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
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 counterargument 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-in-thenation 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 African-american – 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.
I just had to go to the rally on Brexit night in Parliament Square. That’s where history was being made. It reminded me of the discos we went to on holiday in Majorca when I was a child.
The organisers were clearly going for a VE Day vibe, so they tried to get us to sing Rule Britannia, but no one knew the words and the Powerpoint broke down, so we were left hanging. Never mind! The band struck up some Tom Jones and a handsome crooner sang: “It’s not unuuuuusual to be loved by anyone!” Well, everyone knew how that went – so several thousand people joined in. We sang
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, We Are the Champions and Relight My Fire. At 11pm, Nigel Farage led us in a rendition of God Save the Queen. Most of us only knew one verse of that, so we sang it twice.
It was a moment of self-awakening. We would like to think we are the Greatest Generation that licked the Nazis but we are actually boomers and the children of boomers – living in the shadow of the war but far too young to remember it – and our culture is Sixties, not Forties. Beatles, not Vera Lynn. In another 50 years, when we vote to leave the EU again, we will be standing in Parliament Square singing Toxic by Britney Spears. That’s fine. Culture evolves; the desire to sing together remains constant.
As we trudged home, a young fellow told me he had been in two minds about coming because it might seem like triumphalism and hurt people’s feelings. I chastised him: “If we don’t celebrate, it looks like Brexit is something to be ashamed of.”
You have to let people express themselves in a democracy and listen to what they want to say. What is there to be embarrassed about anyway? That we love being British? Patriotism can make us better citizens of the world. No man can love humanity if he does not even like himself.