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Stop saying that Bernie Sanders can’t win.
Stop
saying that he can’t defeat President Trump. That is by now a given. In
fact, in head-to-head national polls, Sanders consistently outperforms
Trump.
Sanders is, for the moment, the
clear front-runner to win the Democratic nomination. And he has a
national infrastructure and a committed band of supporters and donors
that make it clear that he could go the distance.
Furthermore,
Sanders’s impressive win in Nevada proves that he can attract a broad
range of support, at least in one part of the country. This in
particular is an significant feat. When Sanders ran four years ago, the
breadth of his appeal was indeed an issue, which was an issue similar to
the one Pete Buttigieg faces during this election. Since then, Sanders
has recognized that shortcoming, and has worked hard to address it.
If
Sanders can sustain this momentum, he will be the nominee. And then it
will be on to a matchup with Trump. Now, trying to predict what voters
will do in November is dicey business, but I am by no means counting
Sand
ers out.
Yes, I know all the issues with a Sanders candidacy.
First, he is a self-described
democratic socialist. I don’t believe most people know what that means,
but it is different and Trump will make it sound frightening, and many
Americans are likely to be wary of it.
The larger problem here is that the absolute definition isn’t quite fixed. In 2017 Vox’s Jeff Stein wrote an article entitled “9 questions about the Democratic Socialists of America you were too embarrassed to ask.”
Stein’s first question was, “What does D.S.A. believe in?” His answer:
“Like
most socialist organizations, D.S.A. believes in the abolition of
capitalism in favor of an economy run either by ‘the workers’ or the
state — though the exact specifics of ‘abolishing capitalism’ are
fiercely debated by socialists.”
Not
even academics agree. As Frances Fox Piven, a scholar of the left at the
City University of New York and a former D.S.A. board member, told
Stein, “The academic debates about socialism’s ‘meaning’ are huge and
arcane and rife with disagreements, but what all definitions have in
common is either the elimination of the market or its strict
containment.”
Sanders has his own definition, which he explained in a CNN town hall in Washington, D.C.:
“What
democratic socialism means to me is having in a civilized society the
understanding that we can make sure that all of our people live in
security and in dignity. Health care is a human right.”
He went on to say, “When I talk about democratic socialism, what I talk about are human rights and economic rights.”
That’s
too broad and amorphous. This will be a tremendous hurdle. He will need
to refine the term and defang it. But, being in the throes of a
presidential campaign is not exactly the time to educate the American
people on an exotic political label.
In
addition, the Russians and Donald Trump seem to want him to win the
nomination. That is worrisome. The Russians may well like some of
Sanders’s noninterventionist foreign policy instincts, but it is just as
likely that they find Sanders to be the most destabilizing Democratic
candidate. As Gleb Pavlovsky, a political scientist who used to advise
Vladimir Putin, told GQ’s Julia Ioffe, “Our candidate is chaos.”
And, in the end, both the Russians and Trump presumably believe that Sanders will be the easiest to defeat.
Then
there is the overall idea that Sanders is calling for nothing short of a
political revolution that fundamentally reshapes the country. For some
people, particularly many young ones, this is an extremely attractive
idea. But for others it is absolutely terrifying.
“Medicare
for all,” one of Sanders’s central policies, has a problem gaining
traction even among Democrats. As a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found,
“More Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer voting
for a candidate who wants to build on the A.C.A. in order to expand
coverage and reduce costs rather than replace the A.C.A. with a national
Medicare-for-all plan.”
Furthermore,
there are jitters among the Democratic political class that Sanders is
running against them, not with them, and will have a negative effect
down ballot. Sanders’s Twitter account tweeted last week:
“I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”
That
establishment includes the Democrats now in office. They include the
Democratic majority that now controls the House of Representatives.
Indeed, you could argue that it even includes Sanders himself.
Sanders
has work to do. He has some very real hurdles to clear. And it will not
be easy. His opponents would use every instrument at their disposal
during a general election to tar and feather him.
But,
all that stated, I still wouldn’t doubt his ability to win. There is a
very real desire for real change in this country. It would be a mistake
to discount it.
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