Quit Saying That Bernie Sanders Can't Win - He May Be the Most Electable Democrat Running in 2020

By Matthew Rozsa, Salon

25 November 19

Too many of Sanders' opponents are running on an unproven narrative that he's not "electable." Do better, Democrats

don't know whether Bernie Sanders should be president. But if the argument is about "electability," a case exists that Sanders is not merely electable, but may be the most electable Democrat running right now. Democrats who want to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 should not assume that Sanders is a politically risky choice — even though that is the conventional wisdom — and instead look dispassionately at the arguments for and against his supposed electability.

More than mere fairness is at stake here. Donald Trump, who represents a grave danger to the United States and the world. His initiatives on global warming and immigration, his economic and foreign policies and his personal corruption are all existential threats to the survival of the free world, as well as severe moral crises for our country. If he is to be defeated, the Democrats must look at whether each of the leading candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sanders — has a realistic argument for how they could win.

That argument exists for Sanders. It's possible that, as Fox Business Network host Trish Regan told me in March, he's simply too far left. Many people make that same argument, from the axiomatic position that a leftist or socialist is inherently unelectable. Yet when I reached out to assorted political experts to get their thoughts on Sanders' electability, I found more complex responses.

Before contacting these people, I identified five hypothetical arguments suggesting that Sanders is the most electable candidate. He has rebounded a bit in the polls since recovering from his recent heart attack, and is currently at or near the top in both Iowa and New Hampshire. His supporters are enthusiastic and will vote for him no matter what, which could lead to higher turnout for him in both the primary and general elections. Voters may care less about ideology than character, which could give Sanders an edge if he is perceived as compassionate and sincere in contrast to the opportunistic and shallow Trump.

If Trump shifted the Overton Window (that is, the frame of what is considered acceptable in mainstream political debate) in 2016, it's entirely conceivable that Sanders could do it again. For that matter, Sanders' ideas aren't even that radical in the first place; they're basically an updated version of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which got him elected four times.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sanders has consistently led Trump in head-to-head polling in battleground states, and thus has a plausible Electoral College strategy. As a resident of one such state, Pennsylvania, I encounter this daily, at least on an anecdotal level.

"Conventional wisdom routinely fails to grasp the simmering anger that’s fueled by extreme income inequality," journalist Norman Solomon, co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, told Salon by email. He was making what one could call the "populist wave" argument:

And when the electoral door is closed for progressive populism, the only other door open leads to right-wing demagoguery of the sort that Trump personifies. In the 2020 general election campaign, Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders would fling a progressive populist door wide open.

After dismissing the "mass-media myth" that Democrats need to nominate a moderate like Joe Biden to win (and invoking the example of Hillary Clinton in 2016), Solomon argued that

yes, there are disaffected Republicans to be had, but not many — compared to the huge potential for increasing turnout among people of color, lower-income voters and young people. More than any other candidate, Sanders has enormous potential to inspire that kind of turnout.

In other words, Solomon posits that Sanders' democratic socialist ideology — the very thing that lead many to conclude he can't possible win — is in fact his greatest electoral strength.

By contrast, Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan political science site Sabato's Crystal Ball, offered the more traditional view that Sanders' ideology could just as easily be a liability as a strength.

"There is some evidence that voters punish more ideologically extreme candidates, and remember that for as extreme as Trump was and is on some issues and in his personal behavior, he also altered the GOP’s messaging on issues such as entitlements and free trade in ways that seemed to be electorally useful," Kondik told Salon by email. Sanders could also benefit because "he tends to emphasize economic and class issues over cultural and social ones," Kondick continued, which may be "a better approach for Democrats in a general election setting, because a number of the most important swing voters are probably less economically conservative than they are culturally conservative."

At the same time, Kondik suggested that Sanders' policies could be perceived as overly ambitious "in a time of relative peace and prosperity, where such far-reaching proposals may be out of step with the electorate — particularly affluent, highly-educated professionals who are new to the Democratic Party and who dislike Trump but may be leery of Sanders’ program."

Kondik was also cautious about predicting that Sanders would inspire higher turnout, arguing that it was an "open question" whether he could do so among "non-white voters, particularly African Americans" and the "small but crucial number of 2016 Trump and/or third party voters."

