Full disclosure: If New York’s primary were held today — not that it typically has a significant electoral impact, since it’s relatively late on the calendar — I’d vote for Bernie Sanders.
Why Bernie? Because he’s the best this system has to offer: a flawed candidate whose overall message is important enough, and his record free enough of corruption and evildoing, that I can overlook the things I don’t like about his record and fill in the bubble next to his name on the ballot without feeling like a terrible person.
Hillary Clinton is nowhere close to acceptable. She has no message, other than the dead end of liberal identity-politics tokenism: sure would be neat (for her) if there were a first woman president. Her corruption is spectacular: served on the board of Wal-Mart, where she signed off on union-busting, was paid by Goldman Sachs, ran a charitable foundation like a money laundry. Voted for both of Bush’s wars, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, then destroyed Libya and Syria.
A vote for Hillary is a vote against working people, for the plutocrats, and for genocide.
However, just because I plan to vote for Bernie — even though I wrote the book on him— doesn’t mean I can’t see ideological and tactical flaws in his campaign. With that in mind, here’s my report card on the insurgent from Vermont’s bid to date.
The Good
Paris and San Bernadino aside, any political scientist will tell you that pocketbook issues — voters’ feelings about the economy, whether or not they’re prosperous, and how they perceive their future career prospects — usually determine the outcome of American presidential elections. Assuming there isn’t another 9/11-scale national security threat, the 2016 race will be about Americans’ sense that they’re working harder while earning less, and their anger that they’re still digging out of the 2008-09 financial crisis while the banks who created it are making bigger profits than ever.
No other candidate, left or right, can touch Bernie’s credibility on the economy. For decades, while no one paid attention, he shouted that the American economy was rigged in favor of the billionaire class at the expense of everyone else. Now most people agree.
Bernie owns the number one issue in the campaign.
That, as Donald Trump would say, is yuuuuge. Neither The Donald’s newfound openness to tax people like himself, nor Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s awkward attempt to co-opt Sandersism with words instead of policies, stands a chance at denting the Bern on the number. One. Issue.
The other major metric for voters is character. Love him or hate him, everyone knows Sanders has integrity, which is why the Clinton camp’s cut-and-paste attempts to portray him as an NRA shill are falling flat. “Sanders may be a dreamer, but he’s not dishonorable. Trying to sully him in this way only sullies her,” columnist Charles Blow of The New York Times observes.
For an American politician, being widely perceived as honorable is virtually unheard of. It’s worth a billion dollars in attack ads.
The Bad
The biggest danger to Sanders’ campaign isn’t failing to get enough black votes in Southern states. (If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, voters down South who haven’t paid much attention to the race yet will check him out — and he’ll do fine.)
Sanders’ third rail is being perceived as a Johnny One Note candidate obsessed with economic justice at the expense of everything else.
I’ve read everything written about and by Bernie Sanders. But his foreign policy prescriptions are as thin on the ground as U.S. troops in ISIS-controlled Iraq. Whether he’s disinterested in foreign affairs or simply cares more about all matters domestic, he doesn’t talk much about America’s role in the world. Big mistake. Voters expect a robust foreign policy agenda from their president.
As far as I can tell, a Sanders Doctrine is neither militaristic nor isolationist, deploying ground troops and aerial attacks more sparingly than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama. He told me he’d even continue Bush-Obama’s drone assassination program, which is illegal since it has never been authorized by Congress.
If I were running his campaign, I’d spin Sanders’ views as “real pragmatism” to take some air out of Hillary’s hawkish tough-broad sails. But I long for something more.
By 2016 measures Bernie’s foreign and domestic policy agendas are inconsistent. A self-described Scandinavian-style “democratic socialist” doesn’t usually favor wars of choice like Afghanistan (which Sanders supported) or drone killings. Voters assume he’s a pacifist or wish he were — why not become one? I wish he’d align his laudable desire for justice and equality at home for Americans with a push for freedom and self-determination abroad for citizens of other nations. Like: we don’t attack any other countries unless they go after us first.
Sanders is hobbled by some major communications problems. Hillary has exploited his failure to fully explain his healthcare plan by accusing him of wanting to increase taxes, outright lying. “If I save you $10,000 in private health insurance and you pay a little bit more in taxes in total, there are huge savings in what your family is spending,” Bernie tried to rebut at the fourth debate. Not clear enough.
