In 1934 Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California as a Democrat, just like Sanders is doing today except that Sinclair was the party’s nominee after having won 3 times as many votes in the primary than his opponents. In 1992 Greg Mitchell wrote about his EPIC campaign, the acronym for End Poverty in California, in a book titled “The Campaign of the Century”. So unlike other bourgeois electoral campaigns was this one that I always assumed that it was a 3rd party bid. It is useful to use it as a benchmark for Sanders’s campaign this year. From Mitchell’s book:
It was 10:45 P.M. in Washington and New York, 9:45 in the Midwest, and 7:45 in California when Upton Sinclair, who was already packing his bags for the trip east, delivered his first nationwide radio address, originating from KHJ in Los Angeles. Until the past few days, the Sinclair campaign had received little notice nationally. Sinclair himself was a famous author, but what was he known for? Exposing the meat-packers, defending Sacco and Vanzetti, producing an Eisenstein film. What did that have to do with running for office and leading a social movement called EPIC? The author of The Jungle was portrayed by many in the press as a dangerous, demagogic champion of the underdog. Was he another Huey Long or Father Coughlin? And if he was, was that good or bad? With the New Deal faltering, anyone promising to end poverty, even in one notoriously eccentric state out West, deserved a listen, and so millions of Americans—bankers, breadliners, and Brain Trusters alike gathered around their radio sets to find out whether Upton Sinclair embodied their fondest hopes or their deepest fears, or perhaps a little of both. full: http://louisproyect.org/2016/01/25/upton-sinclair-speaks/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
