If Brexit and Trump can win so can Sanders
Is Sanders too socialist for America? No: the zeitgeist favours outsiders, so long as they honour democracy, writes Tim Stanley.
I’m just packing my suitcase for America – toothpaste, slippers, woolly hat – and it occurs to me that what’s been happening in the USA is eerily analogous to Brexit. Last week, when Britain finally said goodbye to the EU, the attempt to impeach Donald Trump in Congress collapsed and he will probably be acquitted this Wednesday. In both cases, liberals tried to overcome a democratic decision – voting for Brexit, voting for Trump – via parliamentary procedure. It has not only failed but probably done damage to their cause.
The impeachment hearings were a waste of time. The country votes in a presidential election in November, so why not wait until then to cast a verdict on Trump? The counter-argument is that it’s a matter of principle: if Trump abused his office, he ought to go regardless of how much time he has left. But we already knew that the Republicans control the Senate and that the Senate votes on his guilt – so there really was no point in all the political theatre. And while the Democratic establishment has been messing about in Washington, there is a feeling that it has ignored the trouble brewing in its own backyard.
Today, Iowa votes in the first-inthe-nation caucus to pick a Democratic nominee, and it looks like Bernie Sanders might win. He’s got the money; he’s got the crowds; he’s been working the state for years. Sanders is not just a progressive, outsider Democrat but a self-described socialist and, the theory goes, the candidate Trump is most likely to beat. He is also polling well in New Hampshire, which votes the following Tuesday, and if Sanders wins both states then he will have big momentum heading into the rest of the primaries. The establishment has finally noticed and there has been a discussion on the sidelines about changing the rules at the nominating convention to lessen his chances of winning on the first ballot, throwing comfort the way of moderate favourites Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Parliamentary tactics, yet again.
The panic, however, is motored by the false premise that America will never vote for a socialist in a general election. Why not? Trump’s victory has shown that anyone can win, that everything previously considered a roadblock to the presidency is a myth the establishment imposed on itself to justify the continuation of the status quo. Given that America has already voted for an AfricanAmerican – overcoming centuries of racial prejudice – and a businessman with no political experience and a bucketload of bad press, Sanders’ radicalism not only isn’t a problem but roots him much better in the zeitgeist than old Biden. He wins on authenticity because Sanders has been saying the same things forever – and before you say ‘‘but that was true of Jeremy Corbyn’’, a key difference is that Sanders is much better at calibrating his message to different audiences, which is how he sustained a successful career as an independent politician in (what was then) the moderate state of Vermont.
He also has an executive record: Sanders was a rather good mayor of Burlington.
In the era of Brexit, anything feels possible. But only through the ballot box. The old methods of fixing and manipulation are out of fashion.