gilded Age politician whose florid words smacked of artifice and insincerity.” Today, nobody seriously questions the purity of Sanders’ ideological commitments.

There are some differences between the two men. If he had won the general election in 1896, Bryan would have been the nation’s youngest president; if Sanders wins in 2020 he will be the oldest. Bryan was famous for his “sonorous and melodious” voice; Sanders’ brand includes consistently delivering speeches in a gruff shout. Those circumstantial and stylistic differences aside, I thought, someone should compare the political influence of these two figures in their respective eras. It turns out, Michael Kazin already has, arguing in this New York Times piece that Sanders, no less than Bryan before him, has succeeded in “transforming the ideology and program of a major party.” Bryan shifted the Democratic Party of his day onto a path that would lead to the Progressive reforms of the turn of the century and the New Deal liberalism of the 1930s. Between his years in the Senate, his 2016 campaign for president, and his 2020 effort, Sanders has almost single-handedly lifted policy goals like a dramatically higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the wealthy (especially Wall Street), and universal healthcare into the realm of Democratic Party orthodoxy.

I wonder, though, if the comparison between Bryan and Sanders is a bit too pat. Bryan was a true and life-long believer in the cause of revolutionizing the role of the federal government, transforming it from a servant of corporations and the wealthy into a servant of farmers and wage earners. He drew inspiration and followers, meanwhile, from an arguably even more revolutionary movement organized as the Populist Party. In that party’s Omaha Platform of 1892, when they ran their own candidate for the presidency, the Populists made several demands, including a “subtreasury” system to provide government loans to farmers, a federal takeover of the railroad system, the coinage of silver to loosen the money supply and put cash in the pockets of farmers, the direct election of U.S. senators, and an initiative system to allow for a more direct form of democracy. As noted above, much of what the Populists and Bryan called for came to pass, in one form or another, in later waves of Progressive and New Deal reforms. According to the historian Charles Postel, however, the Populists, who joined with the Democrats to nominate Bryan in 1896, never realized their full vision. They dreamed of true political power in the hands of a unified farmer-labor coalition, what they often called a “confederation of industrial orders.” What they often got instead was top-down regulatory reforms aimed less at redistributing political and social power and more at increasing the efficiency of agriculture and integrating working-class Americans into corporate-dominated political and economic systems. Bryan lost his presidential bid in 1896, going down to defeat at the hands of the Republican William McKinley, whose campaign convinced northeastern urban industrial workers their interests were more closely aligned with those of their employers than with those of farmers, miners, and residents of small western towns. Bryan would lose another bid for the presidency in 1900, and a final one in 1908.

Is Sanders trying to pull off a social, political, and economic revolution of the type Bryan attempted? Surely, he speaks of revolution, and of his broad coalition of working people, including racial and ethnic minorities, who demand a system that works for them instead of the top one percent. His website highlights the major issues of his campaign, including a “Medicare for All,” single-payer healthcare system; a “Green New Deal” to create a 100% renewable energy system; tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, and trade schools; immigration reform; and reinvigorated and better-protected labor unions. If he accomplishes even some of these goals, he will have had a transformative effect on the federal government, dramatically increasing its scope and power. Nevertheless, he will be building upon waves of reform accomplished in the twentieth century, reform that has done much to improve the lives of ordinary Americans but has done little to slow the expansion of corporate power over the economy and the government. Does Sanders’ vision include shifting the levers of power such that workers and Americans of ordinary means come to truly control the political, social, and economic order under which they live, or is it aimed at liberalizing the existing order, making it more accommodating without upending its foundations? If it’s the latter, does he have a better shot at winning than Bryan did?

Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.

Postel, Charles. The Populist Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.