“Bernie Sanders Isn’t Electable, And Here’s Why”: Revolution On Hold, Politicians Think Of Their Own Necks First
The blunt truth: I just can’t see Bernie Sanders winning a general election. Three months ago, I thought it might be possible, maybe. But watching the campaign unfold as it has, and given some time to ponder how circumstances might play themselves out, I’ve become less convinced that he could beat any of the Republicans. He’d probably have the best shot against Ted Cruz. But in that case, as we now know, Mike Bloomberg would get in, and I think he’d be formidable, but I don’t want to get into why here. That’s another column, if indeed it ever needs to be written.
This column is about Sanders’s chances, which I think are virtually nil for two reasons.
Reason one: He’s not an enrolled Democrat. Understand that I say this not as a judgment on him, but as a description of what would surely become, were he the nominee, a deep, practical liability. Let me explain.
That he’s not an enrolled Democrat doesn’t matter, obviously, to his fans. I’m sure it doesn’t matter to most rank-and-file Democrats. It doesn’t matter to me. But you’d better believe it matters to Democratic office holders and party officials—members of Congress, state legislators, governors, mayors, national committee members, and state committee members across the country. These people are Democrats, and they’re Democrats for a reason. It’s important to them.
A party’s nominee, to these people, needs to lead the party—he or she needs to be the country’s No. 1 Democrat. Sanders has never been a Democrat, which is fine, it’s served him well. But even as he made the decision to seek the presidency as a Democrat, he doesn’t seem to have made any effort to act like he cares about the party he wants to lead.
Politico in early January published an interesting news story comparing Clinton’s and Sanders’s fundraising operations. Clinton raised more than $100 million in 2015, and Sanders $73 million. But here was the key thing: In addition to that $100 million Clinton bagged for herself, she raised an additional $18 million for Democrats around the country.
The Sanders figure? Zero.
There’s a lot I don’t know about life. But I know this: Democratic office holders keep tabs on that sort of thing. Now maybe some of them didn’t want Bernie Sanders at their fundraisers, but that wouldn’t have prevented the Sanders operation from writing checks to progressive Democrats all over the country as a kind of down payment, which apparently did not happen. Also, Sanders could just say at any time, “You know what? I’m a Democrat now.” He cannot, technically, enroll as one, because Vermont has open, non-party registration. He could however simply say it, but he hasn’t. He caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, but that’s just because any senator has to choose one side or the other.
Partly as a result of this, and for other reasons, Sanders has very little Democratic support. He has one Democratic member of Congress, Keith Ellison of Minnesota (out of 232); and, according to the relevant Wikipedia page, just 115 Democratic state legislators across the country. Actually, that’s not across 50 states; it’s across only 14 states. Of the 115, 94 are from New England: Maine 37, Vermont 29, New Hampshire 19, Connecticut five, Massachusetts four. The Vermont number of 29 is particularly interesting, because the Vermont General Assembly (which includes both houses) has 103 Democrats, meaning that Sanders doesn’t have even one-third of the Democrats in his own state.
Maybe 115 sounds like a quasi-respectable figure to you. But there are 3,175 Democratic state legislators in America (.pdf). So 115 is nothing. And again, the vast majority come from states right in his neighborhood. Where are the others from? According to this list, to take stock of some large states and key swing states, there’s one from Ohio; zero from Florida; zero from Virginia; zero from Colorado; zero from New Mexico; one from Nevada; two from New York; one from Illinois; and from California, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, zero, zero, and zero.
Now, my argument is not that endorsements matter that much. Rather, the important part is the likely consequence of this lack of support. Say it’s late spring, and somehow or another, Sanders is charging toward the nomination. He’ll pick up some more Democratic endorsers, in safe liberal districts in states that he won. But here’s what’s going to happen. Every one of those roughly 3,200 elected officials is going to conduct a poll of his or her district to ascertain whether association with Sanders helps or hurts. It’s my guess that for a lot of them—and I would say the substantial majority of them—the answer is going to be “hurts.”
