Can Sanders Remake the Democratic Party?
The Democratic Party fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—one likely to extend through the very last primaries if not all the way to the convention—might be compared to the contest between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford in 1976. A beloved movement figure is taking on an exhausted yet entrenched establishment, running much better than anyone expected. But like Reagan, even in defeat, Sanders clearly represents the future of the party.
.. Sanders’s first election as mayor of Burlington in 1981 was due to a property tax revolt (and the opportunistic support of the police union). What later earned him up to 70 percent of the statewide vote in Vermont were historically favorable ratings from the NRA and zeal in securing veterans benefits.
.. It was not necessarily Sanders’s intention to provoke a debate about the future of liberalism, and he has not aggressively pursued it. Critics frequently call out his reliance on vague talk of popular mobilization (“a political revolution”) when asked how he would pass his agenda against Republican opposition. Left unacknowledged is how much the politics of a Democratic primary constrain him from making a clearer argument, a forceful critique of the party’s establishment and its priorities.
.. Yet despite the challenges Sanders faces, it’s hard to see how the anti-establishment Left could have found a better candidate. In retrospect, the once sought after progressive Elizabeth Warren would have fared poorly as Clinton’s challenger.
.. Still, it would probably take far less pressure than a Trump presidency to completely upend the Democratic establishment, creating a new coalition as inconceivable and offensive to the party of Obama as Trump is to the party of Bush.