Leaders 11I
t wasadevastatingcontrast.AstheIowacaucusturnedintoa
fiasco (Democrats blamed the software), President Donald
Trump hailed an “American comeback” in the state-of-the-union
message and basked in his acquittal by the Senate over impeach-
ment. With the economy roaring and his approval ratings ticking
up, Mr Trump looks likelier than ever to triumph in November.
Compare that with the Democrats after Iowa, in which no candi-
date won the backing of much more than a quarter of caucusers.
Democrats agree that ending Mr Trump’s bombastic tenure is
their priority. But their champions, now trudging round New
Hampshire eking out votes before next week’s primary (see Un-
ited States section), are starkly divided over what to offer Ameri-
cans in his place. The left argues that America has stopped work-
ing for most people and thus needs fundamental restructuring.
Moderates recommend running repairs. A lot rests on which
side prevails—the radicals or the repairers.
Any of the front-runners could yet end up as the nominee: the
radicals, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; or the repairers,
Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden (despite his bad day in Iowa). So at a
pinch could Michael Bloomberg, another repairer, who is spend-
ing gargantuan sums before Super Tuesday next month. But on
every count the repairers have the better of the argument. They
are more likely to beat Mr Trump, to achieve things and, most im-
portant, to do what America needs.
It is striking that all of the plausible nomi-
nees are campaigning to the left of President Ba-
rack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016
(see Briefing). They all have ambitious plans on
climate change; and, with the exception of Mr
Bloomberg, are sceptical of free trade. Neverthe-
less, Mr Sanders, who calls himself a democratic
socialist, and Ms Warren, a capitalist, are dis-
tinctly more militant in both style and substance.
This is partly a matter of degree, as health policy shows. All
Democrats want the number of Americans without health insur-
ance, which has risen from 27m to 30m under Mr Trump, to be re-
duced, ideally to zero. The repairers would expand Obamacare’s
market-based system until everyone was covered. Mr Sanders
and Ms Warren, by contrast, would nationalise health insurance,
revolutionising health care, a $3.8trn business accounting for
18% of gdpand which employs 16.6m people.
There is also a fundamental difference about the role of gov-
ernment. Take labour rights, for instance. All Democrats evoke a
mythical golden age when people were rewarded fairly for a day’s
work. The reformers would increase minimum wages to, say, $
an hour and spend more on education and retraining. The radi-
cals would force any largish firm to put workers on its board—Ms
Warren would give their representatives 40% of the seats, Mr
Sanders 45%. Mr Sanders would require firms to transfer 20% of
their equity to workers’ trusts. Both would create a system of fed-
eral charters to oblige firms to operate in the interests of all
stakeholders, including workers, customers and the local com-
munity as well as shareholders. Such a government-mandated
shift in corporate power has never occurred in the United States.
This radicalism is based on three misconceptions. The first is
thatMrTrumpshowedin 2016 thatyouwinelectionsthrough
the fervour of your base rather than making a coalition. That is
unlikely to work for Democrats in 2020. Presidential elections
tend not to be kind to candidates who pitch their camp far from
the political centre. Voters perceived Hillary Clinton as more ex-
treme than Donald Trump in 2016, and it did not end well for her.
In a 50:50 country, marginal handicaps matter.
Mr Trump would have fun with Mr Sanders, who wishes to
double federal spending overnight and, perhaps more important
to the president, honeymooned in the Soviet Union. It was no ac-
cident that in his state-of-the-union message Mr Trump pointed
to Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader who was his
guest for the evening, and reminded Congress that “socialism
destroys nations”. Few voters are hankering to own the means of
production in suburban Philadelphia or Milwaukee, where the
presidential election will probably be decided.
Another misconception is that a radical who did get into the
Oval Office would accomplish much. Some Democrats say that
the intransigence of the Republican Party means an approach
built around compromise is worthless. The pursuit of incremen-
tal change, they reckon, is an admission of defeat at the outset.
They are right that the two parties in Congress have forgotten
how to work together. Today’s Senate is likely to accomplish less
than any other in the past half-century. Their
idea is to take on Mr Trump’s reality-tvpopu-
lism with red-blooded economic populism.
That might thrill activists and terrify Wall
Street, but it would be both unproductive and
self-defeating. Democrats believe in the role of
government. They are condemned to try to
make it work, not demonstrate that it cannot.
The last misconception, and the most im-
portant, concerns the substance of what the radicals would like
to achieve. Ms Warren takes her faith in government to extremes.
If she had her way, the state would break up, abolish or impose
fresh regulations on about half of the firms owned by share-
holders or private-equity groups. Mr Sanders would go even fur-
ther. Both candidates treat private capital as if it operates with
sinister intent, even as they embrace the state as if it were be-
nign, capable and efficient. That is naive. Just as thriving busi-
nesses at their best invigorate and enrich, so government at its
worst can be capable of heartless cruelty and indifference.
There are moments when the United States has required
something like a revolution—before the civil war, say, or in the
years running up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This is not
one of them. Unemployment is as low as it has been since the
mid-1960s. Nominal wages in the lowest quartile of the income
scale are growing by 4.6%. Americans are more optimistic about
their own finances than they have been since 1999.
Instead America needs repairing—lowering the cost of hous-
ing and health care; moving to a low-carbon economy; finding a
voting system that rewards consensus, not partisanship. For
that, national politics needs to become boring again, not to be an
exhausting, outrage-spewing fight between Mr Trump and the
most extreme candidate the Democratic Party can muster. 7State of the Democrats
The Democratic primaries will be a contest between radicals and repairers. The repairers have the better caseLeaders