And even if that’s not the case, these legislators will sound out, as they inevitably do, their top donors, and their districts’ major employers. How many Sanders enthusiasts are going to be found among those two groups? These legislators will keep their distance from Sanders. They won’t do the things that party people normally do for their nominee—go out and make speeches, share voter information, give tips about the district that only they know, and so on.
This will vary from district to district and state to state, but the sum and substance will likely be, if I’m right, that in a number of important jurisdictions, the message of the state and local Democratic candidates and party infrastructures to Sanders will be: You’re on your own, pal. Politicians think of their own necks first, and they’re fearful of the unknown and are overly cautious on matters like this anyway.
So that’s the first reason: Having never been a Democrat, and having even not given them any of his money in this past year, Sanders just isn’t going to get much help from Democrats. The Democratic Party hasn’t nominated someone who wasn’t an enrolled member of the party since, I believe, 1872, when it chose newspaperman Horace Greeley (I’m still checking on Gen. Winfield Scott, 1880, but even if it was he, that’s a long time ago).
Now, the second reason. I think Sanders is uniquely vulnerable to scorching foreign-policy attacks. Scorching. He’d be subject to stinging attacks on domestic policy, too, but on domestic policy, I’d imagine he can hold his own. On economics and health policy and monetary policy, whatever you think of his proposals, he clearly knows the nuts and bolts.
On foreign policy, that’s not so clear at all. It’s not his lefty past here that I’m mainly talking about, although you’d better believe that Republicans would make sure every voter in America knew about that, and they’d lie about its extent to boot. But even putting that to the side, the issue is his apparent lack of interest over all these years in foreign policy. The world is in a pretty parlous state right now, so I’d bet foreign policy will matter more in this election than it usually does, even without a Big Event in October. One factor that greatly benefited Bill Clinton in 1992 is that the Cold War had ended and foreign policy was low on voters’ radar screens. Sanders won’t be so lucky. I could write the ad myself, and it would be crushing, but I don’t want to give them ideas. Rest assured, they’ll think of them on their own.
And now, here’s where my first and second reasons relate to each other. If a nominee has strong backing from his party, when those attacks come, the other folks will have his back. If he doesn’t, they won’t. Mind you it is not my intent here to scold Sanders, even though many readers will take it that way. My intent is just to describe what I think would be the reality. When the right started savaging Sanders over foreign policy (and over socialism too, of course), the bulk of the support systems that are usually there for a candidate under attack won’t be.
Now, since I know this column is going to face plenty of rebuttal, let me spend two paragraphs pre-butting myself. It’s possible that if Sanders won the nomination, local Democrats would by and large just say “OK, he’s our guy,” and they’d get behind him. I don’t think so, for reasons stated above, but I concede that it’s possible, with so much at stake. And he still would have the support of the unions, who these days do most of the get-out-the-vote legwork. So it’s possible that a lack of support from Democratic candidates in swing (and other) states won’t be that severe and won’t mean as much as I suspect it will mean.
On foreign policy, we see from his debates with Clinton what Sanders’s reply will be: I opposed the Iraq War, and I was right. And second, I support Barack Obama’s foreign policy, so I’ll just do more of that. Who knows, that might be enough. My suspicion is that it will not be. It certainly won’t be against Donald Trump, who also opposed the war in Iraq, making that issue a wash between the two of them. But I suspect that as a general election campaign progresses, Sanders will have a harder and harder time leaning on a decision he made 14 years ago, even though it was the right one.
So that leads to my first stipulation. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll be wrong again. Despite what some of you are going to say on Twitter and elsewhere, I don’t presume to know everything.
Stipulation No. 2: Though I admire Hillary Clinton, my argument doesn’t have anything to do with her. It’s not a brief for Clinton. She has a number of flaws. She lacks the natural pol’s exuberant charisma, she has made errors of strategic judgment in her career that make me wonder how effective she’d be at negotiating with Republicans (or Israelis and Palestinians), and though I don’t think she’s corrupt, this stonewalling reflex of hers is just terrible, and it’s kind of shocking after all these years that she can’t see how poorly it has served her.
