Democratic Primaries

To hear Sanders tell it, he lost the battle, but won the larger war. In reality, however, it’s hard to see Sanders’ presidential campaign as anything other than a defeat.

His signature “Medicare for All” proposal was repeatedly bludgeoned in the presidential debates, fatally infected Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, and ultimately rejected by most Democratic voters in favor of Joe Biden’s proposal of a public health insurance option. More broadly, the Sanders strategy of making big promises with huge price tags, wrapped with the “socialist” label, sent most Democrats into a panic once he appeared to be nearing the nomination.

He lost. His campaign is over. He will not be the next president. And if his loyalists want to make future gains, they need to learn lessons from that defeat, instead of pretending that they have already won.

In his concession/victory speech, Sanders based his claim on two data points. First, he said, “in so-called red states and blue states and purple states, a majority of the American people now understand that we must raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, that we must guarantee health care as a right to all of our people, that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, and that higher education must be available to all regardless of income.””.....

But there’s a big difference between superficial support for abstract concepts and devout support for concrete policies. Support for Sanders’ list of largely simplistic-though-popular principles splinters once respondents have to grapple with policy details, consider counter-arguments or choose from among multiple proposals

Take Sanders’ advocacy of a free college education for every American. As a principle, it speaks to the idea that everyone should have the ability to go to college, regardless of their origins or economic status. A December New York Times poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaners found broad support for making college affordable to all. But there’s a big difference between “affordable” and “free.” Just 30.5 percent of respondent agreed that “the government should make public colleges free for all Americans, regardless of income,” while two-thirds of Democrats believed that either wealthy families or most families should pay tuition....

Has Sanders helped to broaden the political conversation? Has he legitimized proposals once deemed too radical for consideration? Has he galvanized younger voters and helped pull the center of gravity in the Democratic Party further to the left than it was 16 years ago? Yes, yes and yes. But that is well short of having “won the ideological struggle.”

Democratic voters on Super Tuesday and after vehemently sent a message that there are limits as to how far left their party should go. If another democratic socialist wants to run for the presidency in 2024, she or he (probably she) should understand that the ideological struggle has not been won, and figure out what should be done differently in order to win it.