Bernie Sanders is fond of saying, “People want real change”, just as in pretty much every election one candidate or another hypes his or her power to bring just that. Big time, transformational change. The problem is the data on that “real change” thing is pretty spotty-to-discouraging. In reality, mostly voters are afraid of “real change”. Mainly they want things to stay kind of the same, just with a different face at the helm of the ship.
Last night in South Carolina, Bernie took more than his usual share of hits. This wasn’t surprising given his solid-looking front runner-status. The Democratic establishment and a remarkable slice of the punditocracy have mobilized to prevent his nomination.
The primary argument being that once we leave the bubble of the primary season and Bernie is exposed to the full brunt of the hysteria and nefariousness of Donald Trump and Team Trump media, Bernie will play like a 78-ton millstone around the neck of every Democrat in every district and race where large numbers of voters — independents and moderate Republicans — mainly want things to stop being stupid and embarrassing and just go back to the way they were four years ago, no revolution required.
Sanders points to polling showing him regularly beating Trump. Skeptics point to other data showing how viscerally/emotionally voters respond to just the label of “socialist.” Hell, “atheist” polls better. And “gay” is no real issue at all. But “socialist”, even soft-core “Democratic socialist”, remains an American boogey man with very deep roots. It may be meaningless to people of the post-Soviet era, but it remains as toxic to (many) Boomers and ultra geezers as “pedophile.”
(From the article linked above: “Most Americans don’t like the idea of moving toward socialism, regardless of how you qualify it. In a Suffolk poll taken last spring, a slight plurality of Democrats said they’d be “satisfied with a presidential candidate who thinks the United States should be more socialist.” But steep majorities of independents (72 percent to 18 percent) and voters in the aggregate (67 percent to 22 percent) said they wouldn’t. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for the Democratic nominee regardless. But these grim numbers go much further.”)
It’s of course another low-information problem. Beyond the primary season bubble of “activists” and “zealots” and “revolutionaries” — amounting to a fraction of a faction of the total electorate — are far more people, (likely voters), who have never processed how much “socialism” is already baked in to American life. Nor have sussed out how what Bernie is constantly yelling about would really work. Wish all you want that that wasn’t the case, but it’s a harsh reality.
And it’s hard to see how this improves in a long head-to-head with the disinformation/distortion Trump machine.
Through the primaries thus far Bernie has managed to play coy with his math on Medicare for All and with his health records. But there’s a gruesome gauntlet awaiting him on those two matters alone, post nomination. And then we’ll start adding on every “socialist”-sounding thing he’s said for 40 years on Vermont Public Access TV.
My feelings about Bernie remain pretty much what they’ve been for the last five years. Were it to happen, his vision for the mechanisms of the world would be better than what we have in almost every way … but I can not for the life of me imagine how he, or anyone, can possibly deliver them. His “revolution” of “real change” requires leading a wave election so large and definitive that it not only sweeps Mitch McConnell and a dozen or more Republican senators out of DC, but is also so sweeping and commanding it intimidates the truly titanic forces of American finance. To the point they concede resistance is futile and melt away from the fight … for their very existence.
The numbers aren’t there. (Here’s Kevin Drum at Mother Jones breaking down how much better Bernie will have to do with young voters than any Democrat has ever done.)
My pet response to anyone giddy over the thought of Medicare for All and a four-year timeline to put the private health insurance industry out of business is, “Ok, great. They’re carnivorous bastards. But just walk me through exactly how you unwind UnitedHealth, for one example. Never mind the employees out of work. Where does the shareholder value — held by pension funds for teachers unions and others besides the usual plutocrats — go? Are we just wiping it out? If so, I see some resistance there.”
As my blogging colleague Joe has said several times, the poison pill factor in Bernie’s support is the obsessive and (justifiably) angry faction that will not accept anyone but him. Should he lose they’ll likely repeat what they’ve done in recent memory and shift to some/any third party candidate making the same “principled” noises, ignoring what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore, or Jill Stein to Hillary Clinton. (Somewhere within Bernie’s support remains the “blow it all up” crowd who were down to a coin flip between him and Donald Trump in 2016.)
In both “Platoon” and “Saving Private Ryan” a character on the battlefield appeals to his commanding officer, “I got a bad feeling about this one.” That’s me today with Bernie.
Of course in “Saving Private Ryan” Tom Hanks responds by asking, “When was the last time you felt good about anything?”
Look, I’ll vote for Bernie if he is the nominee, but I am hoping that I am not faced with a choice between 2 old angry white guys for President.
What in the hell is your problem with angry old white guys, dammit!?
Want to have some fun? Try gaming out COVID-19 scenarios and their impact on the election. How many millions of deaths in the US would it take to get a massive Trump loss? Could this type of thing lead to a universal health care system?