And she comes with risk. As I wrote Monday, I doubt she’ll be indicted over the email business. But something short of that could still prove politically problematic: an FBI report that gives Republicans enough grist to grind through the attack-ad mill this fall, say.
So what I’ve written here doesn’t have to do with her. Joe Biden could be the mainstream candidate, or John Kerry, or Joe Manchin, or Claire McCaskill, or a Democratic governor, or anybody, and I’m certain I’d still think the same thing.
My feeling that Sanders could win a general election was never strong, based on the usual stuff, i.e., 74-year-old socialist from Vermont. But recently I’ve been reflecting on these two matters, his lack of affiliation with the party whose standard he wants to bear, and his unique vulnerability to attack on foreign policy at a time when those issues are much more in the forefront of voters’ minds than usual. As I’ve written before, current general election head-to-head polling is meaningless, since conservatives haven’t yet spent a dollar attacking him. If he’s the nominee, they’re going to spend at least five hundred million of them doing that. And some Democrats, more likely a lot of Democrats, are going to run away from him. I can’t see how that ends well.
UPDATE: A first reader reminds me that Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona has also endorsed Sanders. A second reader corrects that the Democratic nominee of 1880 was Gen. Winfield Hancock. Winfield Scott was the Whig Party nominee of 1852.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 27, 2016
“Multifaceted Clinton, A Cubist Masterpiece”: Vastly Conflicting Views Of Clinton Every 24 Hours
Picasso would love Hillary Clinton, with her constantly changing Cubist angles. Painting the 68-year-old — from Illinois, New York, Washington or Arkansas, take your pick — would never grow old. Even the master might have a hard time capturing her character and pinning it down.
As fickle, fateful Iowa caucuses come Monday, presidential candidates have been sized up like livestock at the state fair. None more than Clinton. She took all tough questions thrown at her at the town hall with verve.
It’s abundantly clear that she’s got game, playing to win in a state where she lost to freshman Senator Barack Obama, whose words touched the stars in 2008.
The first black president made multitudes rejoice, but his record of advancing the social status of blacks is thin, reactive, lukewarm at best. Ending solitary confinement for juveniles took seven years.
His singing graced the mourning of a tragic race-related murder in South Carolina, but I mean Martin Luther King Jr.-level advancements, like rights, jobs, wages, education, laws and opportunity.
Will Clinton do better by women? Sure hope so. She believes in progress by laws, she said.
Beholding the cusp of the first woman American president, I encounter vastly conflicting views of Clinton every 24 hours. They are like snowflakes in your eyes in a storm, for she means many different things.
Take two Midwestern girls. Mackenzie and Jordynn, African-American sisters, ages 6 and 4. “My girls now want to be president because of her,” their mother Jencelyn King-Witzel told me.
Girls can’t vote, but they can dream. Mothers are taking daughters on the Clinton campaign trail so they will remember this moment in history.
A 5-year-old in my family was asked if she wanted to campaign for Clinton in another state. She went upstairs and packed her suitcase.
On the other end of the spectrum, take brilliant memoirist Susan Groag Bell, the late women’s historian whose 90th birthday would have been this week. Born to elegance in Central Europe, Susan and her mother escaped the Nazis, but her father was deported to a concentration camp.
Susan was educated in England, from age 12, by the kindness shown to war refugees. She studied at Stanford University and lived in California, where she picked up her pen to write and teach pathbreaking studies of European women’s lives, including Christine de Pisan, a medieval French poet. Susan lived until 2015, but would have dearly wished to witness a woman president.
The Washington Post conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker, just took a more jaded view of Clinton, her fellow baby boomer: “Or, is it that she is reflexively prone to dissemble?”