Here, let me help: “Under my plan, your health insurance will be free. Free! The average American will save $10,000 a year. Your taxes will go up, but that tiny increase will be so much less than you’ll save. It’s the same deal almost every other country has, people all around the world love it, and you’ll love it too.”
The Ugly
Capitalism is less popular than most pundits know; socialism and communism are more popular too. In a general election campaign, however, it is true that Republican SuperPACs will air so many anti-Bernie attack ads featuring hammers and sickles you’ll think you’re at an old May Day parade in Moscow.
Bernie has to do more than explain his “democratic socialism.” Post-Hillary, he has to own it. And sell it to the American people.
“[Democratic socialism] builds on the success of many other countries around the world that have done a far better job than we have in protecting the needs of their working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor,” Bernie said in November. Nice start, but can he erase a century of anti-communist propaganda in 10 months?
To me, the term is political self-mutilation. Sanders isn’t a socialist. He’s a old-school liberal Democrat, like George McGovern was in 1972. It’s ridiculous to have to defend something that you said about yourself when it isn’t true.
Next week, I critique Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
(Ted Rall is the author of “Bernie,” a biography written with the cooperation of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. “Bernie” is being released today.)
16 Comments.
Truth!
(If it matches my assessment that closely, it MUST be the truth, right?)
I am sick & tired of voting for the lesser evil; I’ll take flawed any day. Bernie may not be everything I might hope for, but he is a damn sight closer than anything I’ve been offered lately. In spite of all the hype about ISIX, our biggest political problems are indeed domestic.
Funny thing: the NRA rates Bernie a D- … not exactly a gun nut. Hell, I own guns – but I don’t cry myself to sleep every night worrying that the big, bad, government is going to take them away.
“Republican SuperPACs will air so many anti-Bernie attack ads featuring hammers and sickles you’ll think you’re at an old May Day parade in Moscow.” … and fund a few internet agents provocateur who will pretend to be socialists while posting their own anti-Bernie rhetoric. ::innocent smile::
I’m waiting for “Christ Killer”.
I’m willing to bet that if it would get her the Oval Office, Clinton would pound the nails in with her fists.
Would she not rather, alex_the_tired, require William Jefferson to hammer them in with another part of his anatomy ?…
Henri
Nothing economical about socialism.
Nothing honorable about a Zionist or a thief.
No actual argument to make, eh? Best fall back to the Zionist schtick… it always works on Stormfront.
As unoriginal as ever, Russell. On the contrary, however, I was stating definitional problems in the column’s argument. You, OTOH, complained falsely about a non-argument with your own non-argument ad hominem smear. If you had the capacity, you might appreciate the irony.
Ted,
Bernie, as you rightly point out, is a johnny one note. Try it this way: You come home, and there’s water dripping through the ceiling of the living room. You race upstairs and see that the sink faucet has broken off and water is pouring into the bathroom.
You call the plumber. He comes over. And here’s what he says when you cry out, “For the love of God, fix the sink!”
“Whoa. Whoa there, Johnny One Note. See, I’m gonna put some buckets under the drip and then I’m gonna wetvac the carpet. Then we’ll get upstairs and start mopping up all that water….”
“But the sink is still gushing water! What are you talking about?”
“Oh, that’s the One Note approach. You can’t solve this JUST by approaching the source of the problem.”
Of course you can. Sanders is one-noting because he’s identifying the root of all the other problems: the rigged economy.
Don’t like U.S. foreign policy (which is, basically, bomb everything that’s brown)? Look at who makes money off of that policy.
Don’t like healthcare costs? Look at who’s making money from it.
Don’t like that your job could disappear in a heartbeat? Who makes money off of it?
Don’t like how bad the prisons are? Who makes money off of it?
The whole game’s rigged. And Sanders is standing there trying to snap people out of it. Hillary’s arguing that if we try a little harder, maybe we can work a deal with the people who control everything — they’re her bosses — to play a little nicer, gradually, over many years.
I’ve been watching that play out for 35 years. And every time in the past that a candidate tries to bring up that the economy is a three-card monte game, he gets submerged by “having” to discuss other issues. Oh, what about X, what about Y? What’s your stance on underwear? Boxers or briefs? Do you support a gay’s right to choose to not abort marijuana in the military? It’s always hot-button secondary issues that wash away any chance of getting and keeping the electorate’s attention.
