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.
After Tuesday: The Ugly Truth
Can Republican members of Congress and in the upper echelons of the party hierarchy possibly understand that they are the problem, that the breakdown stems from an institutional detachment from reality—and from a failure to understand today’s Republican base? The leadership had proceeded on a number of illusions: that the base could be mollified by making unfulfillable promises—to repeal Obamacare and balance the budget—while their own emphasis was on cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, paring entitlements, expanding trade, and helping out businesses that want cheap immigrant labor. They thought that they could toy with racism—a strategy that began with Richard Nixon—without it capturing the party.
.. though, according to Politico, Trump isn’t spending much of his own money on the race: most of his funding comes from donors and his own contributions are loaned or in kind.
.. he uttered some quotes that could be devastating if he’s the Republican nominee: “I don’t know anything about David Duke.” “I don’t know anything about white supremacists.” “I don’t know David Duke, I haven’t met him.”
.. He’s intellectually lazy and he evinces no respect for knowledge itself. What does he read? Why does he persist in marrying fashion models?
.. Asked about the speaker of the house, Trumpsaid, “Paul Ryan, I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him. And if I don’t, he’s going to have to pay a big price—okay?”
.. Trump’s unerring radar for a rival’s weakness—Jeb Bush’s “low energy”
.. While all this mayhem was going on John Kasich was being presidential: he answered questions thoughtfully, he showed he understood the role of a leader, and he talked common sense. But that wasn’t newsworthy.
.. It’s reported that the question Trump hates most is whether he’s as rich as he claims—$10 billion
.. Trump has shown that he can be as brutal toward members of the press as to his fellow candidates. He can let fly against them in his Twitter account, which has over six million followers. He keeps the press who cover a rally penned up in a cage-like structure and makes threatening statements about them, to the delight of the crowds. A litigious character, he’s threatened numerous lawsuits against reporters and has now proposed to make the standards for winning such suits easier—by ripping up the First Amendment.
.. The history of this period may show that someone temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the presidency made prohibitive gains toward the nomination of one of this country’s two once-great parties because so many people were afraid of him.
.. John Kasich is also considering a plan for getting nominated in a contested convention, but that depends upon his winning primaries in Michigan on March 8 and the state of which he’s a popular governor, Ohio, on March 15. This is actually less far-fetched than Rubio’s scheme since Kasich would have won in two major states.
.. There’s even been talk of the formation of a third party of traditional Republicans, but such a thing is very expensive and hard to organize, especially at this late point in an election year. Then there’s the question of who would be the candidate.
.. these internal schisms aren’t so much ideological as they are about insiders and outsiders—about a struggle for power—and they’re based on a profound sense of betrayal.
.. In particular, young people saddled with student loan debt are drawn to Sanders’s proposal for free college tuition at public schools. The fact that both parties failed to deliver for middle class voters may account for why numerous respondents have told pollsters that they could vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump.
.. Democratic turnout in the primaries and caucuses has been lower than in the last two presidential elections and the Clinton campaign may have to struggle with a lack of enthusiasm for her among Democrats in the general election. By contrast, turnout in the Republican contests has been higher than usual, which could signal that Trump is bringing new people into the process.
.. Turning without saying so to Trump and the fall campaign, she said, “Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again. America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers.” And she’s begun using what she acknowledges is an unusual line for a presidential candidate: “I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.”
.. Nothing has happened in the presidential election so far to alleviate the nagging question of whether a victor from either party will be able to govern. (I’m suspending judgment on whether a possible third-party candidate could overcome
.. The Republican House deposed its previous Speaker because he sought compromise with the president. The current Congress has told the White House not to bother to submit a budget or to nominate a Supreme Court Justice to fill a vacancy.
.. The consequence of a break could be authoritarianism—the temptation toward which is in evidence now—or chaos, which would likely encourage authoritarianism. Hillary Clinton is the one major candidate taking care not to overpromise. But my guess is that way inside she knows the obvious—if she wins in November, the Republicans will seek to undermine her just as they did her two Democratic predecessors, including her husband.
What are the core differences between Republicans and Democrats?
The Republican Party is held together by the core premise that the status of some traditionally important groups be supported and indeed extended. That would include “white male producers,” but not only. You could add soldiers, Christians (many but not all kinds), married mothers, gun owners, and other groups to that list.
.. Democrats are a looser coalition of interest groups. They agree less on exactly which groups should rise in status, or why, but they share a skepticism about the Republican program for status allocation, leading many Democrats to dislike the Republicans themselves and to feel superior to them.
.. No matter how much Republicans talk about broadening their message, the core point is still “we want to raise the status of groups which you don’t belong to!” That’s a tough sell, and furthermore the Republicans can fall all too readily into the roles of being oppressors, or at least talking like oppressors.
Republicans, who are focused on the status of some core groups at the exclusion of others, are more likely to lack empathy. Democrats, who oppose some of the previously existing status relations, and who deeply oppose the Republican ideology, are more likely to exhibit neuroticism.
.. At the state and local level, the governments controlled by Republicans tend to be better run, sometimes much better run, than those controlled by the Democrats (oops).
.. First, Republican delusions often matter less at the state and local level, and furthermore what the core Republican status groups want from state and local government is actually pretty conducive to decent outcomes. The Democrats in contrast keep on doling out favors and goodies to their multitude of interest groups, and that often harms outcomes. The Democrats find it harder to “get tough,” even when that is what is called for, and they have less of a values program to cohere around, for better or worse.
.. It is easier for intelligent foreigners to buy more heavily into the Democratic stories. They feel more comfortable with the associated status relations, and furthermore foreigners are less likely to be connected to American state and local government, so they don’t have much sense of how the Republicans actually are more sensible in many circumstances.
Superdelegates, Clarify Your Role
Superdelegates are party bigwigs — 712 Democratic leaders, legislators, governors and the like. They can vote for any candidate at the nominating convention, regardless of whether that candidate won the popular vote. These unpledged delegates make up 30 percent of the 2,382 delegates whose votes are needed to win the nomination, and could thus make all the difference.
.. Superdelegates serve multiple functions at the convention, among them maintaining order — for example, by casting their votes to avoid deadlock in a fragmented field. That is why superdelegates shouldn’t have to make ironclad pledges to transfer their fealty to the biggest vote-getter. That could set a precedent Democrats might live to regret.