Bernie Sanders: Great Primary Candidate, Wonderful Would-Be President, But a Terrifying Nominee

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Here is what’s great, and also what’s terrifying, about the Presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders — one of the rare Democratic candidates who could proudly wear the label “ideologue” (given that he already wears the label “democratic socialist.”)  Terrifying or not — and it’s not his policies that concern me — I’ll explain how a Sanders candidacy could work out well for ideological Democrats.  (Skip the context in Section 1 if you’re short on time or attention.)

1. Introduction: Ideological Candidates for President

I don’t think that my Republican friends have any idea what it’s like to be an ideological Democrat — by which I mean one who wants the party to take risks and make sacrifices to stand up for its ideals — in Presidential elections.  Here’s a list of at least someone attractive ideological candidates still running by a year before the elections of 1964-2012.

Republicans, at least since 1964, have had no shortage of Presidential aspirants who play to their deepest ideological desires.  We don’t even need to count Richard Nixon or Ron Paul to see how well the ideological wing has been represented. Party nominees are in bold italics; candidates I’d call comparably ideological to Sanders are in orange; liberals whom I’d consider the philosophical counterparts of a solid mainstream partisan conservative like Bob Dole are followed with an orange question mark.

1964: Barry Goldwater
1968: Ronald Reagan
1972: John Ashbrook (protest candidate only)
1976: Ronald Reagan
1980: Ronald Reagan, Phil Crane
1984: Ronald Reagan
1988: Pat Robertson and (in various respects) Bob Dole, Jack Kemp, and Al Haig (not George H.W. Bush)
1992: Pat Buchanan (I’m kindly omitting KKK leader David Duke)
1996: Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm, Alan Keyes, Bob Dornan
2000: Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Ron Paul (George W. Bush not counted here because he was then considered moderate; John McCain not counted because then considered a moderate maverick)
2004: George W. Bush (I think that he’d earned it by then — hence no high-profile primary protest-vote opponent)
2008: Mike Huckabee, Alan Keyes, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, arguably Rudy Giuliani)
2012: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Michele Bachman, Herman Cain

Compare that to their counterpart Democratic candidates — some of whom were liberal (Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry) without capturing the hearts of left-leaning ideologues — sort of like conservatives Howard Baker, Lamar Alexander, George Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney:

1964: No one, nationally — but California’s primary was won by “favorite son” Pat Brown
1968: Gene McCarthy?, Robert F. Kennedy?, George McGovern (replacing RFK)
1972: George McGovern, Gene McCarthy?, Shirley Chisholm, John Lindsay, Patsy Mink
1976: Jerry Brown, Mo Udall?, Frank Church?, Birch Bayh?, Sargent Shriver
1980: Edward Kennedy?, Jerry Brown
1984: Jesse Jackson, George McGovern, Alan Cranston?, Gary Hart (reputation only)
1988: Jesse Jackson, Paul Simon?, arguably Bruce Babbitt
1992: Jerry Brown, Tom Harkin?, Larry Agran?, Gene McCarthy (reputation only)
1996: None
2000: None.  Bill Bradley did not count.  Al Gore did not yet count.  (Paul Wellstone would have counted.  So would Ralph Nader)
2004: Howard Dean?, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Carol Mosely Braun (No, ideologues were not for John Kerry?)
2008: Dennis Kucinich, arguably Mike Gravel?  (Not Barack Obama, despite his historical significance.)
2012: Vermin Supreme (New Hampshire only)

Now, compare that with prospective candidates (most of whom didn’t make into the above) for 2016:

2016 Republicans: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio (announced); Ben Carson, Carly Fionina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry (announcement expected soon); Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Linday Graham?, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki?, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump?, Scott Walker (“formally exploring a candidacy”) — and John Bolton, Bob Ehrlich, Jim Gilmore, Peter King, and Rick Snyder (who have merely “publicly expressed interest.”)

