The race between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, which voters will begin deciding a week from Monday, is not just about the White House anymore. It has intensified into an epochal battle over their vastly different visions for the Democratic Party.
Mr. Sanders, a New Deal-style liberal from Vermont, last week became the party’s first top-tier candidate since the 1980s to propose broad-based tax increases. He argues that only muscular government action — Wall Street regulations, public works jobs, Medicare for all — will topple America’s “rigged” economy.
“Something is grotesquely wrong in America,” he said Thursday in New Hampshire, urging voters to deliver a landslide in November that would cow Congress into enacting his agenda.
Mrs. Clinton, a mainstream Democrat, has started contrasting herself with Mr. Sanders by championing a “sensible, achievable agenda” and promising to build on President Obama’s legacy in health care, the economy and national security. She is the classic continuity candidate: seeking support from blacks, Hispanics, women, union members and suburban voters, and proposing policies that are friendly to families and businesses — strategies that have defined the party since President Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.
Sanders reminds me very much of Ralph Nader: right on many things, but with virtually no chance at the nomination, and unelectable nationally. Even Barack Obama, arguably the most talented politician of our time, only barely beat Clinton and won a distressingly narrow victory over Mitt Romney. Sanders has less appeal. The Times piece draws parallels with McGovern and Mondale. Fortunately, there’s no real need to speculate: primary voters will render their verdict beginning pretty soon.
What do you think?
I support Sanders but don’t think he’ll win the nomination. If he somehow does, he would have done so through expanding his coalition in major ways. If he picks up minority voters, mainstream Dems, and blue collar workers in big enough ways (all while succeeding in the media buzzsaw) to topple the most well-known and experienced person to run for the office, I think he’d be in pretty good shape for a general, especially against Trump or Cruz. No Republican would have the incumbent bump that so helped Nixon and Reagan against McGovern and Mondale.
I get the comparison to Nader, but I’m not sure it’s that apt. Nader is a completely unreasonable person, which allowed for great triumphs early on and great failures in electoral politics later. Sanders record is nothing like that. Sanders is not a liberal who takes his ball and goes home if he can’t have his way – instead he’s been a very successful legislator who has worked with colleagues of all types getting the small things done that help push the progressive agenda forward.
Republicans with Democrats either.
The comments convinced me, for one. Still, WRT the broader point, it is hard to see Sanders as a Democratic nominee. But, time will tell and if he wins Iowa and NH in succession, the media, for better or worse, will start paying more attention to him.
Barack Obama came from nowhere and leaped past experienced campaigners Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, not to mention 2004 VP nominee John Edwards, to become THE alternative to then-presumptive nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been in the public eye since 1991.
Support flowed to Obama steadily, and he won 11 straight primaries at one point. That is NOT “barely” beating, that is a shellacking. She only managed to hold on because she was the only alternative to him. (I KNOW she got more votes, but the contests were state by state.)
I’m not supporting Sanders, but I do think comparing him to Nader is unfair. Hell, comparing Nader to Nader is unfair, the name has become too divisive among Democrats. Both men deserve better.
Re: electability, let’s not forget the immortal words of Dennis Kucinich: “I’m electable if you vote for me.”
Finally, and again I’m trying to be as neutral as possible: conventional wisdom is way off this cycle. Think of the money you could have won betting that the current GOP frontrunner would be the frontrunner as long as he has.
He worked his way up from Mayor to Congress to Senator and incrementally built a successful progressive third party that actually has influence in his state and his state’s politics. He is building a similar movement now, within one of the main party’s. Spoiler has never been part of his vocabulary and he recognizes that there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils.
His insurgency will either lead to a left of center nominee or a grassroots movement to elect a center-left nominee. Either way it is healthy for the Democratic process and is the antithesis of the Greens who keep running candidates for president but don’t bother supporting school board candidates who want to run on their banner.
Sanders is going about this the right way – contesting the Democratic nomination, the verdict of which he has indicated all along he will accept. Nader ran as an additional candidate in the general and may have cost Gore votes in key states the latter could not afford to lose given the close Electoral College margin.
Our electorate is no longer composed of 20-25% swing voters who swing wildly from election to election. There hasn’t been an popular vote gap between the main party candidates greater than 10% since 1984 and there won’t be this year.
If Sanders has a floor it is John Kerry 2004. If he has a ceiling it is Barack Obama 2008, and I would argue those are largely the same for Hillary Clinton. If the Republicans found a way to nominate a true center-right candidate like a Kasich or a Jeb, the only two names that routinely beat Bernie in the polls, that is where he is clearly less electable. I’d add Rubio to that mix as well. What hurts her is that the right seems well on pace to elect an unelectable nominee, which makes it easier to take a risk on Sanders since it seems more likely he would beat them than a conventional Republican opponent.