Finally we come to Allan Lichtman, an American political scientist at American University whose book "The Keys to the White House" defines a formula that has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. Unlike Solomon, Lichtman doesn't think Sanders' ideology will help, and unlike Kondik, he doesn't think it is likely to hurt. Instead, he believes ideology is ultimately irrelevant.

"I have said many times that 'electability' is a word that should be abolished from the political lexicon," Lichtman explained by email. "According to my 13 keys to the White House, presidential elections are primarily votes up or down on the strength and performance of the party holding the White House. Only one key pertains to the challenging candidate and it turns against the incumbent party only in the very rare case where the challenger is truly charismatic and inspirational. Otherwise traditional calculations of electability are meaningless." He cited the examples of supposedly electable Democrats like Michael Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, all of whom lost.

"My advice to voters is vote for who you believe in and stop trying to decipher 'electability,'" Lichtman advised.

In the Solomon, Kondik and Lichtman schools of thought, we can see a full spectrum of possibilities. Only Kondik holds that Sanders' ideology could hurt him — largely based on consistent poll results showing that Biden runs strongest against Trump both in the total popular vote and in the Electoral College.

"Bernie Sanders has an impressively solid base of committed supporters, but there's scant evidence that a majority of Americans are ready to embrace his European-style democratic socialism," Will Marshall, founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, told Salon by email. "I think there are lots of suburbanites across the Midwest who have growing doubts about Trump, but might see him as the lesser evil if Democrats nominate someone they view as hostile to the free enterprise system."

Marshall later added, "Mayor Pete [Buttigieg] is rising in part because Democratic primary voters view him as less doctrinaire than Elizabeth Warren, who is being dragged down by her support for Medicare for All. And if she's too far out of the left limb, Bernie's even farther."

Norman Solomon's school of thought — that a candidate who inspires voters can win by tapping into deep political angers — has played out successfully in recent history. Before 2016, Americans had never elected a president who lacked any political or military experience, let alone someone who had been divorced twice and was primarily known to the public as a reality TV star. Yet Donald Trump is now president because he defied conventional wisdom at every stage.

The Lichtman school of thought also suggests that Sanders can win, although not because of any special qualities that Sanders possesses. Its logic is much simpler: This election will be a referendum on Trump's presidency. If he passes muster, he will be re-elected; if he doesn't, he won't. Either way, the most logical thing for Democrats to do is choose the candidate they like the most; electability will take care of itself.

I would add two more observations. Bernie Sanders will be 79 years old in January 2021 and has recently survived a heart attack. He would need to pick a strong running mate for his candidacy to work. Secondly, Sanders is Jewish and America is seeing an undeniable spike in anti-Semitism. He would need to be especially cautious on the campaign trail, and the consequences of this particular "first" are unpredictable.

If he never becomes president, history will almost certainly remember Bernie Sanders as an influential figure in American political history. He has fired up a generation of progressives and fundamentally altered the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party to the left. He has inspired an entire generation of young progressives and radicals, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to him, formerly fringe policy proposals like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal are core issues in political debate.

Whether you want Bernie Sanders to be president is of course up to you. But the argument that he simply isn't electable doesn't hold water. Those who favor other candidates would do better by arguing for them on their merits, instead of relying on the flawed narrative that Sanders can't possibly win.

When Progressives in Congress Let Us Down, We Should Push Back

By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News

25 November 19

ast week, the Democratic leadership put an extension of the Patriot Act into a “continuing resolution” that averted a government shutdown. More than 95 percent of the Democrats in the House went along with it by voting for the resolution. Both co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, voted yes. So did all 11 of the CPC’s vice chairs.

It didn’t have to be that way. House progressives could have thrown a monkey wrench into the Orwellian machinery. Instead, the cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

“There’s no other way to spin this,” a progressive staffer on Capitol Hill told The New Republic. “This was a major capitulation. The Progressive Caucus has touted itself as an organization that can wield power and leverage the votes of its 90 members. And they didn’t lift a finger. Democratic leadership rammed this down their throats.”

A gag reflex was needed from progressive lawmakers, who should have put up a fight rather than swallow rationales for going along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s maneuver. With the Fourth Amendment on life support, basic civil liberties were at stake.

There were opportunities to push back — if CPC leaders had moved to throw down a gauntlet.

“You could go through and name any strategy for me, and I would tell you why it would fail,” Jayapal said. But if you don’t put up a fight, you’re sure to fail. And showing some strength on a matter of principle can build momentum while marshalling grassroots support in the process.

