What the Democrats don’t get about Bernie
Establishment Democrats are deeply afraid of Bernie Sanders becoming their party’s presidential nominee. They may be right to be concerned, but they are still thinking politics is between left and right. Sanders, like Donald Trump, understands that the new politics emerging worldwide is more about ins versus outs.
Sanders’ politics may be “socialist”, but his appeal is that of an outsider. He tells the people dissatisfied with America that tinkering around the edges isn’t enough; the country need radical change. The fact that he has never been a Democrat is, for his supporters, cause to trust him.
The establishment is, by definition, a collection of insiders. They benefit from the system and favour only incremental change, not revolution. They may support some of the same goals as Sandernistas, but they aren’t fundamentally angry about America itself. That’s one reason they find it so difficult to respond to Sanders’ challenge. It’s also a reason blasting Sanders as extreme or unelectable won’t make his army smaller.
Trump’s appeal is similarly based on a call for radical change. His establishment Republican foes failed because they, too, were insiders who favoured only incremental change. Never Trumpers remain unreconciled to Trump’s worldview and long for a “return to normalcy”.
Voters, however, disagree with both sets of insiders. The Democratic left, reinforced in recent years by young voters and new citizens, wants transformation, not reformation. The Republican right and center-right want to reverse the 21st century’s social and economic changes. They are joined by the Obama-Trump voters who don’t share all of their new allies’ views but do believe that the late 20th century global liberal consensus made them worse off. The Republican Party is now largely a coalition of “outs”, while the Democratic primary battle is essentially a contest over whether the “ins” or the “outs” are a majority.
These battles mirror those being fought in almost every country in the West. Most European nations have seen formerly dominant center-right and center-left parties drop support. These “ins” frequently try to work together to stave off loss of power, with the “grand coalition” between Germany’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats being the prime example. But it hasn’t worked. Voters increasingly want radical change, and sooner or later they will get it.
Democratic Party insiders may not be able to stop Sanders, but that’s the least of their concerns. The popular sentiments driving his and Trump’s campaigns won’t go away with either man’s defeat. How they react to those in coming years will determine whether the Democrats’ “ins” stay in, or whether they end up on the outs.