Ted, thanks for admitting that Sanders is not a socialist and also for bringing up his very troublesome militaristic statements about continuing the drone assassination program, for instance.
Claiming to be a socialist when he’s not, and especially making warlike and imperialist comments are the two very important points that compel me to denounce him.
If Sanders just described himself as a liberal or even a social democrat and passionately spoke against US militarism and hegemony, then I might be much more tempted to support him.
Right wingers have stolen and demeaned the meaning of “liberal Democrat” by their incessant move to the right.
There really is no word in common usage that accurately describes Sander’s politics because of the co-opted condition of the language.
Obama, the best friend capitalism could have wished for, was attacked for being a “socialist” even after providing the largest bail out of a corrupt capitalist oligarchy in history, along with his government enforced subsidy of the capitalist health insurance industry.
The word “Socialist” can give a sense of a very different political direction from the two extreme right wing business parties.
So if Bernie’s policies are like an “old-school liberal Democrat, like George McGovern was in 1972” under the name of “socialist” that will be an evolutionary step toward reclamation of the language if he is accepted as such.
Keep an eye on the prize, on what’s real, not on the merely fashionable language of the day.
There is no way the two parties of plunder will lose the following of the murderous mob during the 2016 Sheep Count.
Free market systems have no bail outs or subsidies. Obama may not be *your kind* of socialist, but he is a corporate socialist.
Extreme right wing would be something like the Golden Dawn of Greece. Here in America, national interests are jettisoned in favor of multinational corporate interests. I can hardly find a TV show or movie without gays in it. And even most Republicans are PC. And what Dem or Repub is talking about eliminating the big social programs?
And I’m not going even to begin to list all the words co-opted by the Left. I must be in the Twilight Zone to be hearing about how the poor Left is so victimized by propaganda! Most Americans *are* socialist!
Time for your meds, Jack.
I hope Jack brought along enough meds to share. It’s gotta be some good shit.
I find it interesting that ‘bailout’ means ‘socialist.’ Under that definition, Dumbya and the entire GOP congress which sucked at his tit are socialists.
Makes sense, he’s a fan of Cliven Bundy and spawn – and they are most assuredly socialists. They expect the government to supply both the land and capital they use to run their business – and that’s certainly socialism in the academic sense of the word.
“If Sanders just described himself as a liberal or even a social democrat…”
I see, so in your estimation, labels matter far more than substance.
Except when they don’t – you believe that any country which labels itself socialist is in fact socialist, regardless of substance.
Interesting contradiction, that.
So, how much real difference is there between ‘social democrat’ and ‘democratic socialist’?
Just a follow-up.
“Nice start, but can he erase a century of anti-communist propaganda in 10 months.”
To a lot of younger people (who are far more inclined to vote for Bernie than Hillary), Communism is like invoking Witchcraft. Communism fell apart in 1989 when Russia went out of business. The Chinese make every damned thing in the stores (including the Apple iProducts).
Granted, Islam is the new Communism for the fearmongers, but I think the Communism PR campaign half-lifed out right around the time 9/11 happened.
In a lot of campaigns, what I notice is that RIGHT after the candidate wins the presidency, he suddenly gets timid. “Oh, I can’t close Gitmo. I can’t introduce single-payer healthcare like 20 other first-world nations have.” That’s why they fail. Because they don’t try.
«A self-described Scandinavian-style “democratic socialist” doesn’t usually favor wars of choice like Afghanistan (which Sanders supported) or drone killings.» Ted, you may be unaware – you are, for obvious reasons, not constrained to know as much about my country as I am about yours – that a Swedish Social-Democratic government sent troops to Afghanistan in 2002 and that, successive governments of what is called the «left» and of the right have continued contributing to the US war there up to and including today. All the Nordic countries, with the exception of Sweden and Finland are formal members of NATO and here in Sweden we «cooperate»with that military alliance to the degree that we allow it to use the northern half of our country as a bombing range (the US began to store military supplies in Sweden back in 1943, the year our then government switched its allegiance from Germany, after Stalingrad had made it obvious that that country was going to lose the war it had unleashed upon Europe). Note also that the current head of NATO is a former Social-Democratic Norwegian Prime Minister. Mr Sanders – and make no mistake : I do hope that he wins both the Democratic Party nomination and the presidential election in your country – would, as far as his foreign policy is concerned, make a perfectly respectable Scandinavian Social-Democrat….
Henri