I Doubt a Majority of Americans Would Elect a President Sanders – I hope I’m Wrong
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, February 24th, 2020
Salaroche


If Bernie Sanders were to win big on Super Tuesday, he will most likely have by then clinched the nomination and if the Nevada caucuses were any reliable sign, such may well be the inevitable case, as by now none of the remaining candidates has come even close to challenging him.

But a Sanders candidacy would represent some serious problems for the Democratic Party and for the United States as a whole. The stakes for this country in November will be of the highest magnitude, as nothing short of the fate of the Republic will be decided at the ballot box.

Sanders’ most serious electability problem are the socialist ideas he embraces, which are ideas many Americans would not even dare to contemplate. Socialism is anathema for the great majority of Americans, even as a considerable number of them may not know exactly what such ideas entail.

The fact is not even the Democratic Socialists of America (D.S.A.) have been able to define with enough clarity what their own political aims for the country are, so, how can we expect the American electorate to understand what Bernie Sanders really stands for?

Sanders is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, but the “socialist” part of that signature does not ring any happy bells in the ears of a good majority of Americans. For them, socialism equals communism equals anti-capitalism, and a good majority of them are fierce capitalists, even if in so being they sometimes go against their own personal interests.

In fact, if selected as the candidate for the Democratic Party, the toughest obstacle Sanders would be facing in November would not be Donald Trump, but the wall of prejudice and misunderstanding that the electorate would judge him with.

Trump and the Republicans would certainly stoke and amplify that anti-socialist prejudice to their own advantage, just as much as they do anytime they see fit, particularly since the uninformed fear of socialism in question is not a 21st century phenomenon, but one that dates, first from the Red Scare of the 1920s and subsequently from that of the 1950s, so that by now it can be said to be a particular characteristic of American culture.

Sanders would commit a grave error if he does not elaborate, as often as he can and in a manner as detailed as possible, exactly what he intends to do once he is in the Oval Office. And this he should do while directly addressing the anti-socialist fear that has been lurking in the American psyche for a hundred years. Not tangentially, but head-on, straight forward.

For instance, he should pick a few countries among the many that have different strands of socialized medicine as examples of the success those systems have, emphasizing the points his proposed system has in common with those others and the points in which it differs from them.

For that purpose, the Nordic model should be at the top of his list, but he should also highlight the British, the Israeli, the Belgian, the Australian, the German and the French models as variations of Universal Health Care systems that have been in place for decades and have thus far been largely successful, even as many, or perhaps all, of them are less expensive than that of the United States.

Sanders would not be able to afford ignoring the huge elephant standing in his way to the presidency, which is the deep anti-socialist prejudice ingrained in the minds of the electorate. He would swamp his electability chances if he talks to the American people with ambiguities that may betray the slightest intention to deceive them.

Either Sanders plays his game straight out in the open or Trump and the Republicans will inflict such a thunderous defeat on him that it may throw the left-wing of the Democratic Party out of the political game for a few decades to come.

At this point in time nothing is cast in stone, but if the political winds presently blowing in our direction are foreshadowing anything, a Sanders candidacy no longer looks farfetched at all.

As far as Bloomberg is concerned, well, he may have some come-back-kid qualities in him and he may still have a chance to recuperate from his disastrous performance in Nevada, but the onus is solely on his shoulders. Luckily for him, he doesn’t need any donors to continue pursuing his political ambitions but, for the moment, not many of us are willing to vouch for him as enthusiastically as we may have just a few days ago.

…and the beat goes on…

Salaroche