Like a lot of us I’m fascinated with the psychology of the average Trumpist. I’m developing a deep thopught on when exactly they start caring whether what he is says is bullshit, or not.
When I was in graduate school in London, there was a guy name Neil Kinnock who served as Labour Party leader in my time of the early 1980s. Kinnoch, in reaction to The Iron Lady (Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) apostlized what many Bernie-backers advocate now that the Labour Party was not radical enough. The Party was too moderate and tried to appease the true blue-blood Torys (why do Conservative Tory politics has as their banner the color blue and Labour red?) in the rural South of the country. In order to invigorate the Labour base in the industrial north they needed a radical socialist revolution. A red rose in a clinched fist with blood dripping down onto the wrist. Nationalize the banks. Nationalize the telephone company. Nationalize the cab drivers and newspaper street vendors! Nicknamed “Worzel Gummidge” Michael Foote was a disheveled intellectual who wore rumpled tweet jackets with patches on the elbows and was a passionate orator. The “Kinnoch strategy” was to move radically left and he defeated by criticizing Foote of vacillating leadership, moderation, and flip-flopping.
Moving ahead today, the Kinnoch strategy was the staple of the arguments of Jeremy Corbyn in moving the Labour Party to radical left rather than left of center. And the result was the election of the baboon and Trump-like Boris Johnson. Can we repeat the Brits stratagem by the Bernie Sanders arguments that the Democratic Party is not left and revolutionary enough?
The cosmetic connection to Corbyn is kind of funny. Elegant grooming and sartorial splendor may not be a high priority with committed revolutionaries. But the primary issue is the appeal of your average Kinnock/Corbyn/Bernie to a majority of voters, not just the like-minded, laser-focused activists.
But Bernie isn’t the only one who has disadvantages in his column. Joe Biden won’t turn out young people as well as Bernie. Joe is much more gaffe prone than Bernie. Amy Klobuchar probably won’t turn out progressives as well as Bernie. Amy has disturbing staff abuse stories that Bernie doesn’t face. Amy is so cautious she is more likely than Bernie to cause progressives to vote third party or stay home. Pete Buttigieg will have homophobe and inexperience headwinds that Bernie won’t face. Warren will face mockery headwinds over her ridiculous insistence that she is Native American that Bernie won’t face. Cold fish Mike Bloomberg is a significantly less skilled political communicator and debater than Bernie. Billionaire Republican stop-and-frisker Bloomberg will surely have more trouble turning out progressives and people of color than Bernie.
Those are all very big disadvantages for us to wring our hands about too. Those are all knowable advantages for Bernie to counterbalance the undeniable socialist disadvantage, but what isn’t knowable is how the disadvantages and advantages will all net out.
We Democrats are engaging in death by armchair punditry. In the quest to divine the truth that we all believe we alone can see in the Great Electability Rorschach Test, we’re inadvertently doing the Republicans work for them by endlessly analyzing all of our candidates’ disadvantages, and therefore magnifying those disadvantages. We’re often doing that instead of making the case against Trump. I know folks sincerely think this is constructive vetting, but because of the power of social media, it’s gotten badly out-of-control and toxic.
Democrats are always a circular firing squad at this point in the cycle. It’s just Trump makes the situation much more dire. The fact that no perfect candidate exists is worth banging upside the head of everyone implying that’s the only way to win. But data has a bit more science to it that (we) pundits, and the Bernie data is disquieting. If he’s the nominee I’ll contribute and door knock for im. But I can already see the faces of my finance-oriented Edina neighbors at me pleading for Bernie-ism as opposed to the current steady market/portfolio performance.
One has to continually show the voters the differences between Social Democracy and Communist Socialism. Now rarely done. In most conversations, someone says “Socialism is bad” and it is left at that without asking him/her to explain what they mean by that word ( most of the time they cannot explain it coherently).
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal workforce health and retirement systems, farmer subsidies, business tax breaks, tax increment financing, the Veteran’s system, everyone can add to the list if they think about it. These social democratic programs exist now in this country.
Universal health care, equal educational opportunities for everyone, reasonable child care, and secure retirement programs for the elderly and incapacitated are practiced in most of Europe and the Scandinavian counties…..this is not totalitarian communism. The naysayers need to be challenged when they flaunt the word Socialism.
I takes longer than the classic elevator pitch, but I’m still amazed Bernie hasn’t been able to condense it into something understandable and appealing to the low-information crowd. Beyond that it’s still the All Hands On Deck/ DefCon Red reaction of the banks, insurance and pharma industries to the mere sight of ol’ Bern that worries me. That crowd can buy Bloomberg+ levels of disinformation.