Politics & Policy
The Left’s Fantasy World Just Exploded
Sanders did more for socialism than socialism did for Sanders.
A mirage just disappeared in Michigan — the mirage of a resurgent socialism in the U.S.
The notion that socialism was making a comeback took hold after Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 primary campaign. A self-described “democratic socialist” won 45 percent of the vote all told. In the years since then, young Democratic politicians who have also adopted that description have won elections and become media sensations, none more so than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
They seemed to be the wave of the future. They certainly thought so themselves. When Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator and 2000 vice-presidential nominee, cast doubt on that prospect, Ocasio-Cortez snapped back: “New party. Who dis?” As Sanders racked up victories in the early contests of the 2020 primaries, the realignment on the left seemed at hand. America could see a socialist presidential nominee, and even a socialist president.
The idea that Sanders could win was far from crazy, given his dedicated fan base. But the larger story line of socialism’s coming triumph was based on one misreading of political events after another.
In the first place, socialism hadn’t spiked in popularity. In 2010, Gallup found that 36 percent of the public embraced the label. Eight years later — following Sanders’s first run for the presidency, and in the same year Ocasio-Cortez got elected — that number had climbed up all the way to 37 percent.
Left-wing Democrats misunderstood the reason Sanders did so well in 2016. It was because Hillary Clinton was the front-runner. Few Democratic heavyweights were willing to take her on, and he was an idealistic alternative. He did more for socialism than socialism did for him. A poll taken that January found that Sanders’s supporters were less likely than Clinton’s to want a higher minimum wage or bigger government.
Clinton’s defeat that November further fed the myth. Sanders’s supporters instantly concluded that “Bernie would have won.” Many Democrats wondered whether Clinton had erred by not taking a tougher line on Wall Street or offering populist ideas on trade.
The 2018 elections should have punctured the socialist bubble. The left’s favored candidates largely lost their primaries, and most of the Democrats who picked up swing districts were relative moderates. House Democrats picked up 40 seats, but the number of co-sponsors of Medicare for All actually fell. Yet Ocasio-Cortez’s squad were an irresistible story: The squad and its fans had an interest in promoting it, and so did conservatives who wanted to make the Democrats look as extreme as possible.
Perhaps the squad sincerely thought that a “new party” was aborning. Americans were, after all, with them on the issues, weren’t they? Polls showed that Americans wanted a larger Social Security, new taxes on wealth, a higher minimum wage. Some polls even found that they favored Medicare for All.
But the course of the Democratic primaries has already shown the limits of that polling. People like the sound of Medicare for All until it is pointed out that it would outlaw the health insurance most people now have, whether or not they want it. Only a minority of Americans is open to voting for even a well-qualified socialist — they poll worse than gays, Muslims and atheists.
If socialism had the political momentum its adherents thought it did, it should have shown up on Tuesday in Michigan. Clinton lost the state twice in 2016, first to Sanders in the primary and then to Trump in the general election. But Biden won handily. His strongest supporters were African-Americans, as has been the case elsewhere. Socialism turns out not to be a strong draw for a large group of the party’s most loyal voters. It’s hard to see how it can prevail in the Democratic party given that fact.
Sanders won big among Democrats who consider themselves “very liberal” in the Michigan primary. Sadly for him, they were only 22% of the voters. Sanders lost big among “somewhat liberal” voters, leading him to a tie with Biden among all liberals. Another 39% of voters considered themselves moderate or conservative, and they strongly favored Biden.
The Democratic Party is moving left, and perhaps the country will move left too. But the socialist fire is dying out. (Conservatives will keep raking the embers to scare moderates.) Socialists have been counting gains that aren’t materializing. The recent primaries have been a bitter disappointment for left-wingers, and all the more so because for the last four years they have been living in a fantasy.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
No comments:
Post a Comment