It’s hard to know when Bernie Sanders is truly angry because he always seems angry, his head the hue of an electric stove burner on high heat. Ideologues don’t like to be criticized, especially by people of lesser purity, which is why Bernie spent most of debate #10 playing defense in high dudgeon.
But that’s going to happen to a “front-runner.” I’ve put that word in quotes because he’s tops with a mere 28 percent of the primary electorate – which means that a landslide share of grassroots Democrats rightly fear the nomination of a guy whose “socialist” label is anathema to 58 percent of Americans.
Granted, the entire debate was standard Democratic chaos (as usual, Trump won by default), but, most importantly, it was Bernie’s job to quell doubts about his electability. That didn’t happen. What you always hear (bellowing certitude) is what you always get. He’s just lucky that his more moderate rivals keep divvying up the not-Bernie voters; none are willing to quit the race for the greater good of the party.
But when he was asked to explain his pipe dream of hiking federal spending by $50 trillion over 10 years, and enacting all-government health care at a partial cost of $30 trillion over 10 years, this was his answer: “How many hours do you have?”
Maybe his young fans (many of whom get their health insurance from mom and dad, thanks to Obamacare) are happy to listen to Bernie for hours, but the average older voter, who likely gets private health coverage, is not going to listen for hours. A few seconds would probably suffice – for instance, these seconds of Bernie, last Sunday night on 60 Minutes:
Q: “Do you have a price tag for all these things (government health care)?”
Bernie: “No, I don’t.”
Q: “How do you know it’s gonna be paid for (with taxes) if you don’t know what the price is?”
Bernie: “Well, I can’t – you know, I can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime.”
That kind of attitude would sink Bernie in the crucial swing states, because there’s no appetite (outside his base) for a wholesale health care overhaul that would kick 150 million Americans off their private health coverage, financed with a ill-defined quantum leap in federal spending. And with Bernie topping the ticket, the down-ballot House Democrats who flipped suburban Republican seats in 2018 would probably kiss their jobs goodbye.
Indeed, there’s solid evidence that government health care was a losing issue in 2018. The most successful House Democratic candidates won by avoiding the issue; the least successful candidates lost by endorsing it. Bernie has never refuted those facts, and he certainly didn’t try last night.
At one point during the debate, Pete Buttigieg told Bernie: “We’ve got a House to worry about. We’ve got a Senate to worry about…If you want to keep the House in Democratic hands, you might want to check with the people who actually turned the House blue, 40 Democrats, who are not running on your platform. They are running away from your platform as fast as they possibly can.” Indeed they are. Bernie has no answer for that.
Mike Bloomberg returned to that topic minutes later. With Bernie topping the ticket, “the House and the Senate and some of the statehouses will all go red. And then, between gerrymandering and appointing judges, for the next 20 or 30 years, we’re going to live with this catastrophe.”
Goaded by Bloomberg, Bernie tried this defense: “Of the last 50 polls that have been done nationally, I beat Trump 47 of those 50 times. If you look at battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, polling just done this Sunday, I beat Trump. And if you want to beat Trump, what you’re going to need is an unprecedented grassroots movement of black and white and Latino, Native American and Asian, people who are standing up and fighting for justice.”
Oh man. Save it for the ’60s ramparts.
First of all, the polls right now are meaningless – especially since the Trump team has held its fire on Bernie, hoping he gets the nomination, at which point they’ll unload. (I remember when Mike Dukakis topped George Bush senior by 17 points in the polls with just 10 weeks to go.) Secondly, Bernie’s turnout scenario omits the risk that he’ll create a backlash – and that, as a result, Trump-driven turnout will be just as high or higher. And thirdly, he never answered the charge that he’d imperil down-ballot Democrats in the crucially important suburbs where he too would need to be strong.
(After the debate, Dana Bash of CNN asked Bernie – twice – to address the adverse impact he could have in the swing suburbs. His boilerplate response: “The establishment is freaking out, the corporate media is freaking out.” He brought up the polls again, and he said “the people” voted for him in the first three Democratic contests. He never answered her question.)
And speaking of electability, let’s talk about Bernie’s praise for Fidel Castro. On 60 Minutes, as you probably know, Bernie lauded the communist leader (whose firing squads killed thousands of Cubans) for implementing a nationwide literacy program. Bernie omitted the fact that, while it’s true Fidel taught more Cubans to read, much of what they were given to read was government propaganda.
When the Castro episode surfaced during the debate, Bernie tried to defend himself: “Literacy programs are bad?…The Cubans do something good, you acknowledge that.” He neglected to mention that, on Monday, Florida’s Democratic party leaders – mindful of the swing state’s Cuban-American electorate – condemned him for his remarks. He neglected to mention that four Florida Democratic congresspeople, one of whom represents a heavily Cuban-American district, condemned him for his remarks.
Buttigieg had the prefect rejoinder: “We’re not going to win these critical, critical House and Senate races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic party is telling people to look at the bright side of the Castro regime. We’ve got to be a lot smarter.”
One would think. Unless this party is bent on remaking Dumb and Dumber.