Journalists are a skeptical lot, and have pursued Clinton’s husband hard for an unseemly affair that was a private sin, not a constitutional crime. Some seem unwilling to forgive her for his betrayal.
Parker revived an infamous line by William Safire, the late op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 1996, Safire labeled the first lady “a congenital liar” as the Whitewater investigation raged against the Clintons, which, by the way, led like a snake to the sex scandal. How convenient. His enemies thought President Clinton was the Titanic, but he was the iceberg.
And Hillary Clinton is the shipwreck survivor. Another Cubist view.
A senior military man feels open to supporting Clinton, but fears her private email record, with careless handling of secret material as secretary of state, may lead to an indictment for her or her top aides.
A pragmatic read is that nothing will soon get done on the domestic policy front, with Congress wrangling, but Clinton is the best-prepared candidate to handle foreign policy.
Yes, she mended fences around the world as Obama’s star Cabinet player. Then again, she voted for the Iraq War; the lady is a hawk. It took Clinton a decade to admit that major mistake as senator. She has her pride, a character flaw. You can see it now, how hard it is to say sorry. Strong women are like that.
If you believe in something cosmic stirring, the morning after the snowstorm in Washington, Jan. 26, only two women senators were on the floor, with only women there to start morning business. “As we convene this morning, you look around the chamber, the presiding officer is female. All of our parliamentarians are female. Our floor managers are female. All of our pages are female,” said Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
That first in history felt “genuinely fabulous.”
By: Jamie Stiehm, , Featured Post, The National Memo, January 29, 2016
“Showing Up At Events Doesn’t Mean Showing Up To Vote”: Do Trump Voters Really Exist? How Both Parties Botched Iowa
If the major political parties had some trick up their sleeves to get more voters registered ahead of the Iowa caucus, it hasn’t happened yet.
With under a week left until people vote for the first time in 2016, the number of registered Democrats and Republicans has remained fairly static in the last six months. So the big crowds at rallies for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—where they boast of attracting new caucus goers in droves—hasn’t translated into big gains when it comes to registered support.
At least not yet.
According to statistics from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, the number of registered Republicans has decreased from January 2015 until January 2016. The same can be said for Democrats. The number can typically fluctuate as registered members of either party do not participate in a given cycle and the actual number of participants who register on the actual caucus night will not be finally tallied until months later, after auditors extensively pour over the numbers.
What can be said about this cycle is that there is a surprisingly small change in the number of registered voters in the latter half of 2015. For instance, compared to the lead-up to 2008’s Iowa Caucus, where Barack Obama pulled off a surprise win against Hillary Clinton, the number of registered Democrats skyrocketed. In June 2007, there were 596,259 registered Democrats in the state, according to statistics from the Iowa Secretary of State. By the time that number was tallied in January 2008, it was 606,209. Looking at the same window for Democrats, this cycle, the number has gone from 584,737 to 584,111, essentially flatlining.
“It’s a little surprising,” University of Iowa political science professor Timothy Hagle told The Daily Beast. He said that sometimes the assumption among campaigns is “If you’re showing up at their events, you’re showing up to vote.”
“That’s not always the case,” Hagle added.
This could explain why Bernie Sanders is hedging his bets slightly even as he has drawn closer to, and in some cases, overtaken Clinton’s lead in the state.
Sanders told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday that he doesn’t anticipate the campaign being able to get the monstrous turnout Obama’s 2008 bid elicited.
“The turnout was so extraordinary, nobody expected it,” Sanders said. “Do I think in this campaign that we are going to match that? I would love to see us do that, I hope we can.”
“Frankly, I don’t think we can,” he added. “What Obama did in 2008 is extraordinary.”
This of course remains to be seen until caucus night but that doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. The Sanders campaign did not respond to a question about their analysis of registered voters.
Clinton’s camp, which has experience on their side, for whatever that’s worth, did not comment on the state of their outreach efforts. However, on Tuesday the campaign announced a Digital Commitment Cards initiative allowing “voters to build a personalized, digital card expressing their commitment to vote for Hillary Clinton in their state’s primary or caucus,” according to the press release. The information, accessible in a Commit to Caucus app, also gives prospective voters information on polling locations and the caucusing process.
