Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political analyst.
[S]top the presses! A man has bitten a dog!
Or so one might think from the (over-)reaction of some slices of the cosmic political media to the shocking – shocking! – news that a Vermont newspaper thinks Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders shouldn’t run for president.
Sanders may be “widely considered a top contender,” said an article in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, but he “doesn’t have the backing of … his home state newspaper.”
Roll Call’s Capitol Hill competitor, The Hill, also took note of the apparent apostasy of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus editorial, as did the Huffington Post website, which more accurately understood that the TA is only “one of his home state newspapers.” CNN was so impressed that afternoon anchor Brianna Keilar interviewed the editorial’s author, Steve Pappas, editor of the Times Argus and the Rutland Herald, on Monday
And in the Boston Globe, columnist Aimee Ortiz not only cited the editorial “begging” Sanders not to run again, but concurred. “They’re right,” she said.
Let’s celebrate. Somebody is taking a newspaper editorial seriously, and when was the last time that happened? These days, not many people even read editorials. Or, come to think of it, the rest of the newspaper. The Times Argus now sells “about 4,500” papers a day, on the five days it puts out a print edition, said publisher Rob Mitchell, less than half its circulation a decade ago. Another 1,000 or so subscribe online, he said, and some 8,000 click on every day to read whatever is free, but that would not include the editorials.
But somebody ought to tell those folks in Washington that there’s nothing new about a newspaper opposing a local candidate. Donald Trump got little support from newspapers in his home state. In 1992, Little Rock’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette regularly and bitterly denounced favorite son Bill Clinton. The Times Argus didn’t support Sanders in 2016, either. Hardly anyone noticed.
But then, the editorial itself could have used a little historical perspective. Its first complaint about Sanders was that he had missed “dozens of votes” in the Senate while he ran for president.
He did. That’s what happens when senators run for president. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz missed votes in 2016, as did John Kerry in 2004, Barry Goldwater in 1964, John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Besides, casting roll call votes is one of a senator’s least important jobs. These days, the majority leader rarely lets a bill come to the floor unless passage is assured. The only recent exception was the 2017 vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Sanders was there.
On firmer ground, the editorial said another Sanders candidacy would present a threat to his (and, clearly, the editorial writer’s) goal of defeating President Donald Trump next year. Because Sanders is often “abrasive … bombastic and prickly,” the editorial said, his candidacy “risks dividing the well-fractured Democratic Party” to Trump’s advantage.
To which a Sanders devotee might point out that the Democrats are going to be fractured anyway. As to abrasive and prickly, lots of voters seemed to like that in 2016.
As the editorial also noted, a second Sanders candidacy could be haunted by the recent allegations that his 2016 campaign paid women less than men for comparable positions and that some women on the staff claimed they were sexually harassed and threatened.
No one has suggested that Sanders did anything wrong or knew about any misbehavior, though he did himself no good by telling a TV interviewer that he would not have been aware of it because “I was a little busy running around the country trying to make the case.”
The sad truth is that there was almost surely similar misconduct on all the campaigns in both parties. A presidential campaign is like a hastily assembled multi-national corporation. It hires hundreds of employees and assembles thousands of volunteers in a few months. Fully vetting every one of them is close to impossible.
That’s no excuse for allowing people to be mistreated, and a campaign’s high command could and should do more to minimize such behavior. But it’s unreasonable to blame the candidate with some vague talk (meaningless talk, actually) about a male-dominant “culture” he may have created or tolerated. A young woman on Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed she was sexually harassed. Clinton neither created nor tolerated a male-dominant culture.
Neither the editorial nor the needlessly breathless coverage of it by the DC media bigfeet mentions two other reasons that Sanders might consider abandoning his next campaign before it starts. One, mentioned in this space recently, is that should he get elected, he will be more than 80 years old before his first term ends. That’s older than any president has ever been. It might be too old.
The Times Argus editorial hints at this when it tells Sanders that “at a certain point you need to know when to step out of the way and let others carry the water for you.”
The other reason he should consider not running is that it is as certain as anything can be (meaning just short of totally) that he will not get elected, or even nominated. What looms for him now is not a second place finish to the nominee; it is more likely finishing third, fourth or lower in the early primaries before dropping out. What looms is embarrassment.
“Oh, yeah!” say his still considerable band of stalwarts. Isn’t that what all the political pundits said last time?
Actually, no. Many did, but some of us took his candidacy seriously, though no one thought he would win. He didn’t. He lost, and by a substantial margin: 55 to 43 percent in the primaries.
This time, he will not have the advantage of running against Clinton, with her six-figure lecture fees from Wall Street and her status as a pillar of the establishment. A great political device, the establishment. Nobody knows what it is or even whether it is. But whatever it is (or isn’t) Hillary Clinton represents it.
And this time, Sanders would not be the only candidate with his leftish populist message. Others – younger, more vigorous, less abrasive, perhaps less male and white – will be offering the same ideas, with less baggage.
Maybe time to let them carry the water.
