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See all parts (and a lot more) on Joe Santago’s
youtube channel:
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Thursday, February 25, 2016
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Feeling the Bern: 2 Questions for Bernie Sanders
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2 Questions for Bernie
Sanders
Nicholas Kristof
| Feb. 4, 2016
When Bernie Sanders won
election as mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1981, I called his office to see if
there was a story there about a socialist elected official. I was interning at
The Washington Post (I didn’t mention the intern part!) and spoke at length to
some assistant who answered the phone in the mayor’s office.
I asked about Sanders’s
plans, and the aide kept answering with “we” — which I thought a nice glimpse
of contagious office socialism. After half an hour, I had enough to check with
my editor, so I asked the aide’s name. “Oh,” he said a bit sheepishly,
“actually, I’m Bernie Sanders.”
Sanders’s lack of political
airs has helped catapult him forward in the presidential race, overcoming a
50-point deficit to just about tie Hillary Clinton in Iowa. He comes across as
winningly uncalculated: Other candidates kiss babies; Sanders seems to fumble
for a baby’s “off” switch so he can tell you more about inequality in America.
Most politicos sweet-talk voters; he bellows at them.
I admire Sanders’s passion,
his relentless focus on inequality and his consistency. When he was sworn in as
mayor of Burlington, he declared: “The rich are getting richer, the poor are
getting poorer and the millions of families in the middle are gradually sliding
out of the middle class and into poverty.” That has remained his mantra across
35 years. And yet, I still have two fundamental questions for Sanders:
Can you translate your bold
vision into reality?
On that, frankly, I’m
skeptical. I’m for Medicare for All, but it won’t happen. And if it did, the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group, found that
Sanders’s sums come up short by $3 trillion over a decade.
Likewise, Sanders says he
would prod America’s allies in the Middle East to lead the charge to defeat the
Islamic State. Yes, but how? The United States has already been trying
unsuccessfully to get these allies to do more against ISIS. What new leverage
does he bring?
The Washington Post last
month published a scathing editorial headlined “Bernie Sanders’s Fiction-Filled
Campaign.” It derided his “fantastical claims” and added: “Sanders is not a
brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction.”
I think that’s too harsh, for
Sanders panders less than other politicians (a very low bar), and he has often
staked out lonely positions that turned out to be correct—such as his
opposition to the Iraq war. But there remains this open question of how he
could achieve his ambitious agenda.
I also wonder if his age may
be relevant here: Sanders would be 75 when he took office, by far the oldest
person to become president (Reagan was 69; Clinton would be a slightly younger
69). Sanders now is indefatigable, but people often slow down in their late 70s
and their 80s.
Another reason for skepticism
is his congressional record. In 25 years in Congress, Sanders has been primary
sponsor of just three bills that became law, and two were simply to rename post
offices in Vermont; he did better with amendments. Clinton wasn’t particularly
effective as a legislator, either, but to me Sanders’s record suggests that his
strength is as a passionate advocate, not as a deal-maker who gets results.
Can you get elected? Or would
your nomination make a President Cruz more likely?
When voters are polled today
about how they would vote in a general election, Sanders does pretty well. For
example, he beats Ted Cruz in the RealClearPolitics average, while Clinton
loses to Cruz. But at this stage that’s almost meaningless: Republicans are
blasting Clinton while ignoring Sanders. If he were the nominee, he would be
savaged.
One particularly sobering
item for Sanders supporters: A Gallup poll last year asking voters what kind of
person they would be unwilling to consider voting for. Six percent of Americans
say they wouldn’t vote for a Catholic, and 7 percent wouldn’t support a black
or a Jew. Some 24 percent wouldn’t vote for a gay candidate, and more than a
third would refuse to vote for a Muslim or an atheist.
However, the most
objectionable kind of person by far was a socialist. Fifty percent of Americans
said they would be unwilling to consider voting for a socialist.
Maybe Sanders could convince
them that a “democratic socialist” isn’t exactly a socialist, or maybe he could
charm some voters into rethinking their beliefs. He has done just that very
successfully in Vermont, a state where he now wins elections by overwhelming margins,
and skeptics have been underestimating him for 35 years. But if a Democratic
nominee starts off with half the voters unwilling to consider someone like him,
that’s a huge advantage for the Republican nominee.
So can he accomplish his
goals, and is he electable? Lots of us admire Sanders and we would like
reassurance.
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