On the Republican side, also a neck and neck race at this point between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the spectre of doubt has been raised about the latter’s ability to win because of an ill-organized ground game.
Despite that, Trump has gained all the momentum in recent weeks leading to Cruz’s campaign trying to pivot to “underdog” status. While the big unknown for Trump is whether his rabid fan base will actually understand and participate in the caucus process—his website recently included an added link to Iowa caucus locations—Cruz’s camp continues to rely on its strong organizational structure as an indicator of likely victory.
“If Trump is truly attracting new voters as the establishment in Washington is now claiming, you would expect to see it in Iowa voter registration, but the number[s] are just not there,” Rick Tyler, Cruz’s communications director told The Daily Beast. “Perhaps reality is about to hit the reality star. We will see on Monday.”
Republicans overall have seen only a marginal increase in registered voters between June 2015 and January of this year, rising from 609,020 to 612,112. When asked if the campaign had taken into account this small rise when considering its own ground game, Tyler said that the religious base in the state would help Cruz pull out a win.
“Iowa evangelicals have a good turnout record for the caucuses and our support among them is strong,” he said.
The Secretary of State’s office will release the most newly updated figures on Thursday, which could indicate marginal last-minute shifts in the final days before the caucus. But the stasis in the numbers over the past year has been noticeable, according to communications director Kevin Hall.
“With 2008, the Democratic numbers reflected the excitement around Obama,” Hall told The Daily Beast. He added that in 2012, there was a measurable spike on the Republican side based on their caucus as well, something that hasn’t been seen this time around.
When considering these figures, Hall referenced the question that has been the elephant in the room for months: whether Trump’s rock-star level fan base will actually get him the victory on Monday.
“It remains to be seen,” he said. “I’m sure some of them will turn out.”
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
For Trump, and perhaps Sanders, a victory on Monday night will be hinged on bringing new people to the table who have never participated in the caucus before. Trump leads Cruz 38 to 25 among potential first-timers, according to a Quinnipiac poll released on Tuesday.
Now the only question left is will these people actually show up.
By: Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast, January 27, 2016
“A Long Slog Or A Quick Knockout?”: All The Ways The 2016 Primaries Could Go Once Voters Start Casting Ballots
I wanted to write this before any votes were cast.
I am not sure that predictions and prognostications do much more than make fools out of a lot of us these days. Lord knows, I have done enough of that in this space. But those of us in politics can’t resist. So here goes.
On the Republican side, polls and reason would dictate that Donald Trump triumphs in Iowa and probably New Hampshire. The angry vote is angrier than ever and folks don’t care much what he says, just how he says it.
This leads many Republicans to the first phase of their hopeful plan: vanquish Ted Cruz. Get him off the stage and out of the race as quickly as possible. We see many senior statesman and wise counselors seeing Trump as the candidate who can initially rid the Republican Party of a dangerous force. Former Sen. Bob Dole has endorsed Jeb Bush but supports Trump right now as the most likely candidate to “repeal and replace” a Cruz candidacy. The hope of many Republicans is that in the course of these early primaries and caucuses, up through March 1 and March 15, we will see a reasonable Republican rise to challenge Trump.
Possible. But let’s look at the likely outcomes.
Out of all these early Trump wins, I see three basic scenarios.
The first is one that many Republicans clearly fear: We may have gotten rid of Cruz but Trump begins to roll through the February states, goes into March with a big wind at his back and begins to rack up delegates and put himself in a strong position to be victorious in the key winner-take-all states like Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Before any organized establishment candidate can emerge from the pack, Trump becomes nearly unbeatable by simply winning delegates. This is part of his steamroller strategy – a lot of candidates stay in, split the vote and he rolls down the tracks. Result: a fairly early wrapping up of the nomination for Trump.
