The Serious Problems with Making Bernie Sanders the Democratic Nominee for President

The Five Point Case Against Making Him the Challenger to Trump

No sober analysis of the 2020 race can take place without grappling with the stakes. So let’s recap — quickly — the state of post impeachment America.

My prediction was that if Trump was not held accountable through the remedy our constitution intends for abuses of power — impeachment — he would be emboldened to double down on weaponizing the state. The lesson Trump has learned, quite simply, is that he can use millions of dollars in military aid to extort allies into smearing his domestic political opponent without any real consequences. And now that he knows he won’t be held constitutionally accountable while in office, he has received — for all intensive purposes — a green light to use his power for personal gain. It’s often said that authoritarian leaders “ride the tiger,” meaning that once they get into power they can’t afford to ever lose it (I.E “get off the tiger”). Putin and Xi Xingping will never leave power peacefully because they have too much to lose. They are the state. Given that Trump faces the real threat of criminal prosecution once leaving office, he similarly has every incentive to use all the tools at his disposal to stay in office. And when you command an administrative workforce of millions and lead the world’s most powerful military, intelligence, and criminal justice apparatus, a rogue president has plenty of tools.

And that appears to be exactly what Trump is doing with the Department of Justice. The crudest form of any criminal justice system — the essence of a banana republic — is that government power becomes about “rewarding my friends and punishing my enemies.” The past few weeks we have seen Trump threaten the jurors and the judge involved in the sentencing of his former advisor and confidante Roger Stone. Trump also tweeted the initial sentencing recommendations were unfair, directly involving himself in a criminal prosecution. By the next day Attorney General Bill Barr directed a lower sentence, leading the prosecutors on the case to resign in protest and a conference of federal judges to call for an emergency session based on this politicization of the rule of law. Again, “reward my friends.” At the same time, Trump has explicitly directed an internal purge of dissenters. He pushed out Lieutenant Colonel Vindman for testifying in the impeachment inquiry, and has pushed out the Director of National Intelligence for the nerve to brief Congress on ongoing Russian interference efforts to benefit Trump’s re-election. “Punish my enemies.”

We do not institute governments to hand leaders such a blunt tool of oppression. We institute them for moments of crisis and threats to our security beyond our individual capacities: Crises like a global health pandemic. And just as the coronavirus spreads like wildfire, and schools and institutions are shuttering globally, our government has essentially stripped itself of its own capabilities. The Trump administration eliminated the position of Senior Director of Global Health Security mere months ago, the person responsible for working with the CDC to manage global health pandemics. And the administration’s budget cuts $35 million from the Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund and $25 million from the Public Health Preparedness Program. This is precisely the kind of moment we need the government to do what it is intended for…and that appears exactly what this administration is incapable of doing. And worse, they are covering up their mistakes and silencing the experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. This is exactly the tack that China took with coronavirus that dramatically worsened the situation, by limiting transparency. And now Mike Pence, the man who questioned the science of cigarettes and climate change while boosting conversion therapy, and whose governership saw an HIV crisis in Indiana, is tasked with leading the government’s response. What could go wrong?

The crises are metastasizing, and if we aren’t honest about where we are we can’t figure out the path for where we need to go. We do not have the luxury to not be honest with ourselves. And the simple reality is the last check on this administration and the threat it represents is the 2020 election. There are no do overs; we get one shot at this. And when the stakes are this high, what you want is a leader who is dependable, tested, and maximally suited for a general election victory. As I have said before, if you are being jumped by someone in an alley, you want the strongest person you know to step in and help you…not necessarily your favorite person in the world if they are not up to the task. The criteria needed for a Democratic party candidate is someone who can beat Trump and actually deliver on the changes we desperately need. And in this context, a Bernie Sanders nomination is an exceptionally risky bet.

1) America desperately needs action, not talk. Sanders’ career has literally been all talk and no action.

I had a former student who reached out to me a month or two ago. We talked about how he was doing in his classes, and he explained his frustration with his current teachers. He said they “try to be my friend” and want to be liked, but that they don’t actually teach and he isn’t learning anything. And he told me that what he appreciated about my classroom is that I was clear I wasn’t there to be buddy buddy with my students — I was there to help them achieve the results they were capable of and build their independence. And this is a student who had achieved scores others hadn’t thought possible in my class, which he had needed for graduation. By the end of the conversation he told me that a teacher who actually helps make those things happen is the “real friend”…not the teacher who acts like they are your buddy and tells you what you want to hear — but never delivers.

