Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
No political prediction is entirely safe, but here’s one of the safer: Bernie Sanders is not going to be president of the United States.
Among those who would agree, in all probability, is Bernie Sanders, the officially independent, but effectively Democratic, senator from Vermont.
Meaning he never thinks about it?
Of course he thinks about it. He’s a United States senator. They all think about it.
That doesn’t mean they all delude themselves into thinking it will happen. Most of them (well, OK, some of them) are realists. Sanders seems to be among them.
Right now, the question being raised in some circles is not whether Sanders will become president, but whether he should run for the Democratic nomination.
Not that he could win. But he could but raise the flag of the populist wing of the Democratic Party, the faction most concerned about growing economic inequality.
Actually, “some circles” is probably an exaggeration. Right now, the Sanders-for-president boomlet is … well, it isn’t. Not in Washington. Not in Iowa or New Hampshire, where the nominating process begins and therefore where guerrilla political uprisings usually start.
In all three places, the kind of Democrats who keep tabs on such matters report that nothing is happening. Liberal state legislators are not discussing a Sanders candidacy. Labor union leaders are not figuring out how they could inspire a Sanders effort. Folks aren’t even batting about the idea around the back table of the saloons where pols are wont to gather. The only “Bernie Buzz” is on the senator’s website.
Well, there was the Playboy Interview. Earlier this month, writer Jonathan Tasini, himself a leftish political operator, interviewed Sanders for the monthly magazine and plainly asked the senator if he was “considering” running for president. Significantly, Sanders did not issue a Sherman statement “absolutely not” reply.
In fact, he said, “it would be tempting to try to raise issues and demand discussion on issues that are not being talked about: inequality in wealth and trade policy, protecting the social safety net, moving aggressively on global warming.”
But then he said, “I am at least 99 percent sure I won’t.”
He’s not a socialist. He’s a social democrat. … Sanders is simply for more social democracy even than most Democrats.
Leaving 1 percent, just enough to keep the subject alive, notably in last week’s “Fair Game” column in Seven Days, where columnist Paul Heintz, noting that Sanders already has a national following, argued that “there has never been, and will never again be, a better time for Sanders to run for president than in 2016.”
True, but never a better time doesn’t mean that 2016 is a good time. For several reasons, it might not be.
None of those reasons is that Hillary Clinton is a cinch to win the nomination. She was supposed to be a cinch eight years ago. She lost.
This early, no one is a cinch for anything. The process creates its own dynamic. Somebody – quite likely more than one somebody – will oppose Clinton, and one of those opponents will probably be from what might be called the Sanders wing of the party (even though he’s not technically of the party) or perhaps more broadly, the Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/Sherrod Brown/MoveOn/Digby wing of the party. (For those who pay scant attention to these matters, those are two other senators, an online political organization and a blogger).
The questions would seem to be, then, not whether there will be such a challenger, but: (a) should it be Sanders? And (b) is it wise for this faction to put up a candidate?
Certainly a case can be made that Sanders would be the strongest contender. He’s funnier and folksier than Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who once was and still sometimes seems a professor, or Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
And who else is there? Well, not much of anybody, neither in politics nor in academia nor in the media/celebrity world, a sign of the feebleness of the American left these days.
Thanks to frequent appearances on MSNBC, Sanders has something of a national following. He’s popular among those who communicate largely via social media (to the extent that there is an organized Sanders campaign, it’s on Facebook) and who get their news largely from Jon Stewart (meaning they are ill-informed). He’s articulate, he knows his stuff, he’s serious about his beliefs, his closet appears devoid of skeletons.
But even a candidacy devoted to “raising issues” rather than getting nominated has to generate support beyond the MSNBC/Jon Stewart set, and here Sanders may have some drawbacks. Vermont is easily ridiculed as being out of the mainstream. A Vermonter with a Brooklyn accent could be doubly dissed in some areas. Then there’s the fact that Sanders once proclaimed himself a socialist, and still resolutely refuses to disparage that label.
He isn’t, of course. Almost nobody is. A socialist is an advocate of socialism, an economic system in which most goods and services are produced by some collective entity, not necessarily government, but not profit-making firms or individuals either. Sanders proposes no such system. He’s not a socialist. He’s a social democrat.
As is almost everyone, of course, including those who insist they are not; just recall all those Republican pledges to protect Medicare and Social Security, the bulwarks of American social democracy. Sanders is simply for more social democracy even than most Democrats. Still, his avowedly socialist past could be a political problem.
Then there is the question of whether it is really in the interests of the Sanders/Warren/whatever faction – let’s call it the Social Democratic wing of the Democratic Party – to field its own candidate. Consider for a moment the fate of one of its subdivisions and perhaps one of its models: The Occupy Wall Street movement.
The rise of that movement should have surprised no one. For at least three decades, economic inequality has steadily grown, in part because of public policies enacted by both parties, which helps explain why neither party strongly opposed it. The Occupy movement rose to fill that vacuum.
But remember: Occupy fizzled, maybe because of its romantic (and childish?) refusal to become organized, especially organized under some kind of leadership. But perhaps because there really isn’t that much support for economic equity in the United States.
When it comes to opinion on complex matters, polling can be murky. But there is at least some evidence that in that middle class – the folks to whom Sanders et al. are so committed – as many people scorn (and fear competition from) those poorer than they as blame the wealthy for their troubles. Yes, most voters think upper-income earners should pay more taxes and the minimum wage should be higher. That does not necessarily mean they would march behind the banner of economic populism.
Or to put it another way, those clamoring for Bernie Sanders to run for president might do well to remember how often people regret getting what they wished for.