I think you’re ignoring the way identify politics impacted Obama, and will influence Sanders and Clinton. With respect to the EVs…
Obama took Virginia and North Carolina in 2008. I don’t think a white candidate (except, maybe, John Edwards had he not imploded) could have done that then, and I don’t think HRC nor Sanders will get NC in 2016. Similarly, Obama could never have won West Virginia in 2008, but Clinton would have in my opinion. In both cases, the marginal impact of Obama’s blackness was relevant. Gender identity politics are a bit trickier (can’t be easily distilled into percentages, since most states are within a few tenths of 50/50), but they’ll matter too.
More specifically, John Kerry won Michigan and Wisconsin, and I could imagine a Dem candidate losing either/both of those in a landslide loss, and perhaps a Maine EV. Similarly, Obama didn’t win West Virginia and I could imagine a Dem taking it in 2016 if the stars aligned. Missouri, Arizona, Georgia, and Montana are all technically possible too, although it would take either a strange geographic-specific situation or a remarkable landslide.
I think the 2004/2008 results are a nice envelope for what is a likely outcome, but if the Dem or GOP candidate go off the rails, I could imagine the Dems winning ~400 EVs or as few as 230 (or even ~200 if the bottom falls out and the Dems lose PA and NJ/MN/OR).
African-Americans have long felt an affinity for the Clintons, but when they saw an African-American emerging as a top candidate they took advantage of the opportunity. Sanders, obviously, doesn’t have that factor in his favor.
And, just as in the general, it played both ways. Check out HRC v. Obama county-by-county results in Appalachia, from Pennsylvania on down to Georgia and Alabama.
…and that Trump cannot last.
2016 is a turning point in a few ways, more so in the Republican Party but with parallels with Democrats.
The Republicans are far less of a political party today and are increasingly a party of an ideology. The party bosses have NO control over what is happening. The Frankenstein Ideology of a hatred of government, immigrants, coupled with the devotion to orthodox capitalism now rules who wins and who does not. This invisible but powerful force is one that I fear. We should all fear it.
On the other side, as is evident to some of us by the debate schedule and corporate media’s unwillingness to cover Sanders, the party leaders are still in control on “our side”, but that control is waning. Sanders is the leader of an ideology of sorts, more of a revolution as he puts it. It’s not anti-business or pro-government but it is against the power brokers on either party and Wall Street.
Why did so few candidates run this cycle? Why did the candidates who did run drop out so quickly?
Whatever happens in November, we need to work on our bench.
I think the bench is pretty good post-HRC. Harris and Hassan will be fine senators and both are presidential timber, I also think Gillibrand and Klobuchar are folks to watch. Not a huge Booker fan, but I bet he’s in the mix too. Not sure if Warren would’ve been able to catch fire like Bernie, hard to imagine for me personally but I’m probably in the minority here who think she is best suited for the Senate.
I think Mr. O’Malley may well become a powerhouse.
I agree with you that most Democrats thought it would be hard or impossible to beat Ms. Clinton in the primary. I also suspect that many Democrats did not want to alienate Bill or Hillary Clinton or any of their many supporters.
Eventually the strategy will pay off.
It’s too bad he is getting Chafee levels of support, he is a substantial candidate with a great resume and actual executive experience. He should be doing so much better, something just doesn’t click with him and voters and eventually you gotta conclude it’s on him. If Bernie wasn’t a factor, would he really be doing much better than he is?
In 1988, Bill Clinton was a promising southern Democratic governor that nobody had ever heard of. His speech nominating Mike Dukakis was AWFUL. Bill Clinton needed experience and seasoning. Four years later, he was an unstoppable political force.
I don’t know if Martin O’Malley has that potential. I don’t think Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton are factors. I also think that he is a better candidate today than he was at the start of this campaign.
Bill Clinton was a better candidate in 1992 than in 1988. I suspect Martin O’Malley will be a better candidate in 2020 than he is in 2016.
You have Hillary and you have the base-inspiring not-Hillary and voters have concluded those are the only choices they need. If Sanders were out O’Malley probably would not do as well as he, but he’d get SOME more support from those who can’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton. With everybody, including Obama’s people, figuring the nomination is finally hers for the asking, Sanders found the only opening leaving no room for anyone else.
Clinton. She had the money, the organization, and probably lined up the right support ahead of time. Jeeze, she owns the DNC.
I disagree, and is exactly fitted for the job of President.
It was especially telling that HRC admitted she was slow to recognize her mistakes. She also presented herself as a one woman band when her efforts were indeed noteworthy, but to the degree she says. Her vote on Iraq was blamed on GWB. So was it a mistake or not or something worse?