This is the Sander’s dilemma. He has had a core thesis of politics since his college days, and he has stuck to it: Top down socialism and nationalization of industries. That consistency has earned him his reputation as authentic, and I will not diminish that his ideas have changed the debate. He has admirably moved the ball on the conversation around universal healthcare. The first problem, however, is his staggering inability to translate words into concrete change. In a 30 year career in Congress Bernie has passed…7 bills. 2 of those bills were renaming post offices, and 1 was designating March 4, 1991 “Vermont Bicentennial Day”. So essentially four laws in thirty years. Call me old fashioned, but I was under the impression legislators were hired to legislate. And Bernie’s one substantive bill, the Veterans Choice Act, gave veterans “choice cards” allowing them to seek treatment from a non-VA facility. There is a certain irony when your signature proposal is Medicare for All — a nationalized healthcare program — but your biggest legislative accomplishment is helping veterans captive to a nationalized healthcare program get more choice from private vendors to avoid wait times. For a point of comparison, here are the statistics for the other Senators running for President: Joe Biden has passed 42 bills into law, Amy Klobuchar has passed 27 bills into law, and Elizabeth Warren passed 8 bills into law (and helped design a federal agency) despite only being in Congress for ¼ the the time as Sanders.

It’s worth noting that there are plenty of other ways to make a difference as a Senator (full disclosure, I am a law-clerk in the Senate). There is oversight and amendments, for example. My law professor actually had the opportunity to work with a group of Senators on amendments to reform sentencing guidelines. They were working closely on changes that would have curtailed certain draconian sentencing schemes. When they asked for Senator Sanders’ input, his staffer relayed a simple message: Bernie wanted to bring back the parole system and would settle for nothing less. So his staff contributed nothing to the sentencing reform effort, because it didn’t completely abandon the determinate sentencing regime we have. This is almost the definition of “making the perfect the enemy of the good.” And if you talk with people who work on the Hill, this is the common refrain: If you want to actually get something done, don’t work with the Sanders people.

When the country desperately needs action on democracy reform, gun safety, climate change, immigration, and a host of other issues we can’t afford to kick the can down the road on, choosing a candidate who pairs (1) deeply unrealistic plans given our political reality (Medicare for all, for instance, does not even have substantial support within the Democartic party) with (2) a non-existent track record of actually passing significant legislation…what you have is a recipe for failure and disappointment. And just like my former student’s experience, if all you do is talk about progressive issues without ever actually delivering, you aren’t a real friend. We can’t afford that in 2020.

2) “Ass Backwards”: Trump and Russia want Bernie to win, candidates who run on his platform lose

At this point the Trump campaign couldn’t be any more explicit about wanting to run against Sanders. Trump himself constantly tries to portray Bernie as a victim to stoke dissension in the party, boost his candidacy, and encourage his supporters to refuse to vote for anyone else (which is working at this point given only 53% of his supporters say they would support another Democrat in the general election). Trump of course knows that this was part of what handed him victory in 2016. Roughly 10% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump, which was the margin of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (and this is to say nothing of defections to 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein). And as we speak Republicans in South Carolina are encouraging republicans to vote for Bernie in the state’s open primary because he is the party’s “best worst candidate.”

And not only does Trump want Bernie to get the nomination, the Russians appear to be actively boosting his candidacy yet again as well. This builds off the intelligence from the Mueller report, which contained intercepted communication from the Russian backed IRA that their disinformation warfare campaign has a “main idea: Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary [Clinton] and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”

When a hostile foriegn power sees strategic value in boosting a particular candidate…that should give you pause about why our enemies find that candidacy appealing.