The second is more complicated. A lot of attention is given to the candidate or candidates who come in right behind the front-runners in the early states – second, third, even fourth place. Close finishers matter. This is much different from previous modern races for president. This allows a candidate to emerge as the alternative to Trump – a Rubio, Kasich, Bush, even Christie. This becomes what analyst Charlie Cook calls the battle between the establishment candidate and the insurgent candidate (or candidates).
The quicker one establishment candidate emerges, the more likely he can stop Trump. Many Republicans tire of his antics, most think he can not win, and congressional Republicans and candidates out on the stump are terrified that he will cost them their elections. He is the political Barry Goldwater of 2016, not the Ronald Reagan. This likely results in a coalescing around a Republican other than Trump.
The third scenario is a bit of a version of the second but is a longer slog, with candidates staying in the race into the spring and even June. In this scenario, Trump is the leader but does not pick up enough delegate support to go over the top and does not have a majority of the delegates going into the July convention. Other candidates win states and the unpledged delegates become more of a factor. Polling begins to show Trump’s weaknesses among independents in the general election and his claims of causing a sea change in turnout begin to look unrealistic. The folks who “are mad as hell and not going to take it any more” appear to be staying home and not voting. The convention turns to a conventional candidate and Trump fades.
Who the likely establishment candidate is may be the hardest prediction of all: I still don’t completely write Bush off; Rubio is possible but my gut tells me he doesn’t have it; Kasich, despite the fact he is not the best debater, has a lot to offer the Republican party in a general election; Christie has an outsider message and a bit of the “in your face” of Trump, but one senses it is forced and his baggage is still rolling off the carousel.
At the end of the day, I think we either have a fairly quick Trump wrap-up of the nomination or a very long slog. I still can not believe the Republicans will choose a Donald Trump (or a Ted Cruz), but this primary and caucus electorate is as extreme and radical a group as I have ever seen.
Turning to the Democrats, it’s not quite as much of a circus. But a similar scenario could unfold in the sense that it could be quick or turn out to be a long slog. In my view, the same outcome prevails: a Hillary Clinton nomination. If Clinton wins Iowa, I think it is over fairly quickly. Bernie Sanders then wins New Hampshire and some states in March, but the party pulls together and she wins the bulk of the states. There’s no winner–take-all on the Democratic side, so the two split delegates. But it becomes clear that voters are coming together around Clinton. Martin O’Malley is gone by the end of February in any case. And by the end of March Clinton is pulling away.
If Clinton loses Iowa and New Hampshire, doesn’t win South Carolina by as much as pundits believe she should and Nevada is up for grabs, this will go on for a while. But Sanders has had more or less a free ride, at least up until now. His stump speech, his Internet fundraising and his organization have taken him a long way. But now he will be researched, criticized and forced to defend his views and his past actions. Socialist won’t sell despite his efforts to redefine it. Having a hero like Eugene V. Debs won’t fly – heck, I liked him too in college and Herbert Marcuse as well, but I was 20 years old. There is no one better to lead a demonstration on the mall than Sanders, but when it comes to sitting in the Oval Office, Clinton better fits that chair. His message is strong and he has made Clinton a stronger candidate, but at the end of the day as we go to March and April and May and maybe even June, it will be Clinton. She can win and she can govern.
So there you have it – and as I say every election cycle, we come out with our armchair analysis and then the voters vote and nearly every time, surprise us!
By: Peter Fenn, Democratic Political Strategist and Head of Fenn Communications, U. S. News and World Report, January 29, 2016
“Four Years Of Peace, Love, And Single-Payer Health Care?”: In That Old Volkswagen Bus With Bernie, Rolling Toward 1972
Unpack your old tie-dyed T-shirts, roll yourself a fat doobie, and warm up the ancient VW bus. We’re going to do Woodstock and the 1972 presidential election all over again. And this time, the hippies are going to win! Four years of peace, love, and single-payer health care.
