Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

As the new administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and the 117th United States Congress settle in, it's becoming clearer that the power flip that occurred in the 2020-21 elections that gave the Democratic Party the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress reflects a much deeper political realignment.

This time it's not just another formal exchange of power from one wing of America's business interests to another – but a real change in how the government will operate that began at the grassroots.

When former President Barack Obama from the Democratic Party, whom Biden served as vice president under, came to power, many believed that this would be a new "progressive awakening" not seen since President Franklin D. Roosevelt. No such thing occurred, and, in fact, Obama gave ground to the Republican Party, which had far fewer numbers than it does now, and stacked his administration with conservatives like Lawrence Summers.

Now, the Biden administration is making it clear that these same people responsible for many of the lost opportunities from the Obama years are irrelevant.

For example, on February 7, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that "the administration is showing very clearly they don't care if they have to work with us" after a Democrat-led budget resolution passed.

White House economist Jared Bernstein also publicly responded to a Washington Post op-ed by Larry Summers that criticized the $1.9 trillion Biden COVID-19 relief plan, saying that Biden's team dismisses "even the possibility of inflation." Bernstein called this "flat out wrong."

While it would be nice to think that Biden, a moderate Democrat, is behaving like this out of nowhere, it actually has to do with the very political survival of the Washington regime as a whole. If he chooses not to act boldly and deliver results for the American people, there will be severe consequences – and people who are actually driving the future of the country know this.

To point out the obvious, the U.S. is barely a month out from an attempted coup by radical right-wing supporters of former President Donald Trump. The friction that exists in society cannot be denied.

But even in terms of conventional politics, Barack Obama promised "hope" and "change" during his first campaign during the Great Recession, failed to deliver big and lost ground to the radical Tea Party movement.

Not only did this inevitably set the stage for the Capitol riot last month, but it would also give an insurgent spirit to the conservative politics that created the inequality driving America's political polarization in the first place.

From 2015 onwards, Trump exposed how vacuous "revolutionary" conservatism actually is – because there is nothing revolutionary nor novel about any of the policies he implemented, immediately evident by the fact that his political messaging harkened back to an idealized past.

But if that wasn't enough, while in office, he threw race relations back generations and drove inequality back to the Gilded Age with policies that could have been written by officials from a century ago.

New solutions to new problems have come from a new breed of Democrats led by Senator Bernie Sanders with next to no exceptions. Calling themselves "democratic socialists," they have become a whirlwind force on the streets and are now apparently very powerful in Washington.

For example, the recent budget resolution that will allow Biden's relief plan to pass through the Senate without any Republican votes, which Senator Cassidy laments, was led by the new chair of the Budget Committee, Bernie Sanders.

Perhaps no better example of the power behind Sanders' political brand exists than, ironically, Biden's inauguration. During that event, as the politically opulent wore flashy clothes and shook hands, Sanders was famously seen in the background wearing the same coat he wore in several campaign videos and a pair of mittens made for him by a school teacher. Then he sold merchandise off the viral meme and raised 1.8 million dollars for Vermont charities.

One of Sanders's closest supporters, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, skipped the event to support the Hunts Point Produce Market strike, the market's first labor union strike since 1986, which was a huge win for organized labor and another data point for the direction of America's political realignment.

While the Sanders vision is in its political infancy, it was his revolutionary 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns that set all of this in motion and accomplished what legendary civil rights leader Malcolm X said was so crucial: waking people up not to "the revolution" but to their own self-worth.

By making Americans aware that they deserve access to livable wages, health care, and a decent education as a birthright, Sanders has changed the direction of U.S. politics forever.

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