In addition, there is almost no track record for Bernie’s platform being a basis for electoral success. I have already pointed out in other posts that Jeremy Corbyn ran on an almost identical platform in England and got absolutely demolished by the U.K.’s Trumpian equivalent in Boris Johson. Corbyn explicitly named Sanders as the inspiration for his candidacy, and he led the Labor party (England’s equivalent of the Democrats) to its worst performance since 1935. Furthermore, in the 2018 American midterm elections the candidates backed by Sanders lost almost across the board. For example, Our Revolution went 0–22, Justice Democrats went 0–16, and Brand New Congress went 0–6. The Democrats picked up the House exclusively through the efforts of candidates like Connor Lamb, Anthony Delagdo, Mikie Sherrill, and Max Rose, who ran on results-oriented platforms often centered on protecting and expanding Obamacare (and were usually coupled with a credible background in national security). These same candidates are now voicing their concern Sanders at the top of the ticket could cost Democrats the House of Representatives. Research has also unpacked how the Sander’s theory of victory is statistically suspect. His entire model for victory is predicated on a level of youth turnout that is completely unprecedented, even compared with Barack Obama in 2008. This level of turnout has so far completely failed to materialize in the primary. In short, his general election prospects depend on the groups statistically least likely to vote, while alienating the groups statistically most likely to vote and the swing voters who explained Democratic victories in the midterms.

3) Sanders has enormous baggage in a general election

It’s hard to even know where to start here.

-Socialism polls terribly with the general public. Asked about their impression of socialism, “28% of adults said they have a favorable view, while 58% said they had an unfavorable one.” Not a great sign for a self described socialist.

-Sander’s pattern of fawning over authoritarian regimes in Latin America and the Soviet Union. Doubling down on the great “literacy programs” of Fidel Castro is bizarre and tone deaf. Should Mao get credit for modernizing the Chinese economy in the Great Leap Forward? Stalin for industrialization? And boosting Fidel Castro (it feels weird even writing it) is the equivalent of basically just giving up any chance of winning Florida.

-Sanders plans to primary President Barack Obama for the 2012 election. To be clear, incumbent Presidents who have faced a primary challenge from within their own party have almost always lost. Sanders seemed to be fine with that, and had to be heavily pressured not to enter the race against the most popular Democratic politician in the country.

-Sanders checkered personal history. If you know that suburban women are considered one of the decisive swing electorates, the fact that NPR literally has an article entitled The Bernie Sanders ‘Rape Fantasy’ Essay, Explained should give you nightmares.

-A lot of suspect finances. And the fact that Jane Sanders keeps doing interviews on Russia Today, a state run propaganda outlet, is flat bizarre.

The list goes on and on. And you can be guaranteed the moment the nomination is locked up, if Bernie is victorious, there will be an avalanche of hit pieces by the Republican propaganda machine that Sanders has never experienced in his political career.

4) There is a toxic dynamic among a portion of his supporters

This is probably the elephant in the room for the Sanders campaign. At the most general level, there is the obvious and consistent trend of his supporters harshly criticizing anyone who doesn’t agree with him 100% as centrist shills, fake liberals, and whatever other name gets some meme traction. This is not an unsurprising dynamic in a hyperpolarized political climate, and we have seen this movie happening for years in the Republican party. Since the Tea Party wave more moderate members have been called RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and essentially been forced out as Trumpism has conquered the party. Seeing the same purity and ideologically hardline dynamic now happen in the Democratic party isn’t just frustrating as a philosophical matter; it defies the demographic realities of our party, which are highly unique from the Republican party. As Ezra Klein puts it, “Democrats can’t win running the kinds of campaigns and deploying the kinds of tactics that succeed for Republicans. They can move to the left — and they are — but they can’t abandon the center or, given the geography of American politics, the center-right, and still hold power. Democrats are modestly, but importantly, restrained by diversity and democracy. Republicans are not.”

Furthermore, the attacks on anyone who strays from Sanders absolutism, or has the nerve to support another candidate, gloss over serious issues with his platform that are worth grappling with rather than marching in group-think lockstep off a cliff. I won’t belabor those policy arguments here, but if the Trump Presidency has not made you at least a tad skeptical about gigantic increases in federal power and authority of the kind Sanders is proposing (he would double the size of the federal government)…I don’t know what to tell you. The Trump presidency has in some ways stood for the proposition that if you were comfortable with the federal government having a particular power under Obama, but aren’t comfortable with that power under Trump, the federal government probably shouldn’t have that power. And it is unnerving to think what a medicare for all program would look like when administered by a potential future President Ted Cruz. If Cruz says no contraception or maternal health issues will be covered under his administration, where do people turn in nationalized health care program with no other alternatives? At a time when the federal government can barely pass a budget to keep the lights on, it seems like it should earn some small victories and earn trust before taking over the American healthcare system and ordering people off their private insurance, including unions who worked for years to negotiate their plans.

