America’s nightmare
Bernie Sanders, nominee
The senator from Vermont would present America with a terrible choice
SOMETIMES PEOPLE
wake from a bad dream only to discover that they are still asleep and
that the nightmare goes on. This is the prospect facing America if, as
seems increasingly likely, the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders as the
person to rouse America from President Donald Trump’s first term. Mr
Sanders won the primary in New Hampshire, almost won in Iowa, trounced
his rivals in Nevada and is polling well in South Carolina. Come Super
Tuesday next week, in which 14 states including California and Texas
allot delegates, he could amass a large enough lead to make himself
almost impossible to catch.
Moderate
Democrats worry that nominating Mr Sanders would cost them the election.
This newspaper worries that forcing Americans to decide between him and
Mr Trump would result in an appalling choice with no good outcome. It
will surprise nobody that we disagree with a self-described democratic
socialist over economics, but that is just the start. Because Mr Sanders
is so convinced that he is morally right, he has a dangerous tendency
to put ends before means. And, in a country where Mr Trump has whipped
up politics into a frenzy of loathing, Mr Sanders’s election would feed
the hatred.
On
economics Mr Sanders is misunderstood. He is not a cuddly Scandinavian
social democrat who would let companies do their thing and then tax them
to build a better world. Instead, he believes American capitalism is
rapacious and needs to be radically weakened. He puts Jeremy Corbyn to
shame, proposing to take 20% of the equity of companies and hand it over
to workers, to introduce a federal jobs-guarantee and to require
companies to qualify for a federal charter obliging them to act for all
stakeholders in ways that he could define. On trade, Mr Sanders is at
least as hostile to open markets as Mr Trump is. He seeks to double
government spending, without being able to show how he would pay for it.
When unemployment is at a record low and nominal wages in the bottom
quarter of the jobs market are growing by 4.6%, his call for a
revolution in the economy is an epically poor prescription for what ails
America.
In putting ends before means,
Mr Sanders displays the intolerance of a Righteous Man. He embraces
perfectly reasonable causes like reducing poverty, universal health care
and decarbonising the economy, and then insists on the most
unreasonable extremes in the policies he sets out to achieve them (see article).
He would ban private health insurance (not even Britain, devoted to its
National Health Service, goes that far). He wants to cut billionaires’
wealth in half over 15 years. A sensible ecologist would tax fracking
for the greenhouse gases it produces. To Mr Sanders that smacks of a
dirty compromise: he would ban it outright.
Sometimes
even the ends are sacrificed to Mr Sanders’s need to be righteous.
Making university cost-free for students is a self-defeating way to
alleviate poverty, because most of the subsidy would go to people who
are, or will be, relatively wealthy. Decriminalising border-crossing and
breaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement would abdicate one of
the state’s first duties. Banning nuclear energy would stand in the way
of his goal to create a zero-carbon economy.
So
keenly does Mr Sanders fight his wicked rivals at home, that he often
sympathises with their enemies abroad. He has shown a habit of indulging
autocrats in Cuba and Nicaragua, so long as the regime in question
claims to be pursuing socialism. He is sceptical about America wielding
power overseas, partly from an honourable conviction that military
adventures do more harm than good. But it also reflects his contempt for
the power-wielders in the Washington establishment.
Last
is the effect of a President Sanders on America’s political culture.
The country’s political divisions helped make Mr Trump’s candidacy
possible. They are now enabling Mr Sanders’s rise. The party’s leftist
activists find his revolution thrilling. They have always believed that
their man would triumph if only the neoliberal Democratic Party elite
would stop keeping him down. His supporters seem to reserve almost as
much hatred for his Democratic opponents as they do for Republicans.
This
speaks to Mr Sanders’s political style. When faced with someone who
disagrees with him, his instinct is to spot an establishment conspiracy,
or to declare that his opponent is confused and will be put straight by
one of his political sermons. When asked how he would persuade Congress
to eliminate private health insurance (something which 60% of Americans
oppose), Mr Sanders replies that he would hold rallies in the states of
recalcitrant senators until they relented.
A
presidency in which Mr Sanders travelled around the country holding
rallies for a far-left programme that he could not get through Congress
would widen America’s divisions. It would frustrate his supporters,
because the president’s policies would be stymied by Congress or the
courts. On the right, which has long been fed a diet of socialist
bogeymen, the spectacle of an actual socialist in the White House would
generate even greater fury. Mr Sanders would test the proposition that
partisanship cannot get any more bitter.
The
mainstream three-quarters of Democrats have begun to tell themselves
that Mr Sanders would not be so bad. Some point out that he would not be
able to do many of the things he promises. This excuse-making, with its
implication that Mr Sanders should be taken seriously but not
literally, sounds worryingly familiar. Mr Trump has shown that control
of the regulatory state, plus presidential powers over trade and over
foreign policy, give a president plenty of room for manoeuvre. His first
term suggests that it is unwise to dismiss what a man seeking power
says he wants to do with it.
Enter Sandersman
If
Mr Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, America will have to choose
in November between a corrupt, divisive, right-wing populist, who scorns
the rule of law and the constitution, and a sanctimonious, divisive,
left-wing populist, who blames a cabal of billionaires and businesses
for everything that is wrong with the world. All this when the country
is as peaceful and prosperous as at any time in its history. It is hard
to think of a worse choice. Wake up, America! ■
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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "America’s nightmare"
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