But do take care to clear the path for Bernie Sanders. Because if he steps in something the dog left behind, he’s going to blame Wall Street and start yelling and waving his arms around.
And you know how much that upsets Republican congressmen who are otherwise so eager to oblige his plans to soak the rich and give everybody free college, free health care, free bubble-up and rainbow stew—as the old Merle Haggard song had it.
OK, so I’m being a smart-aleck. I was moved to satire by a couple of moments from last week’s Democratic and Republican presidential debates. First, Sen. Sanders, boasting about a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that shows him beating Donald Trump by 15 points—54 to 39. Hillary Clinton tops Trump only 51-41.
Both would be huge landslides. In 1972, Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern 61-38. The Democrat won only Massachusetts.
The part Sanders left out and that Hillary was also wise enough to leave unmentioned is that the same poll shows her leading him 59 to 34 percent in the Democratic primary contest nationally. Twenty-five points.
She’d have to be a fool to take that to the bank, although it does demonstrate why a lot of the horse-race commentary has the narrative upside down. See, unless Bernie manages to prevail in the Iowa caucuses, his campaign pretty much goes on life support. A New Englander nearly always wins in New Hampshire, and rarely goes anywhere after that.
Almost needless to say, all polls are individually suspect. Moreover, the national media give far more play to surveys depicting a close contest; they’re better for journalists’ careers.
That would be true even if you didn’t know that bringing Hillary Clinton down has been an obsessive quest in Washington and New York newsrooms for twenty-four years.
During most of which time it’s been “Bernie who?” That Vermont socialist who’s all the time yelling? That guy?
Yeah, him. The guy with the Brooklyn accent and the Wacky Prof look who says “billionaire” the way some people say “Ebola.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The same guy Ohio Gov. John Kasich boldly predicted would lose all 50 states if Democrats were foolish enough to nominate him. Actually, I’m confident Sanders would carry Vermont and probably Massachusetts against any Republican nominee. But New Hampshire and Maine could be out of reach.
Even against Trump? Well theoretical matchups mean next to nothing this far out. And I suspect that Bernie’s big advantage–hard for politically active readers to believe—is that most voters know almost nothing about him except that he’s neither Hillary nor The Donald.
I also suspect that a Trump vs. Sanders matchup would bring a serious third-party challenge. Let the GOP attack machine get to work on Sanders and I’m guessing we’d soon learn that there’s no great yearning among the electorate for socialism—democratic or not.
Did you know, for example, that Sanders took a honeymoon trip to the Soviet Union in 1988? George Will does.
Does that make him disloyal? Of course not, merely a bit of a crank. As Sanders loyalists are quick to remind you, President Reagan went to Moscow to negotiate nuclear arms reductions with Gorbachev that same year.
As a personal matter, I got my fill of Marxist faculty lounge lizards back in that tie-dyed, VW bus era. Disagree with them, and you’re an immoral sellout. That gets old really fast.
Writing in The Washington Monthly, David Atkins does a brave job of trying to explain away a Gallup poll showing that while 38 percent of Americans say they’d never vote for a Muslim president, and 40 percent wouldn’t support an atheist, fully 50 percent said no socialists need apply.
Can Bernie persuade them otherwise? I don’t see how. Most Americans don’t actually hate the rich, and his despairing portrait of contemporary American life doesn’t square with most people’s experience.
“Against these liabilities,” observes Jonathan Chait, “Sanders offers the left-wing version of a hoary political fantasy: that a more pure candidate can rally the People into a righteous uprising that would unsettle the conventional laws of politics.”
Meanwhile, not only has Sanders presented no realistic political scenario for enacting his vaunted reforms, serious observers also question their substance.
Writes liberal MVP Paul Krugman:
“To be harsh but accurate: the Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan, which relies on fantasies about huge supply-side effects to make the numbers supposedly add up.”
During the last Democratic debate, Bernie accused Hillary of failing to take his candidacy seriously. Fair enough. But has he?
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, January 20, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 