The Spectator - 29.02.2020

8 the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk

POLITICS | FREDDY GRAY

performance in last week’s TV debate. The

person who lost that debate in Nevada was

indisputably Mike Bloomberg. He still has

enough money to brainwash and cajole large

chunks of the electorate. He had a slightly

better debate this week in South Carolina,

but everybody knows he has a serious per-

sonality problem.

Team Bloomberg and Team Sanders now

loathe each other — possibly more than they

despise Trump. After Bloomberg’s campaign

offices were vandalised this week, his staff

were quick to blame Sanders’s inflamma-

tory language. Bloomberg then upped hos-

tilities by attacking Sanders for having once

had the support of the gun lobby. It is heresy

to be pro-gun in some Democratic circles;

then again, plenty of Democrats love guns.

That’s the point about Bernie: the usual

rules don’t apply. Similar to Trump, his sup-

posed weak spots are his strengths. His

fuddy- duddy appearance makes him cool.

His socialist radicalism is so old-fashioned

that it speaks to conservatives. He can

win over ultra-progressives in multiracial

metropolises while appearing to stand up

for poor whites in rural areas. He has that

populist juju. If the media ignores him, that’s

an elite conspiracy; if they attack him, ditto.

So he once wrote a strange essay about rape.

So what?

Sanders shrugs off criticism. On Monday,

at a CNN Town Hall, he was challenged for

having said that Fidel Castro’s literacy pro-

grammes were a success. ‘The truth is the

truth,’ he said. He’ll get away with that. Brit-

ish observers might be reminded of Corbyn

and the IRA stuff: a minority feels outraged

that a man who supported the bad guys can

be so brazen; the majority can’t remember

and doesn’t care.

Some commentators are also eager to

claim that Sanders’s movement is, like Cor-

byn’s, racist against Jews, because he has

the support of public figures such as Linda

Sasour and Ilhan Omar, who have flirted

with anti-Semitism. But that point is neatly

undercut by the fact that Bernie is a proud

Jew who once lived on a kibbutz. It would

be an irony of almost biblical proportions if

the first Jewish president turned out to be a

rabid anti-Semite.

Unless the various attack machines can

find a way to stop him in the coming days,

or Bloomberg somehow rigs a brokered

party convention in July, Sanders will be

the nominee. Yet beating Donald Trump is

another matter. Can Sanders win over those

six million or so swing voters who supported

Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016?

He might speak to their lingering disgruntle-

ment. Yet it’s equally possible that a boom-

ing economy has locked them in for Trump.

The economy could turn bad — but

even then a Trump vs Sanders contest might

prove that right-wing populism out-muscles

left-wing populism. Team Trump will por-

tray Sanders as ‘the job killer’ because he

wants to ban fracking and abandon the cur-

rent healthcare system, both of which would

put an enormous number of people out of

work. That point could be far more devastat-

ing than any grainy footage of young Bernie

saying the gulags weren’t so bad.

Sanders could choose a black running

mate to boost Democratic turnout among

African-Americans, something Hillary

Clinton failed to do. But he needs to mobi-

lise huge numbers of black voters to win in

November — and Trump has had some suc-

cess countering that Democratic advantage

with his appeals to African-Americans.

Bernie may indeed be the best-placed

Democratic candidate to beat Trump. That

doesn’t mean he will.

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latest in American politics.

‘B

ernie beats Trump! Bernie beats

Trump!’ That’s what Bernie Sand-

ers’s fans keep chanting, and they

have the polls to prove it. Survey after sur-

vey suggests that, of all the leading candi-

dates for the Democratic party’s nomina-

tion, Sanders is most likely to defeat Don-

ald Trump in the election in November. Vot-

ers like Bernie. Some 46 per cent of voters

say they admire him. Only 26 per cent say

the same of President Trump.

Still, most political experts think Sanders

will be a disaster for the Democratic party.

He may be popular with the base, they say,

but he is far too left-wing for the general

electorate: 2020 would be a repeat of 1972,

when the radical leftie George McGovern

lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide. Sand-

ers as nominee would all but guarantee four

more years of Trump and put both houses

of Congress back under Republican control.

Senior Democrats are freaking out. At

the candidates’ debate in South Carolina

on Tuesday night, Michael Bloomberg even

rehashed the idea that Vladimir Putin is

driving Sanders’s success — a sure sign of

elite despair.

What Sanders’s campaign has really

shown is that all the expert theories as to

why Bernie can’t win are not so clever. It’s

said that he can’t appeal to racial minorities,

yet in Nevada last weekend he won 27 per

cent of African-American voters and 53 per

cent of Hispanics. It’s said that only young

voters are drawn to his socialism, yet he

won every age group apart from the over-

65s. He’s meant to have a ‘ceiling’ of about

30 per cent of Democratic voters, yet he

won about 47 per cent of the vote, including

about 22 per cent of voters who identified as

‘moderate’. By Wednesday next week, after

Super Tuesday — when 14 states vote — his

lead could be insurmountable.

The best news for Bernie is that his rivals

are so weak. Joe Biden’s candidacy is a sad

spectacle, his mind is gone, yet his zombie

campaign drags itself on. Pete Buttigieg is

a clear second in the delegate count, yet his

pale imitation of Barack Obama’s rhetori-

cal style leaves people cold. Amy Klobuchar

is doing enough not to be discounted, yet

not well enough to count. Elizabeth War-

ren has faded dramatically, but she kept

her candidacy on life support with a good

Sanders, Trump, and the populist juju

Bernie might speak to swing voters.

But the booming economy may have

locked them in for Trump

‘Yes, you could say we’re self-isolating.’

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