Cruz, Sanders and the missing middle
During his victory speech Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz sought to appeal to the full spectrum of voters who have tended to support Republican presidential candidates over the years. He even named several of the subgroups, such as “Reagan Democrats” and “libertarians.”
Memo to the Cruz campaign: libertarians (and plenty of mainstream voters who supported previous Republican candidates) deplore the idea of having U.S. law enforcement “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,” whatever that means. Nor do they support the police-state-like apparatus that would be required to deport every last illegal immigrant — another policy that Cruz recklessly endorsed in his sometimes desperate effort over the past few months to head off Donald Trump.
Now it appears that Cruz may have succeeded in stalling the Trump express. And good for him. The Texas senator will have done the nation a tremendous service if he can keep Trump from getting enough delegates to triumph on the first ballot at the GOP convention and then wrest the nomination from the ignorant celebrity who has dominated campaign coverage since June.
But can Cruz now rescue himself from his self-created image as a hard-liner outside the mainstream of American political values?
His speech Tuesday indicated that he’s about to attempt such a reinvention, with his emphasis on “jobs, freedom and security.” However, that task could be tougher even than stopping Trump.
The other winner Tuesday, progressive Bernie Sanders, regaled an adoring crowd in Wyoming with his usual platitudes about “the billionaire class” and the pernicious influence of Wall Street and the pharmaceutical and fossil fuel industries.
For a more revealing perspective of Sanders’ grasp of issues, however, voters might turn to an interview he gave recently at the New York Daily News, where he was asked for details on some of the signature proposals that so animate his fans — such as the breakup of big banks. The result was accurately summarized by The Washington Post’s Chis Cillizza.
“It did not go well for the senator from Vermont,” Cillizza wrote. “Time and again, when pressed to get beyond his rhetoric on the evils of corporate America and Wall Street, Sanders struggled. Often mightily.”
Sanders may be on an electoral roll, having won most recent caucuses and primaries, but at bottom he is, like Trump, predominantly a candidate of simplistic slogans.
Unlike Trump, however, whose campaign may be taking on water, Sanders still appears to be gaining strength not only with bedrock Democratic activists but general party voters, too.
If Sanders wants to entice the party’s superdelegates away from Hillary Clinton, though, he may have to pull off an upset of staggering magnitude, such as in New York on April 19.