2016 Democrats: Bernie Sanders.  Lincoln Chaffee? and Martin O’Malley? might count if they run; they and Jim Webb, who wouldn’t count, are “formally exploring a candidacy.”  Joe Biden, who wouldn’t count, has “publicly expressed interest.”  (Liz Warren? would count if she ran, but is not as broadly ideological as Sanders.)

Look at all of this Bernie-Sanders-equivalent names in orange, now and over the past 50+ years.  Look at the sheer number of ideological names.  Republican ideological counterparts to Bernie Sanders include Barry Goldwater, John Ashbrook, Ronald Reagan, Phil Crane, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm, Alan Keyes, Bob Dornan, Orrin Hatch, Ron Paul, George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Michele Bachman, and Herman Cain with new names Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio (announced); Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, John Bolton, Bob Ehrlich, and Rick Snyder waiting in the wings.  That’s 29 names!  Two Presidents, one failed nominee from the Senate, seven other Senators, five U.S. Representatives, six Governors, two Ambassadors, one white business tycoon, one Black business tycoon, one surgeon, one television journalist, and two television preachers — all making the case as Presidential candidates for a hard-right-wing line.

Bernie Sanders, by contrast, has been preceded as a seriously left-wing Democratic Presidential candidate by only five people in the past 50 years: McGovern, Chisholm, Jackson, Sharpton, and Kucinich.  Tote them up: that’s a failed Presidential nominee from the U.S. Senate, two U.S. Representatives, and two Black preachers — one pulling double-duty as a businessman and the other a media figure.

Now is it clear why the Sanders announcement is a big deal to left-wing Democrats?

2. Sanders Would Be a Great Presidential Primary Candidate

What all of those Republican ideological names in orange have been doing is making the case for, not merely an ideological, but a strong ideological left-wing line.  Left-wing Democrats haven’t had anyone who could (and would) do that the Presidential level since McGovern in 1971 and Jackson in 1988 (although not in 1984), when each was taken more seriously than Chisholm, Sharpton, or Kucinich ever were.  Sanders has been on the stump for years as a weekly guest on Thom Hartmann’s radio show — one of the few nationwide left-wing counterparts to the mass of right-wing talk shows — taking on all comers and their questions.

Others have been able to tell parts of the story well — including Ralph Nader, who was outside of (and received media attention largely for his antagonism to) the Democratic Party — but only in part.  Howard Dean got some attention in 2004 — at which point Democratic Party regulars and everyone to their right descended on him like a herd of wildebeests — but even his “anti-war and pro-public-health” program was not a broadly left-wing one.  Mondale, Cranston, Dukakis, Simon, Harkin, Brown, both Clintons, Gore, Kerry, and others could all tell part of a good story to a wide Presidential campaign audience — but it wasn’t ideologically coherent with a larger left-wing worldview.  (For that, you’d probably have to go back to Ted Kennedy at the 1980 convention — although not, sadly, in the campaign leading up to it.)

Sanders is the guy we have who can tell that story better than anyone else.  In fact, if he didn’t embrace the label of “Democratic Socialist” — not the same as a Statist socialist, but that distinction would surely be lost on people — many of you would listen to him and find yourself nodding at his practicality and common sense.  Go listen to his old broadcasts; he’s a good communicator for those of you who like smart and garrulous old Jewish lefties — which I hope is all of you, although I’m pretty sure that it is not.

Sanders has a free ride this year, having just been re-elected to the Senate in 2012.  And even if he drops out of the race right after the 2016 California primary, that gives him over a year to enunciate his philosophy nationally in the forum where Americans would be most inclined to listen to him.  Of course he had to run this year, at 73, while he’s still vigorous!  This is his one last change to perform in history’s main stage!

And presumptive — but only presumptive — Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should and does welcome him into the race.  Whatever pressure he puts on her — whatever progress he makes with convincing the public — makes it that much easier to tack to the left when she and her brain trust decides that the public is ready for it: both in the general election campaign and in office.  Whatever attacks he makes against her for being politically compromised — and they will be far less barbed than those of a Dennis Kucinich — probably help her with moderate and independent voters.

