Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt

Chapter 403: Chapter 188: Sanders’s Jerusalem

Just as Leo was planning how to mobilize all of Pennsylvania’s industrial cities to join his Industrial Revival Alliance, the phone on his desk suddenly rang.

Leo glanced at it, then answered the call.

"Good evening, Senator Sanders."

"Leo."

Daniel Sanders’s voice came through the line.

"I saw the news." Sanders got straight to the point. "You’re doing good work in Pittsburgh. Murphy’s vote share in Western Pennsylvania is simply incredible."

"It wasn’t a miracle, Senator."

As Leo replied, he considered the purpose of Sanders’s call.

"It was the result of calculation, the inevitable return on our investment."

"We gave the workers jobs, and the workers gave us their votes. It’s only fair."

"Fair..."

Sanders scoffed on the other end of the line, his tone laced with a hint of sarcasm.

"In Washington, ’fair’ is a luxury."

"The situation right now is complicated, Leo. Although we held onto the seat, the centrists are rallying, and they’re blaming the tight race entirely on us."

"They want to slash all our progressive agendas." Sanders’s voice grew heavy. "They say our platform can’t win in red states, that we only know how to spend money, not make it. They say we’re scaring away suburban housewives."

"And are they right?" Leo asked in return.

"Of course they’re full of shit!"

Sanders’s volume shot up instantly.

"But they have the data, the deficit reports, the endorsements of those damn economists. All I have are slogans."

Leo fell silent for a moment on his end of the line.

He keenly picked up on the implication in Sanders’s words.

’Mr. President,’ Leo communicated with Roosevelt in his mind. ’Sanders isn’t just calling at a time like this to congratulate me on Murphy’s victory or to complain about the Establishment Faction’s attacks. It’s not that simple.’

’That’s right, my boy,’ Roosevelt’s voice replied. ’He’s asking for help.’

’Asking for help?’ Leo was confused. ’He’s a major player in the Senate, the leader of the Progressives. He needs to ask *me* for help?’

’Politics isn’t a competition of who has the bigger title,’ Roosevelt explained. ’The Establishment Faction’s attacks have hit him where he’s weakest.’

’Sanders’s perennial problem is that his theories sound wonderful, but he lacks successful models to prove them in reality. Especially during a time of economic recession, when pragmatic solutions are needed, his revolutionary slogans sound hollow and dangerous to moderate voters.’

’And you, Leo... you happen to have exactly what he needs.’

Leo understood instantly.

Sanders needed Pittsburgh, and he needed it more than ever.

Leo knew how he had to respond.

"You have more than just slogans."

Leo spoke into the receiver. "You also have Pittsburgh."

"And you have me."

The other end of the line went quiet for a moment.

"Daniel."

Leo changed how he addressed him. It was a strategy to close the distance, a declaration of equal standing.

"They’re attacking your ideals as fantasies. They’re saying that implementing green energy, industrial upgrades, and worker cooperatives in traditional, declining industrial areas is a fairy tale."

"But I ask you to look at Pennsylvania."

"Look at Pittsburgh’s South District. Look at the docks in Erie."

"Murphy won. He won the election in the reddest of districts, on a Progressive platform."

"That’s the proof."

Leo’s voice became steady and powerful.

"Everything we’re doing here—the worker cooperatives, the Inland Port logistics chain—these are the very things you’ve described in your speeches. Now, they are gradually becoming a reality."

"But those people in the Establishment Faction are twisting all of it."

Leo’s voice grew urgent.

"They acknowledge Murphy’s victory, but they’re attributing it to the five-hundred-million-US-Dollar bond, to the power of capital."

"They’re saying it’s just another Keynesian-style government stimulus, an effect bought with US Dollars that has nothing to do with our Progressive ideals."

"They are deconstructing our victory, trivializing it, reducing it from a triumph of ideals to a triumph of money."

"If Pittsburgh falls, if this model project collapses because the funding chain breaks..."

"It won’t just be my failure—Leo Wallace’s failure. It will be the bankruptcy of your entire political theory."

"That would be telling all of the United States that progressivism is just an expensive hoax."

"The Establishment Faction will stand on the corpse of Pittsburgh and throw your progressive ideals into the trash heap."

"But if it succeeds, it will become the Jerusalem for Progressive ideals in the United States."

Sanders was silent for a moment.

"I do need Pittsburgh," Sanders’s voice turned serious. "But I don’t need a successful economic case study. I need a political symbol."

"I need Pittsburgh to be branded, definitively, as Progressive."

"I want that name, in the minds of every voter in the country, to be inextricably linked with terms like universal healthcare, green energy, and workers’ rights. It must become the banner of our movement."

Sanders paused, then laid out his demand.

"I need you, in Pittsburgh, to be the first to pilot the core legislation we’re pushing in Congress. Even if it’s only symbolic, even if you just implement it in a single neighborhood, I need to see some action."

"Only then can I take the case of Pittsburgh and use it to counter the Establishment Faction’s attacks. Only then can I tell everyone that our ideals are viable, that they have a future."