Bernie Sanders is a political revolutionary, a man who will stop at nothing to prevent the powers that be from exploiting the poor. Too often democrats have compromised with Republicans, but Bernie knows that winning elections requires the presentation of a clear and powerful left-wing agenda that is diametrically opposed to the repugnant policies of the far-right. In every particular, he will fight the Trump administration and its divisive vision of a closed, inward looking America.
This is the narrative that has pervaded the Democratic Party since the catastrophic results of November 8th. It is simple, it is comforting, but it is also largely false.
When most democrats attack Donald Trump, they do so unequivocally; they claim Trump is racist, incompetent and unhinged, that his policies are ridiculous and unattainable lies. Most Democrats use this attack, but not Bernie Sanders. Instead, Bernie often accepts the veracity of Trump’s economic message, and therefore the fundamental message of angry populism. Sanders attacks Trump on morality and on ethics, but infrequently on policy.
This is no accident; after all, the far left and Trumpian nationalist wings in American politics share some key traits. It is no accident that Sanders' campaign was in many ways a dramatically less hateful mirror image of Trump’s: both believe in a zero-sum economy where the benefits accrued to one group harm another. For Sanders, this means a battle between rich and poor, and for Trump a struggle between immigrants and native-born Americans. Either way, both men have abandoned the fundamental American ideal that all of us can succeed together.
Their agreement doesn’t stop there, Trump and Sanders agree that we must turn inward, and abandon any attempt to defend our values and rights on the world stage. Both men have rejected the policy consensuses that have defined US foreign policy for the past decades, and each has paid little attention to serious security threats to this nation.
They find further common ground in their opposition to trade deals and to the broader forces of globalization, and both men traffic in the spurious claim that protectionism can bring the industrial jobs of the 1950s back to the US.
But the similarities between Sanders and Trump don’t stop with policies. Both built political movements based upon mass rallies, both eschewed traditional campaign tactics, both ran campaigns based largely upon raw emotional anger and both struggled with outlining realistic and specific policy platforms.
To be sure, there are differences between the two: Sanders is an incorruptible, admirable and devoted public servant. Trump is a conman whose corrupt activities are unprecedented in modern times. But these stark differences do not change the underlying political reality.
This new ideological world is confusing and disorienting, it places President Trump at one end, Bernie Sanders in the middle, and pro-globalization politicians at the opposite extreme. This may seem an arcane issue for political scientists and historians – but this problem is far from academic.
President Trump is an affront to everything that has made America what it is today. His policies will create a world that is poorer, weaker, and scarier. We must oppose Trump in every particular and counter every false promise, every lie and every un-democratic threat. That means we need a leader who will never compromise, who will fight proudly for American values and American lives. We need a real radical, who is unafraid to stand up for an open, prosperous and equal nation. And whatever his personal virtues, before we hand that role to Bernie Sanders and his fellow travelers, we should consider: will a moderate who accepts the validity of Trump’s basic message really be able to beat him?