Like Obama, she’ll be running on a platform that she’ll do what she can in the Oval Office, but not more than that.  (She learned that lesson in 1993, she’ll note — before going back to reminding people publicly about how old Justices Ginsburg and Scalia are.)  Inoculating people to those attacks works; having a primary opponent who can wave away the bullshit about Benghazi while stressing the grievances about Goldman Sachs is good for her.

There’s only one serious problem for her.  At some point, probably not from anything Sanders campaign would have done, her own campaign might fall apart and Sanders might beat her.  Let’s explore that in the remaining sections.

3. Sanders Would Be as Good of a U.S. President As We Could Get

When I talk about how good of a President Sanders would be, it comes with a big — but necessary assumption.  Obviously, he only becomes President if he wins the election.  So we have to imagine a world in which Sanders does win the 2016 if nominated.  This would probably be sufficiently shocking and humbling to the Republican members of Congress that it might change a political calculus or two.

As President, Sanders would similar to Obama but not wedded to the same degree of national security statism or dependence on corporate donors.  (Don’t worry, independent expenditures favoring him would be huge, if he’s running against a Ted Cruz type.)  What Obama does that he would not do is to rule out in advance moves to the left.  He would not rule out single-payer, for example, as both Obama and Hillary did when their chance came.  And, frankly, expanding the range of options and trying to push the debate left is good for political success.  Ronald Reagan, on the other side of the aisle, was hardly a shrinking violet.

Unfortunately (from my perspective), Sanders own legislative preferences in 2017 might not matter all that much so long as Republicans control Congress — and while they might lose the Senate next year it is quite unlikely that they will lose the dramatically and drastically gerrymandered House of Representatives.  So there’s a limit as to how much he can accomplish by law.  There’s less of a limit on what he could accomplish by executive order — but of course a hostile Congress could try — although it would probably fail — to impeach him.  Nevertheless, Sanders is one of those rare politicians who might not care that much if he were impeached for bad reasons; it would just burnish his reputation in history.  (Actual removal from office is another matter.)

What Sanders is really there to do — what anyone who serves as President, in fact, will be there to do — is to make sure that their side keeps control of the Supreme Court.  (This is one of the main structural problems with our political system right now.)  Still, Sanders will probably do as good a job of it as any Democrat could do.  I don’t know what initiatives he might take, but I know that I’m more likely to believe him when he characterizes a compromise as “the best that we can do” than I would be with any other politician.

So, he’s brilliant, he’s scrupulously honest, he’s humble, he’s a good communicator — what’s the problem?

4. Democrats May Find the Prospect of Actually NOMINATING Sanders Terrifying

Who would Republicans rather run against: Hillary Clinton and her $1,000,000,000,000 (or whatever it turns out to be) campaign budget, or Bernie Sanders?  I’m just guessing here, but I’m guessing that they’d rather run against Sanders.  In fact, they might prefer to run against Sanders than almost anyone else.  In fact, if there’s a clear Republican front-runner, they might register as Democrats just to vote for Sanders, simply to give trouble to Hillary, not even daring to believe that Sanders might actually win the nomination.

Why would they rather run against Sanders than Hillary?  Let me count the ways:

1. Self-described socialist
2. Jewish — and one member of each ticket this year is likely to be Latino or Latina, most likely Catholic
3. Describes himself as a “democratic socialist”
4. Would be sworn in at age 75
5. His wife is known to have spent years cohabiting with a socialist
6. Does not take corporate contributions
7. His one child and three stepchildren have a socialist father
8. He skipped the Netanyahu speech
9. Others describe him as a socialist
10. Liberal voting record
11. Socialist voting record
12. His brother, who is literally named Larry Sanders, is running for a seat in the British Parliament right now as a member of the Green Party
13. Socialist!  SOCIALIST!  SOCIALIST!  SOCIALIST!  SOCIALIST!  SOCIALIST!
14. Fox News ratings would go up.
15. Schlubby male.  And a socialist.