With a show of resolve, just a few dozen Democrats could have blocked the resolution. Instead, it passed the House on November 19 by a 231-192 margin, thus extending the Patriot Act for three months instead of letting it expire.

“No” votes came from all four members of The Squad — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

The list of “yes” votes from House members with progressive reputations was stunningly long. Here are just a dozen: Karen Bass, Raul Grijalva, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Zoe Lofgren, Jim McGovern, Jerrold Nadler, Chellie Pingree, Jamie Raskin, Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters and Peter Welch.

One factor: Even the best progressives in the House spend a lot more time with Congressional colleagues and leaders than they do with constituents. Call it an occupational hazard. Peer pressure and conformity tend to be cumulative. The power of the Democratic leadership is quite tangible and often stern, whereas the power of constituents is routinely diffuse and unrealized. 

To the extent that progressives at the grassroots don’t effectively pressure members of Congress, party authorities like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer maintain a tremendous advantage. To the extent that avoiding conflict with the Democratic leadership is more important than standing up for principles, even the best progressive incumbents succumb to the Capitol bubble. Given the strength of that bubble, it can only be burst with methodical intervention from the grassroots.

Congressman Pocan was on target when he commented a year ago: “People in D.C. think we’re the center of the universe, but we’re not — the people who elect us are the center of the universe. It’s when you have that kind of activism in the districts, you’re really going to be impactful.”

In the case of the Patriot Act-laden continuing resolution, which President Trump signed into law shortly after passage, the contrasts between avowed commitments and conformist acquiescence were striking among many progressive luminaries in the House. A few examples:

• In his first House race, when he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Tom Lantos in 2004, now-Congressman Khanna was emphatic in his opposition to the Patriot Act. He declared: “We have a chance to do something absolutely extraordinary in this election: to hold a congressman responsible based on his voting record. Mr. Lantos has had a distinguished career in public service, but his votes for the war and the Patriot Act don’t represent the will of this district.”


• Congresswoman Lee has been denouncing the Patriot Act for the better part of two decades, as when in 2005 she issued a news release headlined “Barbara Lee Opposes Extension of the Patriot Act, Blasts ‘Big Brother Attack.’”


• In 2015, Congresswoman Lofgren minced no words in opposing even a brief Patriot Act extension. She signed a letter with five colleagues that stated: “We will not vote to reauthorize this program, even for a short period of time.”


• In autumn 2016, just before she won election to Congress for the first time, Jayapal told an interviewer why she “stepped up to fight back against the Bush administration, against the Patriot Act, against civil-liberties violations. It was very, very personal, in a way, but it was also very political. It was not just about me. It was, ‘Wait a second. We as a country cannot undermine the deepest values that make us who we are.’”

It’s telling that Khanna, Lee, Lofgren and Jayapal — and so many other self-identified progressives in the House — chose to take the path of least resistance last week when faced with a choice of whether to buck their party’s leadership or facilitate the extension of the Patriot Act that they have long opposed. Heightening the sad irony is the fact that the newly reauthorized provisions have enabled far more aggressive surveillance than was envisioned when the Patriot Act first passed — at which time Lee, McGovern, Nadler, Schakowsky, Waters and others who just voted for the reauthorization felt compelled to oppose it.

Last week, they followed leadership that was determined to merge the odious Act with the continuing resolution. An amendment, offered by independent congressman Justin Amash, would have separated the Patriot Act extension from the resolution — but the House Rules Committee (chaired by McGovern), in step with Pelosi’s marching orders, killed that amendment.

If even 20 more House progressives had signaled a willingness to vote against the continuing resolution unless it was separated from Patriot Act reauthorization, they would have been in a strong position to demand stand-alone votes on each measure. That would have underscored serious opposition to the Act’s surveillance programs — enhancing progressive leverage in the House and increasing the chances of reform when the issue of further Patriot Act extension comes back to Congress in a few months.

Instead, leading progressive lawmakers chose to sidestep a historic opportunity to do the right thing by registering clear opposition to the Patriot Act. Such retreats end up eroding rather than building the power of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Rolling back key aspects of the military-industrial-surveillance complex cannot be accomplished without putting up a huge fight. Postponing confrontations with party leaders might seem prudent, but such caution has negative consequences. Sooner or later, grassroots activists become exasperated when Democrats in Congress don’t match progressive statements with actions. Just being a member of the Progressive Caucus is not enough.

Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.