TheEconomistFebruary 29th 2020 271A
mbitious, exhilaratedand a little
nervous, a freshly elected Democratic
congressman was buzzing with the pos-
sibilities of his new office when he first en-
countered Bernie Sanders. “You do realise
this place is a complete waste of time, don’t
you?” growled the independent senator
from Vermont, by way of welcome to Capi-
tol Hill. And, to be fair to Mr Sanders—and
to the millions of Americans who set such
great store by his integrity and plain speak-
ing—he could not have summed up his
own legislative history better. Mr Sanders
has grumbled persistently about real pro-
blems—a broken health-care system and
inequitable college education above all—
while rarely making any headway in fixing
them. During 30 years in Congress he has
been primary sponsor of just seven bills
that became law, two of which concerned
the renaming of post offices in Vermont.
An uncharitable observer might consider
this the record of a blowhard.
Mr Sanders has taken his preference for
speechifying to the big time. With only mo-
mentary interruptions, he has spent five
years campaigning to be president—ever
since he decided to play spoiler to Hillary
Clinton’s coronation. America’s most fam-
ous socialist is running for the presidency
on more or less the same set of problems he
has emphasised for all those many years
(plus a more recent focus on climate
change). Though his proffered solutions,
in the form of fantastical reforms and vast
spending pledges, look ruinously expen-
sive and unlikely to pass Congress, a com-
mitted faction of Democratic voters like
them enough to have made Mr Sanders the
indisputable front-runner. A candidate
could scarcely have hoped for better results
in the all-important early-primary states.
Betting markets give him a 60% chance of
winning the nomination. If he does well on
March 3rd, Super Tuesday, when 14 states
vote and one-third of delegates will be allo-
cated, he will be uncatchable.
That worries many Democrats. Mr
Sanders is a 78-year-old self-described so-
cialist pulling his party hard to the left in an
election in which the centre is wide open.
Among those who feel the Bern, Mr Sand-
ers’s ideological consistency over his three
decades in Washington is usually the firstthing they mention. Jeremy Corbyn’s sup-
porters had similar feelings about their
candidate, before he led the Labour Party
off a cliff in Britain’s most recent general
election. In some ways, Mr Sanders’s pro-
posals are more radical than Mr Corbyn’s
were. If he got his way, all American resi-
dents, including undocumented immi-
grants, would receive free health care, child
care and education at state universities.
Workers would have a jobs guarantee, seats
on corporate boards and receive 20% of the
equity of large firms. Billionaire clout
would be broken by a wealth tax.
There are two hurdles to achieving all
this: a general-election contest against Mr
Trump, and gaining control of Congress.
Like a Goliath company swallowing
start-ups to preserve its dominance, Mr
Sanders has embraced all the new progres-
sive-sounding ideas that have recently
emerged—borrowing heavily from the in-
novations of Elizabeth Warren in America
and Mr Corbyn in Britain. From Ms Warren,
he has taken on the idea of a wealth tax—
though with higher rates set at 8% at the
top—co-determination of corporate
boards, and the creation of federal charters
for big corporations. From Mr Corbyn, he
has borrowed the idea of national rent con-
trol and the forcible expropriation of cor-
porate wealth to workers (though he has
doubled Mr Corbyn’s suggested 10%, to
20%). The Green New Deal, proposed by cli-
mate activists and espoused by Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term representative,
has found a welcome home in his agenda.The Democratic primary
That Berning feeling
WASHINGTON, DC
What does Bernie Sanders’s political revolution hope to accomplish?
United States
30 HarveyWeinstein
30 TheSupremeCourt
31 High-skilledimmigration
32 Lexington: The primary problemAlso in this section