Nonetheless, anyone who strays from Bernie dogma or brings up any potential issues with his plans is attacked — often viciously and personally. To name a few examples:

-The Nevada Culinary Union, about as sympathetic a democratic constituency as imaginable, had to release a statement after an onslaught of online attacks: “It’s disappointing that Senator Sanders’ supporters have viciously attacked the Culinary Union and working families in Nevada simply because our union has provided facts on what certain health care proposals might do to take away the system of care we have built over eight decades.”

-Left wing activists brought a literal coffin to a Joe Biden campaign event. This is the same Joe Biden who buried his son just a few years ago, and who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident at the start of his career.

-Bernie Campaign staffer Ben Mora went after female candidates for their appearance/age and Mayor Pete for being gay. Journalists who covered Mora were doxxed.

-Sanders supporters have done late night bullhorn protests at the homes of public officials, to the point where law enforcement had to be called.

-A pleasant call and response chant by Bernie supporters Iowa:

“When I say ‘Fuck,’ you say ‘Biden!’”

“Fuck,” he yelled. “Biden,” the crowd roared back.

“When I say ‘Fuck,’ you say ‘Warren!’”

“Fuck,” he yelled. “Warren,” the audience answered back.

The irony here of course is that this approach often backfires. When people feel you will not welcome their support, and that you are talking down to them from a condescending moral superiority complex, you lose them. This was on full display in the Iowa caucus, where reporting literally documented overzealous Bernie supporters driving people on the fence away from them to vote for other candidates.

David Leonhardt has described the problems of this dynamic far better than I ever could:

“For many progressives, every issue has become a moral litmus test. Any restriction of immigration is considered a denial of human rights. Any compromise on guns or health care is an acceptance of preventable deaths. And I understand the progressive arguments on these issues. But turning every compromise into an existential moral failing is not a smart way to practice politics. It comforts the persuaded while alienating the persuadable. F.D.R. and Reagan understood this, as did Abraham Lincoln and many great social reformers, including Frederick Douglass, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Strong political movements can accept impurity on individual issues in the service of a larger goal: winning.”

5) You can’t pretend the health issue doesn’t exist

Bernie Sanders had a heart attack a few months ago. He is 78 years old. If my Jewish grandfather was still alive and told us at 78 after a heart attack he wanted to start working in the most stressful job on earth…we would get him some manischewitz and and tell him to come back to planet earth.

Worse, Sanders is refusing to release his comprehensive medical records, unlike any other candidate. It’s one thing to have a major health scare, it’s another to refuse to give any subsequent health records and basically expect voters to trust a hand selected doctors note (which is what Trump did, of course). Given the very high five year mortality rate for a 78 year old who has had a heart attack, there is zero credible argument for not releasing them. The American people had a right to see Trump’s tax records, and they have just as much to understand Sanders’ state of health if he wants to be Commander in Chief. “Trust me” isn’t enough. Period.

Addendum:

At the most fundamental level, the biggest issue with Sanders may be his theory of progress. His orientation seems built on a premise that American society and history is so irredeemably corrupt that there is nothing worth learning or gleaning inspiration from. It is not a story of progress, hard earned and fought for, but a kind of unchanging capitalistic domination that can only be overcome by an amorphous “revolution” long on rhetoric and short on details. And unlike community, which is about building relationships through common goals, Bernie’s orientation is tribal populism — which is far more concerned with vilifying a common enemy. Or as Bernie himself put it at the beginning of his career:

““I hope to play some role in making working people aware that present day reality of poverty, wage slavery and mind-destroying media and schools is not the only reality — but simply a pathetic presentation brought to us by a handful of power hungry individuals who own and control our economy.”

The problem with this philosophy, in addition to its black and white oversimplifications, is it gives no positive moral sustenance for inspiration and action. It diminishes our own agency and the lessons we can learn from battles fought and won. It offers only the sugar high of fashionable cynicism and sanctimonious “above it all” fatalism. “Bern it all down.”

President Obama had a better vision of how progress happens.

“We betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.”