In any event, given that the Issue Among All Issues is the Supreme Court, even Democrats who love Bernie — who respect Bernie, who desire a Bernie Presidency — may not vote for him in the primary, out of the fear that he will lose and the United States will end up in smithereens before 2020.  (Note: all of this is despite the possibility that Hillary might find her own way to blow her own foot off between June and November and lose the election as well.  Somehow, that is less disturbing, because at least one wouldn’t have to listen to the party’s shmucks blaming it on “socialist socialism.”)

I myself would like to vote for Bernie more than pretty much any other politician on the national scene — and yet even I would worry about voting for him if I thought that he would win the nomination, solely because of the prospect that the Republicans would turn their 2016 convention into something like the Nuremberg rallies (although without all of those divisive-looking swastikas) — and then end up appointing Sarah Palin to the Supreme Court.

So one of three things might have to happen for me to vote for Bernie in June 2016:

1. I would have to think that he was going to lose the nomination despite my vote.  PROBABILITY: HIGH.
2. The label and very concept of socialism, or at least democratic socialism, would have to have been shown to be politically rehabilitated in the U.S., to something approaching Scandinavian levels, by then.  PROBABILITY: LOW.
3. Something else.  PROBABILITY: DIFFICULT TO ESTIMATE.

As I think about how it might happen, though — that third possibility might have its possibilities.

5. Remembering 1968

I take it as pretty much a given that we’re not going to have the opposite and equal conversion to our party voters as occurred among Republicans in 1964, when in the wake of eight years of Eisenhower and four years of Democratic rule after Nixon lost to Kennedy then nominated Barry Goldwater.  In other words: Hillary’s only going to fail to win the nomination if she falls apart, with a Tuzla to the Benghazi-th power sort of explosion.

So let’s think that through.

If that happens early, Joe Biden will probably step in.  Possibly even Al Gore.  Hopefully not John Kerry.

If that happens later, after it has been established that voters like Hillary, Joe Biden will probably step in with a promise to pick someone like Hilda Solis.  Or, don’t roll your eyes, it seriously could be Loretta Sanchez.

But, if that happens after there is already a strong positive reaction to what Bernie has to say, and the party officials say “OK, OK, we have to go with someone from that wing of the party, but PLEASE DON’T MAKE IT A 75-YEAR-OLD JEWISH SOCIALIST,” then things get interesting.

Hillary still has a lot of delegates, which allows her to do some queen-making — and it would very likely be a woman whom she would like to make the nominee.  And it would need to be someone who could (1) hold onto her own voters, (2) be acceptable to Bernie’s leftists, and (3) appeal to the larger public.

Only two names spring to mind: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York Senator Kristin Gillibrand.  Either would be better than Hillary — and would be almost as good as Bernie Sanders, at least when you take his age into account.

Is there a model for this?  Sure: 1968.  (Note: other bad things happened that year, notably two horrific assassinations and the 1968 convention.  If you don’t know, I’ll tell you about them in comments.)

In 1968, you had an incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson who, after realizing that he had totally screwed the pooch in Vietnam, belatedly decided not to run.  This late abdication would be analogous to Hillary, who given her political similarity to and identification with President Obama, is essentially running as the incumbent here.

Anti-war candidate Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy came within 7% of beating the incumbent President in the New Hampshire primary on March 12.  (Fun fact: allegedly, many New Hampshire voters thought that they were voting for by-then-dead anti-Communist Senator from Crazyville Joseph McCarthy.  In other words, LBJ thought that he was losing to a left-wing challenge when it was actually a far right-wing challenge.  The part of Eugene McCarthy in this analogy will be played by Bernie Sanders.  The part of Joe McCarthy will be played by, I don’t know, maybe KFC’s Col. Harlan Sanders.)

New York’s U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy took a look at McCarthy, took a look in the mirror, and said “y’know, I’m a lot more to win the general election than that guy!”  So, on March 16, he threw his hat into the ring against LBJ and McCarthy as a second anti-war candidate.  McCarthy was highly pissed off because after all he was the one who had run against LBJ and now he deserved the pelt!  Let’s give the part of RFK to Hillary’s more liberal protege, Kristin Gillibrand.

