IT WAS A
devastating contrast. As the Iowa caucus turned into a fiasco
(Democrats blamed the software), President Donald Trump hailed an
“American comeback” in the state-of-the-union message and basked in his
acquittal by the Senate over impeachment. With the economy roaring and
his approval ratings ticking up, Mr Trump looks likelier than ever to
triumph in November. Compare that with the Democrats after Iowa, in
which no candidate won the backing of much more than a quarter of
caucusers.
Democrats agree that ending
Mr Trump’s bombastic tenure is their priority. But their champions, now
trudging round New Hampshire eking out votes before next week’s primary
(see article),
are starkly divided over what to offer Americans in his place. The left
argues that America has stopped working for most people and thus needs
fundamental restructuring. Moderates recommend running repairs. A lot
rests on which side prevails—the radicals or the repairers.
Any
of the front-runners could yet end up as the nominee: the radicals,
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; or the repairers, Pete Buttigieg
and Joe Biden (despite his bad day in Iowa). So at a pinch could Michael
Bloomberg, another repairer, who is spending gargantuan sums before
Super Tuesday next month. But on every count the repairers have the
better of the argument. They are more likely to beat Mr Trump, to
achieve things and, most important, to do what America needs.
It
is striking that all of the plausible nominees are campaigning to the
left of President Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 (see Briefing).
They all have ambitious plans on climate change; and, with the
exception of Mr Bloomberg, are sceptical of free trade. Nevertheless, Mr
Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, and Ms Warren, a
capitalist, are distinctly more militant in both style and substance.
This
is partly a matter of degree, as health policy shows. All Democrats
want the number of Americans without health insurance, which has risen
from 27m to 30m under Mr Trump, to be reduced, ideally to zero. The
repairers would expand Obamacare’s market-based system until everyone
was covered. Mr Sanders and Ms Warren, by contrast, would nationalise
health insurance, revolutionising health care, a $3.8trn business
accounting for 18% of GDP and which employs 16.6m people.
There
is also a fundamental difference about the role of government. Take
labour rights, for instance. All Democrats evoke a mythical golden age
when people were rewarded fairly for a day’s work. The reformers would
increase minimum wages to, say, $15 an hour and spend more on education
and retraining. The radicals would force any largish firm to put workers
on its board—Ms Warren would give their representatives 40% of the
seats, Mr Sanders 45%. Mr Sanders would require firms to transfer 20% of
their equity to workers’ trusts. Both would create a system of federal
charters to oblige firms to operate in the interests of all
stakeholders, including workers, customers and the local community as
well as shareholders. Such a government-mandated shift in corporate
power has never occurred in the United States.
This
radicalism is based on three misconceptions. The first is that Mr Trump
showed in 2016 that you win elections through the fervour of your base
rather than making a coalition. That is unlikely to work for Democrats
in 2020. Presidential elections tend not to be kind to candidates who
pitch their camp far from the political centre. Voters perceived Hillary
Clinton as more extreme than Donald Trump in 2016, and it did not end
well for her. In a 50:50 country, marginal handicaps matter.
Mr
Trump would have fun with Mr Sanders, who wishes to double federal
spending overnight and, perhaps more important to the president,
honeymooned in the Soviet Union. It was no accident that in his
state-of-the-union message Mr Trump pointed to Juan Guaidó, the
Venezuelan opposition leader who was his guest for the evening, and
reminded Congress that “socialism destroys nations”. Few voters are
hankering to own the means of production in suburban Philadelphia or
Milwaukee, where the presidential election will probably be decided.
Another
misconception is that a radical who did get into the Oval Office would
accomplish much. Some Democrats say that the intransigence of the
Republican Party means an approach built around compromise is worthless.
The pursuit of incremental change, they reckon, is an admission of
defeat at the outset. They are right that the two parties in Congress
have forgotten how to work together. Today’s Senate is likely to
accomplish less than any other in the past half-century. Their idea is
to take on Mr Trump’s reality-TV populism with
red-blooded economic populism. That might thrill activists and terrify
Wall Street, but it would be both unproductive and self-defeating.
Democrats believe in the role of government. They are condemned to try
to make it work, not demonstrate that it cannot.
The
last misconception, and the most important, concerns the substance of
what the radicals would like to achieve. Ms Warren takes her faith in
government to extremes. If she had her way, the state would break up,
abolish or impose fresh regulations on about half of the firms owned by
shareholders or private-equity groups. Mr Sanders would go even further.
Both candidates treat private capital as if it operates with sinister
intent, even as they embrace the state as if it were benign, capable and
efficient. That is naive. Just as thriving businesses at their best
invigorate and enrich, so government at its worst can be capable of
heartless cruelty and indifference.
There
are moments when the United States has required something like a
revolution—before the civil war, say, or in the years running up to the
passage of the Civil Rights Act. This is not one of them. Unemployment
is as low as it has been since the mid-1960s. Nominal wages in the
lowest quartile of the income scale are growing by 4.6%. Americans are
more optimistic about their own finances than they have been since 1999.
Instead
America needs repairing—lowering the cost of housing and health care;
moving to a low-carbon economy; finding a voting system that rewards
consensus, not partisanship. For that, national politics needs to become
boring again, not to be an exhausting, outrage-spewing fight between Mr
Trump and the most extreme candidate the Democratic Party can muster. ■
This
article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the
headline "The Democratic primaries will be a contest between radicals
and repairers"
