With Dems, Sanders already won
Despite name recognition and fundraising prowess, I can’t imagine that Bernie Sanders will actually be the next Democratic nominee for president.
He would be 79 when inaugurated and 83 at the end of his first term. I’ve got to believe that Democratic primary voters will ultimately turn to a younger champion. Perhaps Sanders can sue them for age discrimination.
In a real sense, however, Sanders has already won the Democratic primary. The nominee will, in all likelihood, be running on the Sanders agenda.
Although Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, that agenda isn’t really socialism, if the term is to retain any useful meaning. Instead, it’s a call to remake the United States in the image of European-style social democracy.
In true socialism, government calls the shots for the economy and owns or controls major industries. That’s what happened in Venezuela, and what’s happening in Venezuela is a timely reminder of the consequences.
There are no longer any truly socialist countries in Western Europe, as there were in the 1960s and 1970s. Even Britain was fairly described as a socialist country before Margaret Thatcher.
Today, all the countries of Europe have primarily market economies. The allocation of capital and labor, and the products and services produced and consumed, are mostly driven by market competition and price signals, not government diktats.
What distinguishes Europe’s social democracy from the political economy in the United States is the depth and breadth of the welfare state and the extent of government regulation of the economy, particularly labor markets.
This leads to a more sluggish and static economy, with less opportunity — particularly for new workers. Unemployment rates for young adults in many European countries are troublingly high, which makes the enthusiasm for such a system among young adults in this country ironic.
For good or ill, the Democratic Party now stands for Sanderism, or bringing European-style social democracy to this country.
The nominee will undoubtedly run on a Sanders platform: government-financed health care for all. Free higher education. Sharply redistributive tax policy, whether through higher marginal income tax rates, a confiscatory estate tax, or a wealth tax. Greater government regulation particularly of labor markets through a higher minimum wage and enhanced oversight of wage differentials coinciding with gender or race. And more governmental requirements for capital markets and corporate governance.
Sanders’ robust run for the Democratic nomination in 2016 is what created the political space for these ideas, which prior to his run were generally considered too extreme for mainstream consumption. Historians may view Sanders’ 2016 run as the catalyst for the reshaping of the Democratic Party as an advocate of European-style social democracy, in much the same way that Barry Goldwater’s run in 1964 was the catalyst for the reshaping of the Republican Party to align with conservative principles of political economy.
Sanders probably won’t be the presidential nominee. But he should rightly be considered the founding patriarch of today’s Democratic Party, which is quite different from the party of even two years ago.