On March 31, LBJ decided not to run for re-election after all.  (He had never formally announced, but had had “favorite son” candidates supporting him in various states, few of which at that time held primaries.)

Party leaders, just as would likely happen now, chose the sitting Vice-President — then Hubert Humphrey, but in this analogy it would be Joe Biden — to carry the fallen torch as an establishment candidate.  LBJ’s committed delegates were “willed” to Humphrey — but how committed they were remained uncertain.  (And, in this year’s example, Hillary’s desire for a female President would work against Biden.)

Kennedy and McCarthy traded primary victories through April.  Kennedy did not compete, given his later entry, against McCarthy in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois.  He ran unopposed in South Dakota.  He beat McCarthy in Indiana and then Nebraska, but McCarthy came back to win in Oregon.  So then it came down to California — the delegates of which were, if you can believe it, then appropriated on a winner-take-all basis!  Kennedy beat McCarthy 46%-42% in California, taking all of the delegates.

(I am now going to exit the analogy briefly because Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles right after giving his victory speech in the closing minutes of June 5.  We’re just going to have Gillibrand eating a poisoned apple and falling into a long coma from which she will later emerge entirely unharmed when awakened by True Love’s Kiss.  Anyway, in our analogy, for some reason she can’t run.)

Back to the analogy.  Combined, coming out of California, Kennedy and McCarthy had 651 delegates to Humphrey’s 561.  The Chair of Kennedy’s campaign, Senator George McGovern, then declared his candidacy in order to replace RFK.  So then it was establishment candidate Humphrey against insurgent antiwar candidate McCarthy and that-year’s-heir-to-the-Kennedy-political-mantle antiwar candidate McGovern.   McCarthy and McGovern couldn’t agree on which of them would run.  Humphrey continued to pile up uncommitted delegates from caucus states and such.  Violent clashes between Chicago police and anti-war protesters during and around the convention raised fears and tensions on both sides.  Humphrey ended up winning, but was never able to consolidate the anti-war vote, and he ended up losing narrowly to Richard Nixon.

That was what happened in 1968.  But in 2016, the part of George McGovern would be played by Elizabeth Warren — or they could switch roles, or the first to enter could remain in the race — and the outcome might be very different.

6. A Warren (or a Gillibrand) Nomination?

There are three big differences between what happened in 1968 and what could happen in 2016:

1. It would be as if LBJ wanted Kennedy or McGovern to win, rather than Humphrey.  (He never liked McCarthy, who was sort of the Democratic Ron Paul of his day.)  In other words, if she was out of the 2016 race, Hillary would have little reason to support the more politically vulnerable Sanders over Biden, but she’d have lots of reason to support Warren — or, even more so, Gillibrand.
2. Warren is more well-known and probably more well-liked than McGovern was in 1968.
3. Hopefully, no huge riots at the Democratic convention this time.  Whomever Philly Democrats nominate in 12 days as the prohibitive favorite to become the new Mayor who will serve during the 2016 Democratic convention, it won’t be the likes of Mayor Daley.

So yes, I plan on voting for Bernie.  His candidacy will mean a great education for the country, who will learn that the military and Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare and the requirement that Emergency Rooms serve anyone and (to some extent) even aspects of Obamacare are much of what is meant by the word socialism — and that socialism no more need mean the Gulag Archipelago than capitalism must mean poorhouses and child labor.

If Hillary falters early and Bernie speeds past O’Malley and Chaffee and Webb towards the nomination, then I hope that polls will show that the nation’s voters are ready to accept him.  And, if they don’t, and if the party looks like it really is heading towards a disaster, then I hope that one of the two above women will step in and be, so far as is possible, the sort of President he would be.  Unlike Gene McCarthy, Bernie Sanders really does seem to be about getting the best result, rather than about vanity.

On the other hand, if Hillary doesn’t falter — then I’m ready for that too and will support her in November.  I may just not be entirely ready for her Presidency itself.