WOW, TNR: Democrats Need Bernie Sanders to Run for President
Democrats Need Bernie Sanders to Run for President
By Michael Kazin Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
................
His tough consistency on economic issues might also persuade some of the white working-class voters who now vote Republican, without much enthusiasm, to take a fresh look at the party that established Social Security, Medicare, and the National Labor Relations Act. Sanders, after all, did not score landslide victories in 2006 and 2012 (with 65 percent and then 71 percent of the vote) by appealing just to the one-third of the adults in his overwhelmingly white state who earned a college degree.
There is, of course, a danger that an aggressive campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016 would expose divisions between Democrats—of gender as well as ideology—and weaken her for the main contest that fall. Historians and political scientists generally agree that a party that undergoes a long primary season finds it more difficult to win the general election. But that's generally true only for those incumbent presidents—like Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992—whose political woes already made them vulnerable to competitors. In contrast, vigorous debates and a series of close primaries and caucuses helped Ronald Reagan in 1980 shed his image as a dogmatic right-winger. Twelve years later, they gave Bill Clinton a chance to show off his political skills as “the comeback kid” after the revelation of a past affair almost drove him from the race. If there had been no long, tense battle among Democrats in 2008, Barack Obama would not have become president at all.
Unless American politics takes a sudden, unprecedented lurch to the left, Bernie Sanders has little chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Progressive voters in both red and blue states may agree with his positions and appreciate the passion with which he states them. But most are unlikely to prefer a man in his mid-70s to the celebrity stateswoman whose election would “make history” and whose appeal extends beyond partisan lines.
But if Sanders does run, he could perform a vital political service to Democrats in need of revitalization and to the country at large. Except for a small minority of dogmatic conservatives, Americans don’t like the fact that rich investors have profited handsomely while wages remain stagnant or are eager to balance the budget by cutting Social Security or believe that politicians who routinely lavish their favors on multi-millionaires can also serve the interests of people who worry about paying the mortgage. A left-wing candidate who bluntly and repeatedly points all this out could embolden Hillary Clinton and other timid Democrats to do the same. Winning control of the government with such rhetoric—and policies to match—might actually nudge us further toward becoming a more decent and truly democratic society.
........
MORE:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117816/bernie-sanders-2016-campaign-why-democrats-need-him-run
= new reply since forum marked as read
